I think there's a spectrum between letting whitehats do anything (including violating privacy, hurting real user accounts, etc) vs. suing everyone who changes a GET param somewhere. Having a whitehat program with (IMO reasonable) guidelines around not impacting unsuspecting real users seems to me like a good balance and is fairly close to the first part of the spectrum.
Obviously I don't love the end outcome, and this would have gone better for all parties if he had used a test account and included some kind of repro instructions (like that video) in the initial report.
Obviously I don't love the end outcome, and this would have gone better for all parties if he had used a test account and included some kind of repro instructions (like that video) in the initial report.