Former Social Network Parler has over 50TB of Data Leaked Online

[Nowak]

10 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The description of this Hack is completely in accurate.  

 

The information was not stored in the clear.  They took our information put it into one archive file then ran a sha 256 hash.  That hash is saved.  

As the above reddit post shows NOTHING private was downloaded.  Think about it.  Do you know how rare multi terabyte hard disk are?  At 50-100 TB we'd have to be talking hard disk.  

Considering the speed of even the best home internet it would take days and days to download all of the information.  Mathematically, and technologically what they are saying is impossible.  

Again, I was a Parler user, want to know what it was really like inbox me. 

So whatcha saying is, the only private info obtained was what Parler users posted themselves in response to US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and whoever else asked for it (likely due to a lack of tech literacy and knowledge of what is and isn't okay to post online).

[Kisai]

20 minutes ago, Nowak said:

So whatcha saying is, the only private info obtained was what Parler users posted themselves in response to US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and whoever else asked for it (likely due to a lack of tech literacy and knowledge of what is and isn't okay to post online).

Given what Parler was marketed to, it wouldn't surprise me if they had their own moderation problems with people posting things that would get the site and it's users in legal trouble. There is a reason why internet cesspools get deplatformed. They are expensive to host, and the only places that will host illegal content without question are in countries that are corrupt, and even cloudflare can be pressured to drop a hate site faster than it will take down a piracy site. 

 

There will be a day that one of these stupid sites move their data to a country that's in the middle of a civil war and find their data perish when the country goes offline, or the government decides to cut the internet off to keep other countries from knowing what's going on. 

 

If the site was completely invisible to the public web, it would likely still be online. I don't know about the apps however, as it seems like the apps were just wrapping the website much like twitter and facebook do.

[Nowak]

Just now, Kisai said:

Given what Parler was marketed to, it wouldn't surprise me if they had their own moderation problems with people posting things that would get the site and it's users in legal trouble. There is a reason why internet cesspools get deplatformed. They are expensive to host, and the only places that will host illegal content without question are in countries that are corrupt, and even cloudflare can be pressured to drop a hate site faster than it will take down a piracy site. 

 

There will be a day that one of these stupid sites move their data to a country that's in the middle of a civil war and find their data perish when the country goes offline, or the government decides to cut the internet off to keep other countries from knowing what's going on. 

 

If the site was completely invisible to the public web, it would likely still be online. I don't know about the apps however, as it seems like the apps were just wrapping the website much like twitter and facebook do.

I've seen screenshots on Twitter of sitting US congresspeople asking people on Parler for their personal info so they can "stay in touch", which actually resulted in people posting their private info. This includes email addresses, full names and even street addresses. I'm obviously not going to post them here due to the posts containing the info uncensored, but considering how much of a shitshow of a site Parler was I am not all that surprised this happened.

 

However, I guess that's how participants in the January 6th insurrection were added to "no fly" lists so quickly. They brought it upon themselves.

[Uttamattamakin]

39 minutes ago, Nowak said:

I've seen screenshots on Twitter of sitting US congresspeople asking people on Parler for their personal info so they can "stay in touch", which actually resulted in people posting their private info. This includes email addresses, full names and even street addresses. I'm obviously not going to post them here due to the posts containing the info uncensored, but considering how much of a shitshow of a site Parler was I am not all that surprised this happened.

 

However, I guess that's how participants in the January 6th insurrection were added to "no fly" lists so quickly. They brought it upon themselves.

That may be a tiny number of fools.  Though I could immagine someone posting an email address or link to some other social media.  Some people don't consider a gmail (that is going to be full of more Spam than a US army kitchen in 1944) as being "personal" information.  

You're making it sound like people posted their credit card number and social. 

 

44 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Given what Parler was marketed to, it wouldn't surprise me if they had their own moderation problems with people posting things that would get the site and it's users in legal trouble. There is a reason why internet cesspools get deplatformed. They are expensive to host, and the only places that will host illegal content without question are in countries that are corrupt, and even cloudflare can be pressured to drop a hate site faster than it will take down a piracy site. 

 

There will be a day that one of these stupid sites move their data to a country that's in the middle of a civil war and find their data perish when the country goes offline, or the government decides to cut the internet off to keep other countries from knowing what's going on. 

 

If the site was completely invisible to the public web, it would likely still be online. I don't know about the apps however, as it seems like the apps were just wrapping the website much like twitter and facebook do.

Actually it wasn't marketed to conservatives.  Conservatives knew it was just not going to mark things as being misinformation when they are not.  

What got me interested was when COVID 19 was first coming around.  Back in Jan 20.  Twitter would call a video posted from China, showing the effects of Covid in Wuhan "misinformation".  Now look at the world.  I had also known for a while that in China they tend  to censor their social media at the behest of government.   Which made me want to ... diversify... my social medias beyond just Facebook and Twitter. 

As for calling a newer or smaller platform a "cesspool"  You know there was a time where Facebook was just something for goofy college kids, that one had to be invited to if they went to one of a few elite universities.  There was a time that posting a picture of a college party on Facebook where alcohol was served was a termination level  offence.  People lost jobs because they had a FB account in college in the early days.  To some companies even having had a FB account was, they would make you delete it.  

 

This really was a thing.  In 2006 for example this was written.

Social Networking & Computer Privacy - Workplace Fairness

Quote

11. Can my employer legally fire me for the content that I post on my personal website, blog, social networking, or social media website?

Generally, an employer can fire you for having a personal website or blog that it deems inappropriate, with very limited exceptions. Even if you have a non-work related website that you don't access from your office, employers can fire you if they feel the content on your personal site or blog is offensive to them or to potential clients, or reflects badly on the company. For more information about how to blog without risking termination, see our site's page on off-duty conduct.

emphasis mine.  

 

So try not to be so judgmental.  All I wanted to do was share and see Libertarian Memes.  Argue with conservatives, argue with liberals.  If I needed a fact check I could cite sources to debunk what they wrote.  That's how a free debate should work.  

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You're making it sound like people posted their credit card number and social. 

They didn't go that far. If they did then I'd begin pushing harder for internet literacy classes being mandatory.

[Mling]

do not publish anything on the internet you would not yell out loud in your town/village square. If someone leaked the details of my facebook account I would laugh because all of it is publicly accessible except for messenger which is just full of dirty jokes, which are hilarious!

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

 

So try not to be so judgmental.  All I wanted to do was share and see Libertarian Memes.  Argue with conservatives, argue with liberals.  If I needed a fact check I could cite sources to debunk what they wrote.  That's how a free debate should work.  

Did you see me callout who it was marketed to? No. I include troll sites (eg chan sites and the sites spun off from them when their edgy content was no longer welcome) in the definition of cesspool, or sewer, or garbage dump. If you go in without protection, you come out smelling like garbage. The minute you post on those sites, you have to take that protection off.

 

Imagine for a minute, that it wasn't parler, but SA. A site that's been around before youtube, and created a lot of the early meme-culture stuff you see on facebook, youtube and twitter.  That site requires PAID membership to keep the bots and those who don't get the message they aren't welcome there off. Yet, most of the people who moved on from that site, regret having ever engaging in that kind of immature cesspool behavior. So let's say someone dumped SA, linked all the credit card names to their subscribers and went around going "hey, every single member of SA is a domestic terrorist." That's easily disproven since members of that site exist outside the country. Yet here we go with Parler which essentially, either through incompetence in security, or willingness to engage in illegal activity in requesting ID when they had no legal authority to, created a list of potential domestic terrorists, and anyone who joined it for luls and posting poop images got rounded up with them.

 

So while I'm not willing to throw every member of Parler under the bus for jumping on a "taking my toys and going elsewhere" behavior that other sites have fragmented their communities before, this feels a lot like trading competent Twitter for an incompetent Nigerian 419 scam.

 

[straight_stewie]

On 1/11/2021 at 2:12 PM, pierom_qwerty said:

To put it simply, I am disappointed. I was not a user of Parler, but I do have to say if you market your platform towards a growing group of people not satisfied with their current social media options for one reason or another, you should do your best to make sure the security of your users is protected as much as possible. Who knows what will happen with the data, but we can for sure know that it is going to spread like wildfire.

 

I didn't notice a date in the article. Does anyone know what date(s) the data was grabbed on?

[GDRRiley]

I didn't realize people needed to be told to not use sequential URLs, is that not on the first page of having a site with user uploads.

[GDRRiley]

10 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

I didn't notice a date in the article. Does anyone know what date(s) the data was grabbed on?

most of it was the last 3-4 days as it got close to being closed.

[Video Beagle]

23 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Technically you're not really a hacker if you're just doing it official way without breaking into anything or abusing login credentials lol

Well, you do qualify if you're eating ramen and drinking Jolt! cola while doing it.

[RejZoR]

32 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Well, you do qualify if you're eating ramen and drinking Jolt! cola while doing it.

MtnDew and Doritos not a thing anymore?

[Video Beagle]

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

MtnDew and Doritos not a thing anymore?

Well, I'm old school.:)

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

Did you see me callout who it was marketed to? No. I include troll sites (eg chan sites and the sites spun off from them when their edgy content was no longer welcome) in the definition of cesspool, or sewer, or garbage dump. If you go in without protection, you come out smelling like garbage. The minute you post on those sites, you have to take that protection off.

 

 

 

I read all of that and here is the TL DR I get from that.  

"I will call anything a cesspool that isn't used by a lot of people, or which mainstream media is censorious about.  If something (someone) is not the most popular then it (they) are bad." 

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I read all of that and here is the TL DR I get from that.  

"I will call anything a cesspool that isn't used by a lot of people, or which mainstream media is censorious about.  If something (someone) is not the most popular then it (they) are bad." 

A cesspool is a cesspool when it attracts people who are joined by their hatred of something. It's that simple. Many *chan spinoffs are that, and Parler fits the mold. 

 

Likewise, anyone defending it, likely refuses to acknowledge the reality of the situation.

[SolarNova]

Parler isnt/wasnt a 'cesspool', it was a free speech platform, (with moderation of openly illegal content), in competition with Twitter.

Just like Twitter there are ..'unsavory'..individuals that use it, the primary difference is that Twitter openly censors those of particular views whilst leaving equally 'unsavory' views of the opposing 'mindset' alone.... Parler does not, and because that ..it is no more.

 

The 'leak' was a data dump of publicly available information prior to its 'canceling' .

[Gibs960]

The most worrying part is not that people submitted their ID for verification purposes, but the fact that that's legal without any sort of guarantee of safety. 

 

Surely to be able to store someone's ID you must have to have strict measures in place to make sure that doesn't get in the wrong hands?

[Uttamattamakin]

39 minutes ago, Kisai said:

A cesspool is a cesspool when it attracts people who are joined by their hatred of something. It's that simple. Many *chan spinoffs are that, and Parler fits the mold. 

 

Likewise, anyone defending it, likely refuses to acknowledge the reality of the situation.

The fact you, without having been there and had an account there think you know "the reality" proves me right.  

That's like thinking one can know the reality of  war better than a combat veteran does by watching MASH. 

[Uttamattamakin]

1 minute ago, Gibs960 said:

The most worrying part is not that people submitted their ID for verification purposes, but the fact that that's legal without any sort of guarantee of safety. 

 

Surely to be able to store someone's ID you must have to have strict measures in place to make sure that doesn't get in the wrong hands?

There was a guarantee of safety.  They did not save our actual ID's.  They are saved just long enough to do a hash of the data.  Something which can be done on any data set. 

 

Ever downloaded an .iso then verified it with an MD5 Sum?    That's what they did with the ID info.  Then they delete the ID info and keep the hashed code.  

[piemadd]

39 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The fact you, without having been there and had an account there think you know "the reality" proves me right.  

That's like thinking one can know the reality of  war better than a combat veteran does by watching MASH. 

Did you seriously just compare yourself to being a war vet? TBH that is a little bit messed up...

[SolarNova]

10 minutes ago, pierom_qwerty said:

Did you seriously just compare yourself to being a war vet? TBH that is a little bit messed up...

Missing the analogy ?

[CarlBar]

Disclaimer. I'm from Europe, and beyond a strong degree of "A pox on both your houses" sentiment towards both sides in the US right now i have no personal stake in this.

 

What Parler was actually like overall is irrelevant. What matters is was there visible content of the types cited against which parler was taking no moderation action? If so then thats all the reason that Apple, Google, and Amazon need to stop supporting it. Doesn't matter if it was a few crazies only, it's still all the reason they need to take action.

 

 

[Master Delta Chief]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The fact you, without having been there and had an account there think you know "the reality" proves me right.  

That's like thinking one can know the reality of  war better than a combat veteran does by watching MASH. 

Just because some people weren't on that platform doesn't mean we have no clue what goes on the platform? It's well known that at this point Parler had a large number of users who were posting a lot of hatred kinds of messages and all sorts of other crap like anti-Semitism. You cannot deny it became a cesspool for those kinds of people. 

[piemadd]

1 hour ago, SolarNova said:

Missing the analogy ?

Well first off its not that good of an analogy. I can quite clearly look at the indexed version of the site and see how it is.

Vets don't have cameras tied to their heads 24/7.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

What Parler was actually like overall is irrelevant. What matters is was there visible content of the types cited against which parler was taking no moderation action? If so then thats all the reason that Apple, Google, and Amazon need to stop supporting it. Doesn't matter if it was a few crazies only, it's still all the reason they need to take action.

The sticky issue of Section 230. If you can moderate your forum, then the forum takes on the legal responsibility as they're ostensibly held liable. I say "ostensibly" because as far as I'm aware, FB or Twitter hasn't been fined yet.

 

Either you're hosting an open forum with zero moderation. Or you take it full-on to scrub any liable content. You can't have your cake at eat it too. There should be none of this "we moderate what we want, but take no responsibility" crap.