2021-01-11 Parler "Hacked"

[kjr_29]

OK jokes aside, there is no legitimate reason for this platform to collect driver's licenses or SSN's. I would not provide PII to a website without a real need for it.

Parler has a verified citizen (or something to that effect) badge that a user can initiate and requires some form of ID for vetting. I.e. if they had that, it was because a user wanted verification.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[SJC3081]

OK jokes aside, there is no legitimate reason for this platform to collect driver's licenses or SSN's. I would not provide PII to a website without a real need for it.

They don’t, that is false information. They only asked for a telephone #. So they can confirm your a real person.
Parler doesn't data mine their users, so the telephone # helps prevent bot and fake accounts.

[randyho]

I never gave Parler any of that. Let's not think that Parler requires more than the gulag to play along.

[Default.mp3]

They don’t, that is false information. They only asked for a telephone #. So they can confirm your a real person.
Parler doesn't data mine their users, so the telephone # helps prevent bot and fake accounts.

I was never on Parler, so perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like you only need a phone number to sign up, but you need to provide a government ID of some sort in order to become a "Parler Citizen".



Allegedly, one of the issues here is that it wasn't really a hack (hence my use of quotation marks), but simply just a data scrape; no breach of security occurred, per se, but more of just extremely poor security by Parler, or at least that's the current narrative. Rather, due to how Parler had set up how they store posts, images, and videos, the scrapers were able to simply iterate through URLs in a straightforward fashion and just download everything in an automated way once they wrote a script to automate that iterating through of URLs.

[David S.]

^^^^ Correct, but it's my understanding that they do (did?) not store your ID information. It gets deleted as soon as the user is confirmed.

Apparently Parler maintained everything on Amazon Web Service servers, along with a few others. Apparently they all dumped Parler at the same time. Parler is suing for antitrust.

[Default.mp3]

^^^^ Correct, but it's my understanding that they do (did?) not store your ID information. It gets deleted as soon as the user is confirmed.

I believe the claim is that Parler did not actually delete the photos of the government IDs (or anything else, really, allegedly it just deindexes the posts from being searchable within Parler), and thus those photos were downloaded. Again, I'll stress this appears to be speculation only for now, but it doesn't sound too farfetched given the poor security practices that allegedly led to the scrape to begin with.

[David S.]

I believe the claim is that Parler did not actually delete the photos of the government IDs (or anything else, really, allegedly it just deindexes the posts from being searchable within Parler), and thus those photos were downloaded. Again, I'll stress this appears to be speculation only for now, but it doesn't sound too farfetched given the poor security practices that allegedly led to the scrape to begin with.

We'll see if anyone actually puts forward any evidence.

I wouldn't put it past any tech company to be shady with private info. I also wouldn't put it past AWS from being shady with Parler's info.

Fortunately I didn't bother to get verified.

[Wendell]

OK jokes aside, there is no legitimate reason for this platform to collect driver's licenses or SSN's. I would not provide PII to a website without a real need for it.

That user verification is optional. If the user wishes to be seen by the community as verified, they submit both sides of an ID and a picture. Whatever ID you provide...

[Stephanie B]

The censorship needs to go away. Conservatives and gun owners need to able to be just as present and vocal on social media as anyone else. Free speech should matter, and space for genuine and intense dissent must exist. I won't be hopeful.

I hope that I'm not telling anyone here something new, but here it goes: On any forum, be it print, TV, radio or the internet, the right of free speech applies to the owner of the forum. It does not apply to those who seek to publish within that forum. The government has to have a pretty damned good reason to censor the publishers and the courts do not look fondly on those attempts.

BUT the forum owners generally have the right to apply whatever rules they want. Your choice is to comply with the rules or walk away. You do not have the right to have your views carried on Twitter, Parler, or here, for that matter. If LittleLebowski decided to delete all posts critical of AOC or DJT, he is more than free to do so because this is his forum and he has the right to set the rules for participation. Just like any newspaper can edit or refuse to publish your letter to the editor.

Those politicians crying about Twiter's censorship are only showing their basic lack of understanding in how the First Amendment works.

[Borderland]

I hope that I'm not telling anyone here something new, but here it goes: On any forum, be it print, TV, radio or the internet, the right of free speech applies to the owner of the forum. It does not apply to those who seek to publish within that forum. The government has to have a pretty damned good reason to censor the publishers and the courts do not look fondly on those attempts.

BUT the forum owners generally have the right to apply whatever rules they want. Your choice is to comply with the rules or walk away. You do not have the right to have your views carried on Twitter, Parler, or here, for that matter. If LittleLebowski decided to delete all posts critical of AOC or DJT, he is more than free to do so because this is his forum and he has the right to set the rules for participation. Just like any newspaper can edit or refuse to publish your letter to the editor.

Those politicians crying about Twiter's censorship are only showing their basic lack of understanding in how the First Amendment works.

I can't load that link.