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Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

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Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#71

Post by mikeash »

mod wrote: post #55
basseq wrote: post #45

At the risk of making a tenuous (and inflammatory) connection, I'm struck by the difference in tone between this and the Ashley Madison leak. Here, there's sentiments of "how terrible", "leaked users might have severe consequences", and "this ruins the privacy where people get away from repressive social mores". Ashley Madison, by comparison, was met with sentiments of "good!", "glad we're outing adulters", and "thes…

If you're correct in that the same users are presenting different tones (which I don't necessarily agree with), then perhaps it could be summed up by, as you say, impressing our own values on the situation. Perhaps we think it's fitting for adulterers to be outed & shamed, but we don't think it's fitting for them to be attacked or jailed or executed.

That last part is an excellent point. Approximately nobody suffered legal prosecution, mob justice, or honor killings due to the AM leak. The potential consequences here are much more severe.

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#72

Post by mpol »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #24
bmmayer1 wrote: post #8

This is a serious security threat for many Muslims abroad, given that premarital sex is severely punishable in several Islamic countries (including Pakistan mentioned in the leak), and even within countries where it isn't punishable by law, those who get caught frequently risk honor attacks from their families as has happened in the US, UK, India and elsewhere. Obviously dating != sex but there's probably enough 'smo…

Its a sad reality of the culture prevalent amongst poor and rich muslims. Hopefully no one becomes a target of any blasphemy laws. With that said, as someone who grew up as a direct witness to honor cultures and strong religious roots, labelling people who carry out violence as sadist is deluding yourself to reality. This isn't sadism, this isn't even fundamentalism. This is basis of a culture in which honor and reli…

Why call it a honor culture? That almost sounds positive. Here (Netherlands) it is often labelled as shame culture, where people do everything to avoid shame or put it under the carpet.

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#73

Post by mikeash »

ss108 wrote: post #39

The comments about honor killings and stoning for adultery are a bit ridiculous. Honor killings usually happen in tribal and rural segments of Pakistan--not the kinds of people who use Muslim Match. Not all of the users are even from Pakistan, many were probably from the US and the UK, and a lot of the people on there were just genuinely looking for a spouse. Do you guys really think that nobody has premarital sex in…

Here are several examples of honor killings in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing_in_the_United_St...

I'm sure you can find them in other countries too.

The people who use Muslim Match and the people who would commit honor killings aren't the same people. I don't see why it's so unimaginable that a child might use Muslim Match and their parent might think honor killings are necessary.

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#74

Post by douche »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #69
basseq wrote: post #45

At the risk of making a tenuous (and inflammatory) connection, I'm struck by the difference in tone between this and the Ashley Madison leak. Here, there's sentiments of "how terrible", "leaked users might have severe consequences", and "this ruins the privacy where people get away from repressive social mores". Ashley Madison, by comparison, was met with sentiments of "good!", "glad we're outing adulters", and "thes…

One big difference is that people outed by Ashley Madison were not at risk to the degree that muslim daters are at being harmed violently. And even though the definition of adultery may vary between cultures, ignoring the difference between a website where you purposely go in blatant disregard of a personal and somewhat legal trust you established with someone versus a website where you go in an attempt to build a ne…

If an eight-year-old hasn't been impressed with the immorality of theft by that point then there has been a serious lapse of parental and even basic community policing.

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#75

Post by FreedomToCreate »

gbin wrote: post #67
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a sad reality of the culture prevalent amongst poor and rich muslims. Hopefully no one becomes a target of any blasphemy laws. With that said, as someone who grew up as a direct witness to honor cultures and strong religious roots, labelling people who carry out violence as sadist is deluding yourself to reality. This isn't sadism, this isn't even fundamentalism. This is basis of a culture in which honor and reli…

There is nothing cut and dry: is the person in the crowd stoning a woman to a slow and painful death virtuous behind the cultural curtain ? Or part of a religious exploitation? Or part of a political exploitation ?

It may not be cut and dry but you do people a great injustice if you blanket there beliefs and values held over generations as acts of religious or political exploitation. People have a choice, and they can choose the change if they want. Freedoms arose from people choosing to do so.

And yes, if they have a strong belief in the hadith and the local cleric has ruled that there person is an adulterer and proves 4 people witnessed it (not hard to due in corrupt regimes anyway), then why wouldn't you feel virtuous while carrying out the punishment given by God.

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#76

Post by douche »

mpol wrote: post #72
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a sad reality of the culture prevalent amongst poor and rich muslims. Hopefully no one becomes a target of any blasphemy laws. With that said, as someone who grew up as a direct witness to honor cultures and strong religious roots, labelling people who carry out violence as sadist is deluding yourself to reality. This isn't sadism, this isn't even fundamentalism. This is basis of a culture in which honor and reli…

Why call it a honor culture? That almost sounds positive. Here (Netherlands) it is often labelled as shame culture, where people do everything to avoid shame or put it under the carpet.

It's something of a standard term[1]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#77

Post by existencebox »

basseq wrote: post #46
basseq wrote: post #45

At the risk of making a tenuous (and inflammatory) connection, I'm struck by the difference in tone between this and the Ashley Madison leak. Here, there's sentiments of "how terrible", "leaked users might have severe consequences", and "this ruins the privacy where people get away from repressive social mores". Ashley Madison, by comparison, was met with sentiments of "good!", "glad we're outing adulters", and "thes…

Example: HN gleefully ate up analytics on the AM dataset. What men were saying, searching for, the ratio of men to women, etc. Will we do the same here?

The following ramble will try and address the disagreement I'm having with the subtext I'm inferring from your post, that the desire to look over such a dataset is something to be looked down on.

It's a rare dataset with some very interesting implications, as someone who works with data (and humans) I'm curious to better understand parts of behavior one can't often observe.

Now; I will say that if used, it should be handled properly, anonymized to whatever degree possible, and would reject analytics use cases which aim at attacking the subjects.

However, to deny that there are fascinating and valuable questions to be asked in how different population strata interact is to deny a basic curiosity present in many I've met from tech-centric communities.

(Edit: to answer the child since reply limited: Perhaps I misunderstood you, since I read your statement as implying that people only wanted the data to "punish" the users or as some morbid curiosity in the prior case; since as you say I have equal (significant) desire to look at the datasets in both cases; I took the OP comment to focus more on the _sentiments_ and not on the data usage itself as you held up to example.)

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#78

Post by douche »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #62
nickpsecurity wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is ample market opportunity in providing secure services and communications for Muslim clients." You mean aiding and abeitting terrorists? That's the nonsense they'll mention when they target that company or its founders. "They" means about any country in the Wassenar Agreement, part of many Eyes coalition, prone to mass surveillance, or concerned about terrorism. That's unfortunately about every democracy or…

If a terrorist organization wants secure communications, they will find a way to get them, whether by an app with encryption by default like Telegram or something they make in-house. You can't stop or prevent that unless you intend to do so for everybody on Earth. It has nothing to do with being Muslim.

Shit, you could encode a ton of secret communications in imgur with a tiny amount of steganography. There's a lot of junk bits that could be used here and there to store sensitive data in places that would not be looked into.

Security through obscurity

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#79

Post by basseq »

centizen wrote: post #70
basseq wrote: post #45

At the risk of making a tenuous (and inflammatory) connection, I'm struck by the difference in tone between this and the Ashley Madison leak. Here, there's sentiments of "how terrible", "leaked users might have severe consequences", and "this ruins the privacy where people get away from repressive social mores". Ashley Madison, by comparison, was met with sentiments of "good!", "glad we're outing adulters", and "thes…

I think it's an important point to bring up, but I don't feel like the same people who were passing judgement on the AM leak are the ones raising concerns here. But if I had to explain the difference, I think it's the differences in potential backlash on the affected users. Majority of Ashely Madison users were not in countries that would severely persecute them for their activities.

Yet the consequences for AM users could be severe as well (divorce, stigmatization, etc.). Yes, physical harm is worse than divorce, but it's a spectrum.

Also, interesting thought exercise: there probably was a percentage of AM users that were Muslim. Was it a larger percentage than those users on Muslim Match who would face persecution?

Re: Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

#80

Post by basseq »

existencebox wrote: post #77
basseq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example: HN gleefully ate up analytics on the AM dataset. What men were saying, searching for, the ratio of men to women, etc. Will we do the same here?

The following ramble will try and address the disagreement I'm having with the subtext I'm inferring from your post, that the desire to look over such a dataset is something to be looked down on. It's a rare dataset with some very interesting implications, as someone who works with data (and humans) I'm curious to better understand parts of behavior one can't often observe. Now; I will say that if used, it should be…

And I'm struggling with the same thing: hence the comment thread here. Wouldn't Muslim Match have "interesting implications" as well?
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