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Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

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Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#3

The Chinese hacked the entire OPM database and siphoned of the data of all government employees. Hacked Marriot. It’s anyone’s guess how will they mine and use this information.

They didn't exactly hack Marriott. They hacked Starwood, which had been bought by Marriott. I don't mean to nitpick but there are far more Marriott guests than Starwood guests.

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#4

The Chinese hacked the entire OPM database and siphoned of the data of all government employees. Hacked Marriot. It’s anyone’s guess how will they mine and use this information.

They didn't exactly hack Marriott. They hacked Starwood, which had been bought by Marriott. I don't mean to nitpick but there are far more Marriott guests than Starwood guests.

The Marriott system is still riddled with vulnerabilities. Had someone transfer 200,000 points out of my account recently. No way they stole my session cookie, and the password was very complex, unique to Marriott and generated / stored by LastPass. There was no attempt to change my password. Now what's interesting is that the points to airline infrastructure likely is a SPG legacy backend that is still running.

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#5
The most amazing part of this acquisition was discovering there's a gay dating app called "blue" that I bet most americans, even those in the space, have never heard of with 10 times the traffic of grindr.

And grindr isn't obscure or known only among gays, I've heard it joked about on late night television and light-hearted NPR shows. It's part of the zietgiest whether you're in the target demo or not.

I guess the domain space is inherently regional since it's about meeting locals but I'm still continually amazed at how unknown some of the largest players are outside their market.

It's like the regional scooter/rideshare/delivery competitors. I listen to UK podcasts and they act like everyone on the planet has heard of and constantly uses a company named "Deliveroo", which I, even in the startup world had only maybe tangentially heard of, but not in any significant way. It serves in 14 countries and has 13,000 employees and 20,000 deliverers.

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't exactly hack Marriott. They hacked Starwood, which had been bought by Marriott. I don't mean to nitpick but there are far more Marriott guests than Starwood guests.

The Marriott system is still riddled with vulnerabilities. Had someone transfer 200,000 points out of my account recently. No way they stole my session cookie, and the password was very complex, unique to Marriott and generated / stored by LastPass. There was no attempt to change my password. Now what's interesting is that the points to airline infrastructure likely is a SPG legacy backend that is still running.

Woah. 200,000 points. Thats a lot of stays and or purchases. Did they acknowledge the theft ?

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#7

The Chinese hacked the entire OPM database and siphoned of the data of all government employees. Hacked Marriot. It’s anyone’s guess how will they mine and use this information.

The entire CIA network in China was recently brought down from stuff like this while the agents of Chinese military are masquerading as innocent Chinese graduate students and copying University hard drives as fast as possible. My coworker from Carnegie Mellon described the situation years ago and it seems pretty grim.

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#8

The most amazing part of this acquisition was discovering there's a gay dating app called "blue" that I bet most americans, even those in the space, have never heard of with 10 times the traffic of grindr. And grindr isn't obscure or known only among gays, I've heard it joked about on late night television and light-hearted NPR shows. It's part of the zietgiest whether you're in the target demo or not. I guess the do…

I have Blued, but I barely use it as loading pics and messages on it is so sluggish. There's literally a spinning cursor that comes up for actions that should be quite trivial for the user.

Re: Behind Grindr's Doomed Hookup in China

#9
post #8

The most amazing part of this acquisition was discovering there's a gay dating app called "blue" that I bet most americans, even those in the space, have never heard of with 10 times the traffic of grindr. And grindr isn't obscure or known only among gays, I've heard it joked about on late night television and light-hearted NPR shows. It's part of the zietgiest whether you're in the target demo or not. I guess the do…

I have Blued, but I barely use it as loading pics and messages on it is so sluggish. There's literally a spinning cursor that comes up for actions that should be quite trivial for the user.

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