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Parler Databases Disclosed

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Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#132
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While it does feel reactionary (if that's the right word) that the services are only now revoking doing business with Parler, they are within their rights to stop the contract one-sidedly. I'm actually fairly sure that in the contract they don't even have to state a reason, but don't quote me on that. Yeah most of these services are doing that to avoid being associated with Parler and these Trump movements. But it…

Yep, there are no good choices here. Parler is an organizing venue for Trump supporters attempting to overturn a democratic election and/or storm the capitol, which also has a rather anti-democratic feel to it, no? So you can think of it as a trolley problem with "democracy" strapped to both sets of tracks. Since democracy will be a casualty, to one extent or another, in both the "do nothing" and "do something" optio…

> the service providers must ask themselves: which scenario will hurt democracy worse?

As I mentioned above, what they are likely asking themselves is pragmatic instead of moral, i.e. "which option exposes us as a company to the most legal problems? What hurts profits?"

That explains why service providers changed their thinking so suddenly and dramatically after, you know, a whole lot of serious crimes against the state happened on the 6th, and the evidence trail runs through those service providers.

Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#133
post #124
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This shows a new type of cloud hosting vulnerability. Your entire corporations infrastructure could be mirrored faster than you could notice. and YOU are paying for the bandwidth too :-)

Upload into many clouds is free. You could set up a bunch of instances on Azure to download data to a data store and shutdown when finished, unless I’m missing something.

They mean that the corporation is paying for the people downloading 70 terabytes from them.

Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#134
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, yes (even in the US). You still have to pay for it, but there is a litany of rules and procedures they must follow before they can cut you off. Kind of like the foreclosure process. They can't cut a customer's power over his politics--especially paying customers!

Electricity is a public utility, not a right. A public utility is a regulated entity that must supply anyone in their region who follows the rules -- and, in general, if you break the rules but then fix your behavior, they must allow you service again. The existence of a public utility does not forbid a private competitor, but the scale advantage of a public utility is generally overwhelming unless you have specializ…

It would be useful to clarify what "follow the rules" here means, in the USA (for us non-USA audiences). It probably varies in different countries, but in most cases doesn't it simply refer to fair usage? Make your payments in time and don't put excessive strain on the grid by powering your inter-dimensional portal. Does ideology or clandestine activity matter in how you use electricity? Of course, a court order could force the utility company to cut you off, but can the utility company simply cut you off based on their or society's _opinion_ of your activities?

If you consider an internet connection a public utility, which we should, then that would be ostracism. In terms of companies being able to successfully run their businesses, are we at the point where a "cloud provider" should be considered part of a country's infrastructure?

I can agree with the point being made about an internet connection, but Parler was still able to buy some servers and self-host. Unless there's an argument here to consider cloud providers a de-facto component of a nation's tech infrastructure. Seeing as we have no proper public regulation of the sector and no public player providing the service, I'm not sure how far that argument would go. It's still an interesting question to ponder on, I guess.

Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#138
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upload into many clouds is free. You could set up a bunch of instances on Azure to download data to a data store and shutdown when finished, unless I’m missing something.

They mean that the corporation is paying for the people downloading 70 terabytes from them.

Ahh, I misunderstood.

Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#139
post #87
post #4

"Twilio put out at midnight last night. In that Press Release, Twilio accidentally revealed which services Parler was using. Turns out it was all of the security authentications that were used to register a user. This allowed anyone to create a user, and not have to verify an email address, and immediately have a logged-on account. Well, because of that access, it gave them access to the behind the login box API that…

> this leaves a really bad taste with how Twilio handled the situation AS A BUSINESS. I wouldn't blame Twilio. It's entirely Parler's fault they allowed an unvalidated account to successfully register and log in. Of course, it's also entirely the intruder's fault they exploited the wide open security hole.

Agreed. It’s a bit of column A and column B. Twilio shouldn’t have disclosed the services that Parler were using. Parler should not have allowed unverified users to log in ESPECIALLY if they’re dealing with PII. (Verified Parlers submitted photos of their licenses.)

Either way, this feels like something that will end in a lawsuit.

Re: Parler Databases Disclosed

#140
post #18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Twilio was no longer authenticating emails. Can someone explain what does this mean?

Trying to make sense of it, I believe that means Parler was delegating their email verification and 2fa checks to Twillio. And somehow, without access to Twillio's API, they defaulted to not do any check at all? I'm not sure what to do of this, that doesn't sound that realistic but who knows.

Nope it was totally realistic.

I tried to create an account on Parler last night to check which services were turned off by AWS. I entered dummy data into their form. The POST to their auth service timed out...but the auth flow took you to the success page anyway?

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