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I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

lucas03.com

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Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#51

Post by Cthulhu_ »

tekromancr wrote: post #35

"I discovered this neat new hack called 'fraud'"

He confesses that it was a black hat "proof of concept", but he's refunded the money and reported things to Patreon.

Patreon, and ANY website that has user's profiles as permalinks, should reserve ANY account name that has been deleted to prevent squatting.

I'm not sure how this works with the right to be forgotten laws though; I have a gut feeling that you can have your profile deleted and the leftover URLs and permalinks just go to 404 or other kinds of placeholders.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#52

Post by cmeacham98 »

boudin wrote: post #46
cmeacham98 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal consequences aren't the only form of consequences. In this post the author mentions their (legitimate) business. If I was a potential customer looking into said business and found this post I would be very offput by the lack of morals. The strongest condemnation we receive for literal theft is they "didn't want to", the author barely even seems to understand why their behavior is immoral.

Did you read the post to the very end? I don't see anything immoral, he just spotted a weakness in Patreon, warned Patreon and wrote a blog post about it. Nothing wrong here.

Yes, I did read the post until the end.

The author makes no mention of warning Patreon about this weakness, unless you're counting this blog post as the warning.

They clearly attempted to impersonate the original owner of the page, using a description and artwork suggesting they were the original owner.

The second to last paragraph features the author fantasizing about how much money they could make by defrauding people. Quote: "This plan could be pretty profitable!"

Like yeah, in the end they took down the page and refunded the patron. But the author made the wrong choice at essentially every step prior to that moment.

The author didn't just "spot a weakness in patreon", they attempted to (and managed to) commit wire fraud. The fact they had little success and later returned what they stole is relatively little consolation.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#53

Post by Closi »

ghego1 wrote: post #41
tekromancr wrote: post #35

"I discovered this neat new hack called 'fraud'"

Not legal advice. Why fraud? If we are talking about criminal law, the requirements to convict a person are strict. In this case the author has not claimed neither on Patreon or YouTube to be someone he is not. He has not falsified any data/documents and has not stolen any account, since the one he claimed was available. Sketchy? No doubts. Fraud? Doesn't seem like it at all.

In the UK it could be technically counted as fraud by false representation. The legal hurdles for this are:

* The patreon page was misleading (this post shows it was, including the use of old links and imagery to show association to a YouTube channel which was false)

* The person making it knows it might be misleading (they did - they said so in this post)

* The intention was to make a gain in money for themselves, others or to cause a loss to someone else. This includes situations where the gain in money is only temporary (again, technically yes.)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/pdfs/ukpga_2006...

I'm not saying they should be charged with it as clearly they didn't mean to cause harm and were doing it to raise awareness, but it does seem to fit the definition.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#54

Post by boudin »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #52
boudin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the post to the very end? I don't see anything immoral, he just spotted a weakness in Patreon, warned Patreon and wrote a blog post about it. Nothing wrong here.

Yes, I did read the post until the end. The author makes no mention of warning Patreon about this weakness, unless you're counting this blog post as the warning. They clearly attempted to impersonate the original owner of the page, using a description and artwork suggesting they were the original owner. The second to last paragraph features the author fantasizing about how much money they could make by defrauding peo…

You're right, I'm the one who misread the end, I thought the author said he wrote to Patreon, which doesn't seem to be the case. This is not great...

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#55

Post by amelius »

CyanDeparture wrote: post #37
cmeacham98 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is wild. The author does not seem to realize they are confessing to a relatively serious crime, and even calls it a "profitable business"!

The writer at the end refunds the money and messages Patreon to fix the issue, I think that would go massively in his favour in the rare change it ended up in front of a judge.

Yes, this is called white-hat or ethical hacking, a well-established concept even at the government level.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#56

Post by julianwachholz »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #51
tekromancr wrote: post #35

"I discovered this neat new hack called 'fraud'"

He confesses that it was a black hat "proof of concept", but he's refunded the money and reported things to Patreon. Patreon, and ANY website that has user's profiles as permalinks, should reserve ANY account name that has been deleted to prevent squatting. I'm not sure how this works with the right to be forgotten laws though; I have a gut feeling that you can have your profile deleted and the leftover URLs and perm…

Wouldn't the proper status code be "410 Gone" in that case?

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#57

Post by mountainb »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #36
tekromancr wrote: post #35

"I discovered this neat new hack called 'fraud'"

This post is wild. The author does not seem to realize they are confessing to a relatively serious crime, and even calls it a "profitable business"!

Not as uncommon as you think. Many people realize without knowing much about the law that breaking the law can be a great business plan. They just converge upon ideas that are illegal naturally and unperturbed by the potential problems.

Ironically this is also a bit of an entrepreneurial advantage. A trained corporate management drone will be aware of all the bad things that can happen and has been paper trained by lawyers to be frightened of doing anything illegal. The sweet spot is when it's something that's just slightly illegal or just a matter of civil law, but the danger zone is in something like this which is just fraud.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#58

Post by gwd »

jjeaff wrote: post #23
unreal37 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but I doubt refunding your fraud victim after the fact gets you off the hook for fraud. If the victim or the police wanted to pursue that.

I think it might make it difficult to prove intent to defraud if you immediately return the cash. Is it theft if a magician picks your pocket but then returns the wallet at the end of the trick? By the most technical sense of the term, it might. But i can't imagine a prosecutor that would go after something like that.

> Is it theft if a magician picks your pocket but then returns the wallet at the end of the trick?

If a "street magician" randomly picks my pocket out of the blue, you can bet I consider that theft, even if they give it back afterwards. They'd better get my consent to do anything with my person or my property.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#59

Post by harperlee »

julianwachholz wrote: post #56
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He confesses that it was a black hat "proof of concept", but he's refunded the money and reported things to Patreon. Patreon, and ANY website that has user's profiles as permalinks, should reserve ANY account name that has been deleted to prevent squatting. I'm not sure how this works with the right to be forgotten laws though; I have a gut feeling that you can have your profile deleted and the leftover URLs and perm…

Wouldn't the proper status code be "410 Gone" in that case?

Then you are leaking info about previous (or private) existence of the resource. If I recall correctly github does 404 for existing private repos, for example.

Re: I exploited existing YouTube videos with a fake Patreon profile

#60

Post by ldoughty »

amelius wrote: post #55
CyanDeparture wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writer at the end refunds the money and messages Patreon to fix the issue, I think that would go massively in his favour in the rare change it ended up in front of a judge.

Yes, this is called white-hat or ethical hacking, a well-established concept even at the government level.

I was going to leave this alone, but it's important to point out this is not white hat..

This world still be black hat (or arguably grey hat)...

White hat would have been realizing the possible problem and informing the company without actually making the account (or, with only making the account or prove the link, but not taking money from anyone)

You could possibly argue that if the author "cheated himself" only, that's okay... E.g. paid themselves through patreon... Assuming the author eats the cost difference and doesn't refund.

The author actually defrauded unaware visitors, intentionally, he has caused harm to them, patreon (financially or good will/name), and the money transfer networks; this is at a minimum grey hat... Sure, the end user donating was made whole, but other business entities were harmed... Someone eats that transaction fee.

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