Or, you could let us know when you figure out why it was trending yesterday and the users are complaining which is why Vice wrote about it. Why I'm saying what I am.

There's an assumption here that this problem is fixed bc it was already hacked.

It's not.

With Parler down, there are going to be a ton of white supremacists switching to (or back to) @Telegram, a company that has sheltered some of the worst, most explicitly pro-terror Nazi groups for years now.

RT to tell @apple & @google to KICK TELEGRAM OFF their app stores, too.

Or, Telegram can actually enforce its terms of service.

But I am watching tons of Nazis thrill to the idea of mass murder on there.

They're emboldened, and @Telegram gives them a place to recruit, radicalize, and plan to kill people.

Parler was bad, but Telegram is the absolute wild west.

I've watched actual terror plots unfold there.

It's where they share printable gun plans and bomb how-tos.

It's where they discuss targets and share vicious, gory murder videos of minorities they don't like.

And I would also add, deplatforming the less dark-webby extremism platforms like Parler ALWAYS means a temporary influx to these more extremist, darker-webby platforms.

We saw it after 8chan, too.

It was necessary, it immediately and overwhelmingly cut down on successful deadly terror, but in the very short term I watched numbers swell in overtly terror Nazi channels as more radicalized/edgelors 8chan folks sought a new home.

I did more research into the Parler dump. What probably happened was not so much a "hack", but this: When Twilio/Okta shut them down, they just disabled email/phone verification to create an account. This means anyone could directly create huge amounts of accounts via their API.

Someone also found out that fetching Parler posts could be done by enumerating IDs (e.g 1, 2, 3) instead of random IDs that can't be guessed. Unclear if this was via the ordinary API endpoint, or that they found a separate one by monitoring app network traffic.

So you combine these two things and you can create a script to scrape all the posts on the entire platform, using a lot of different accounts to avoid suspicion. Anyone could download and run this script to spread it out over many IP addresses as well.

What I'm still not sure about is whether deleted (meaning flagged as deleted, it's common that services never actually delete data) posts could be fetched without any special handling.

The verdict: The people who wrote Parler are fucking amateurs.

I'll touch upon few different types of cyber frauds and few possible ways in which we can avoid ourselves to be duped of money, time & energy.

Will also attach few real registered FIRs showing that most of the times such crimes happen with educated & learned people.

1/16

Cyber Fraud type 1 - Facebook/Instagram

Profile cloning -Fraudster will make exact same profile like yours - using pictures from your own profile. They will then message to your contacts asking for money immediately for the surgery of mother or similar emotional lie

2/16

Always verify before sending money.
Don't verify by calling that person, instead, call a common friend or family member of that person. Don't think you can't be fooled - I know at least 20 people working in Top IT MNCs becoming victim of this fraud. Lock your FB/Insta.

3/16

Cyber Fraud type 2 -OLX/Quikr
This generally happens while selling something on OLX/Quikr & similar platforms. In such cases, people will fraud in the name of paying money by asking to scan the QR code or click a link.
NEVER scan the QR code to receive money, give your UPI

4/16

Cyber Fraud type 3 - Fake SMS & Call from unknown numbers
Fraudster will send fake SMS showing amount credited to the account - with correct account number in SMS. Then they will call from unknown numbers asking for money.

ALWAYS check your bank account first via bank app.

5/16