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Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’
- timwaagh 10y agoreally? the most interesting messages where only sweet romantic stuff? This should be a treasure trove for journalists.
- Avshalom 10y agoAh yes, the old Dating-Site-That-Is-Actually-An-ISIS-Terror-Cell-Coordination-Site ploy... Oh wait, that's not a real thing at all. Why should this be a treasure trove?
- timwaagh 10y agobecause groups talk differently amongst themselves than they do in a survey. i live in a muslim dominated neighbourhood. i had them for classmates so i heard them talk amongst themselves and they said some stuff that did shock me (not just related to jihad, but also things like: some girls talked about how they where not allowed to look western boys in the eye). but more importantly because we want to know this. how do they (the other) think. what is a 'moderate muslim'. its fascinating to get some insight on these things.
- fahadkhan 10y ago"what is a 'moderate muslim'." WOW! How do cope with such a high level of paranoia?
- cableshaft 10y agoI'd say it's less paranoia and more "all we get from the media is anti-Muslim propaganda and reports of horrible things extremist Muslims do, it'd be nice to have something to point to that's not about that." Honestly I'd rather the mainstream media just starts doing consistent positive coverage on individuals in the Muslim community to counteract the negative news, but I'll take what I can get. I've had discussions with several 'normal folk' Americans (note: I am American) that are totally brainwashed into believing being Muslim is synonymous with being pure evil, and I'm afraid of what that mindset leads to, especially on a large scale.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoI've had discussions with several wealthy upper class Americans (who should know better) that are totally brainwashed into believing being poor white trash, pro gun, pro gay marriage or pro abortion is synonymous with being pure evil. The ability to fail to understand the difference between a group and it's most visible members is one that is common across ethnic and economic subsets of the population.
- Trombone12 10y agoYou live with many Muslim neighbours and you look to leaks of dating sites for gaining insight into their lives? Why don't you just plant microphones directly in their homes? You are their neighbour so you should be able to find a pretext to be invited for dinner if you just talk to them a bit.
- Someone1234 10y ago> not just related to jihad The prejudice is strong with this one. edit: Changed "racism" to "prejudice"
- KON_Air 10y agois it a race now?
- douche 10y agoWords no longer actually have meaning, or did you not get the memo? There was a meeting scheduled to go over it, but it was on Google Calendar...
- Someone1234 10y agoAnd by "it" you mean the Islamic religion I assume? I don't see what distinction you're trying to make. Is it somehow more acceptable to be prejudice against an entire religion than it is to be prejudice against an entire race? Is that really the discussion you want to have, that some prejudice is acceptable and other prejudice is not?
- vox_mollis 10y agoWell, yes. The nominal standard here is whether the prejudice is against something the individual has choice over. One does not choose one's race, whereas once does choose one's own religion, even if raised in an environment suffused with it. Choice and agency is the standard by which most people draw the line between generic prejudice and hate. It's no coincidence that gay rights dramatically improved along with widespread acceptance that, regarding sexual orientation, "I was born this way".
- openasocket 10y agoIt's still the result of stereotypes and over-generalization. Islam is a religion with over a billion followers: trying to make any sort of statement about all of its followers is a fool's errand. I'm reminded of what my religious studies professor said: "There is no such thing as Christianity: there are Christianities". The Christianity of Pope Francis is not the Christianity of the Westboro Baptist Church, and the same holds true for Muslims.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoYou live in a Muslin neighbourhood yet to understand them you need to look at stolen private information? How about talking to them instead?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoThat's legitimately a shame. This is one area where people deserve privacy and lack of privacy can injure people in real life in various ways. Hopefully they figure out who is responsible and they're from a country which cares.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoIf anything this will just show that generally speaking people are people. Regardless, I expect the staff of the various network evening comedy shows to be combing through this for raw material and will be disappointed if (after this hits mainstream media) those shows don't throw around some politically incorrect jokes. edit: my comment was misinterpreted. I meant jokes along the lines of "this guy is very religious, went to school in $place" -> take some words out of context -> some joke about stereotypical thing about $place" I did not mean to imply that they'd just read funny excerpts of people's conversations, take them out of context and then tell everyone who said it.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago>> "I expect the staff of the various network evening comedy shows to be combing through this for raw material" I would be disgusted if they did. It's private information. Just because someone stole it and made it public doesn't mean you should propagate it further.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoI think "this one guy writes said $stuff" "and she replied $morestuff" followed by a punch line that draws on some fairly recent gaff by a (Muslim) head of state, diplomat, CEO, etc is sufficiently within the envelope of what's acceptable. You don't have to reveal names and details to be funny.
- ohitsdom 10y agoExcept that then encourages people to go through the leaked info to find more "funny" stuff.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agothe people that will dig through this for negative purposes will do it regardless of who makes jokes about it. If my info (I'm not muslim) was leaked in a dump I wouldn't care if some intern in an office somewhere went through it to find something useful as long as long as a large fraction of it isn't published all together.
- bmmayer1 10y agoThis 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 'smoking gun' evidence of the latter to satisfy any sadist looking to inflict harm on these doxed folks.
- FreedomToCreate 10y agoIts 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 religion are above anything else, and anything which deviates from the set rule is eliminated. Not doing so is considered outside the norm. For an easy read on honor cultures, check out chapter six of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and also watch HBO's doc on honor killings called A girl in the river.
- gbin 10y agoThere 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 ?
- FreedomToCreate 10y agoIt 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.
- danso 10y agoThis link is basically a summation of this Vice article: http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/hacked-private-messages-from-dating-site-muslim-match http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/hacked-private-messag...
- sctb 10y agoThanks, we updated the link from https://thestack.com/security/2016/06/30/muslim-match-dating-site-hacked/ https://thestack.com/security/2016/06/30/muslim-match-dating....
- DominikR 10y agoThis is clearly a criminal and very evil act that will likely harm many people, not just emotionally but also physically. I wonder how anyone could be so deranged to do something like this. But it is also a cultural problem of these Muslim societies that they actually stone people to death for adultery. This is horrific. If I were to make a dating app then I would outright ban all of these countries because I don't want to have their blood on my hands if I made an error and data was leaked as a result. Of course in some cases people might be harmed physically even in our societies, but it'd occur much less frequently and what's most important - it wouldn't be something that is supported by our institutions, culture and society.
- protomyth 10y ago> This is clearly a criminal and very evil act that will likely harm many people, not just emotionally but also physically. I wonder how anyone could be so deranged to do something like this. I would imagine its probably a family member of someone killed in a terrorist attack. Trying to take vengeance against a whole segment of humanity is not unknown.
- DominikR 10y agoWhich makes him or her no different from the terrorists themselves, though I can understand the suffering if you have lost someone. These are just normal people after all that will be harmed. Some random teenagers sexting in the Middle East.
- Swennemans 10y agoWow no HTTPS, makes you wonder what security measures they did take.
- dreamsofdragons 10y agoNone, obviously. If you don't have https, you don't even have the illusion of security.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoGiven the other comments here and the longtime and blatant surveillance of Muslims by the FBI and NYPD, to name a few alphabet agencies, one would imagine that there is ample market opportunity in providing secure services and communications for Muslim clients. Might even have Islamic-appropriate functionality, such as allowing families to discuss potential marriages but forbidding the presumptive couple from communicating directly, or facilitating Islamic loans in a similar fashion to WeChat Pay. Or maybe there is and I don't know about it since there aren't that many Muslims in my community or social circles. So if that's the case...success?
- nickpsecurity 10y ago"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 powerful non-democracy you can develop crypto in. I'm not saying you can't do it. I have no idea what outcome will be. I just know it's one of riskiest, business models for crypto.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoIf 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.
- douche 10y agoShit, 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
- 10y ago
- x5n1 10y ago> This is a serious security threat for many Muslims abroad. It's not a threat. It's a wake up call. The less you can bury all that goes on under the rug the less easier it is to justify repressive, hypocritical cultures like the cultures around Islam.
- shrugger2 10y agoI feel exactly the same way. If whatever group you belong to would condemn you for choices you make about your own personal lifestyle, maybe it's that group that needs to be condemned. Islam is a threat to the rest of the world.
- basseq 10y agoYou're getting downvoted, but there's a grain of truth here. If our perspective is, "It's ok that people were on this site, but bad that it leaked because consequences," shouldn't we be willing to focus on how to remove those consequences and the system that puts them in place?
- afarrell 10y agoPeople are willing to do that, but without a significant number of arabic-speaking westerners, how do you do thatin a way that is actually effective?
- hackuser 10y agoThis discussion painting an entire religion, condemning and insulting a billion individuals, as criminal and violent is ignorant and disgusting, and should not be on Hacker News (or anywhere else in civilized society). I can only imagine what Muslim readers of HN feel when reading it, seeing that our community - and YCombinator - appear to condone it. The problem isn't Muslims, Christians or any other religion; it's hateful, ignorant attitudes.
- x5n1 10y agoWe need to talk about Islam's human rights problems all the time everywhere because that's the only way these problems will ever see the light of day. In Muslim countries these problems are always buried and there is a conspiracy to keep them buried so that no social progress can be made. That's immensely disrespectful to the victims of these problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zina#Human_rights_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zina#Human_rights_controversy
- riyadparvez 10y agoDoes the hacker have any religious motivation? As an ex-Muslim, I cannot comprehend how someone in his/her right mind can do something like this. The people whose identities are revealed will be socially rejected in the best case; in the worst case, physical abuse, honor killings, and whatnot. These hackers should be prosecuted for intentionally risking other peoples lives.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tassl 10y agoWhile I do agree with you that the hackers should be prosecuted (but in the same way than any other hacked service), what should be really prosecuted and repudiated are the regimes that allow that kind of "behavior". And I saying this assuming that you, as ex-muslim, agree completely with that statement, after all the punishment for leaving Islam is... a bit extreme.
- ss108 10y agoThe 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 places like Pakistan? All that surfaces in the media are stories of some poor raped woman getting tried for adultery (usually in a Gulf Arab country, not Pakistan), or stories of honor killings. Those are real problems for sure, and the cultures of most Muslim countries have devolved during the past century in many ways, but a catalog of dramatic headlines doesn't capture what actually goes on in these countries and how people actually live. I would expect the jump from "Muslim dating site" to "honor killings and stoning" from the comments section of a common newspaper, not Hacker News.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago>usually That word is the sad qualifier to this statement. There are plenty of instances of this happening in popular areas, even outside a well protected courthouse in Pakistan's second largest city by the person's own family: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pregnant-pakistani-womans-public-stoning-draws-outrage/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pregnant-pakistani-womans-public...
- mc32 10y agoOf course premarital sex happens, but I think it's one of those things that people know happen and allow to happen so long as it's not flaunted. The jump may be an expression of concern for the people who could be negatively affected by the disclosure of their activities.
- jdmichal 10y ago> Honor killings usually happen in tribal and rural segments of Pakistan--not the kinds of people who use Muslim Match. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing#By_region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing#By_region
- jacquesm 10y agoWe even have these so called 'honor' killings here in NL: http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/04/25/honor-killings-rise-netherlands/ http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/04/25/honor-killings-rise-netherl...
- basseq 10y agoAt 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 "these people are getting what's coming to them". Yes, I know AM was explicitly based on having an affair, where this dataset might just include people who are committing adultery (with varying cultural definitions of "adultery"). But other than impressing our own values on the situation (e.g., "cheating on your wife" = bad; "premarital relations" = ok), how do you explain the difference?
- basseq 10y agoExample: 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?
- existencebox 10y agoThe 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.)