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Millions of Instagram influencers had their contact data scraped and exposed
- yhoneycomb 7y agoSemi off topic, but "influencers" are so absurd to me. I mean, they're basically people who build a following based on being attractive, right? And the idea is that other people want to do whatever they do based on that? Seems so shallow. Not gonna lie I follow hot people on instagram, but I definitely don't aspire to be exactly like them.
- Liquix 7y agoThey're people who have X thousand or more followers. This gives them the power to influence their audience. Yes, many got to where they are based on their looks. But there's also plenty of talented photographers, 3D artists, traditional artists, craftspeople, athletes, and hobbyists with large followings on IG. Influencers are created and supported by followers like you. They don't gain that status because they're particularly skilled at anything or good marketers - they gain that status because people choose to follow them. If the majority of Insta users valued higher-quality content over shallow looks, the talented creators mentioned above would be the top influencers. It's a reflection of the user base (and on some level society as a whole).
- nixpulvis 7y agoWelcome to the world of pop culture. This is really nothing new, except maybe the scale.
- wgj 7y agoHow is Techcrunch able to figure out the owner of this database, and why did the researcher expect them to be able to? > Security researcher Anurag Sen discovered the database and alerted TechCrunch in an effort to find the owner and get the database secured. We traced the database back to Mumbai-based social media marketing firm Chtrbox
- draw_down 7y agoI agree that's an interesting question, but seems outside the scope of the article.
- askafriend 7y ago> How is Techcrunch able to figure out the owner of this database, and why did the researcher expect them to be able to? Relationships in the industry and resources.
- ummonk 7y agoAs in someone at AWS leaked private account information?
- ForHackernews 7y agoUsing journalism?
- 781 7y agoMake you contact information public. Companies collect it. Surprise Pikachu :o In the past, people used to call this crazy technology "The Phone Book". This stuff is also on Google: "1-800" site:instagram.com
- detaro 7y agoAccording to the article, people did not publish that information as a possible source.
- 781 7y agoMeaning they hacked Instagram? I think you are mislead by the "private contact number" phrase.
- detaro 7y agoThe article has theories regarding that too.
- 781 7y agoThe article uses the word "scraped" multiple times. The word "hacked" is not used at all. FB also talks about scraping: > “Scraping data of any kind is prohibited on Instagram,” said a spokesperson.
- detaro 7y ago> The scraping effort comes two years after Instagram admitted a security bug in its developer API allowed hackers to obtain the email addresses and phone numbers of six million Instagram accounts. The hackers later sold the data for bitcoin. Obtaining data through a security bug is very much different from scraping it from public sources, and not really something you can blame on the people the data is about, as your initial comment did. So lets wait and see if the question where the data comes from gets answered clearly before blaming people for being stupid.
- 7y ago
- astrea 7y agoThis makes me wonder: How many Instagram influencers are there in total? What is the percentage of influencers in the entire population of (active) users? At some point it's just influencers influencing each other, right?
- asaddhamani 7y agoEveryone and their grandmother is an "influencer" on Instagram. Sounds so cringey.
- rightbyte 7y agoThe user numbers are probably grossly exaggerated by bots. I get a feeling the news feed of long time users get so spammy that "real content" gets lost. I've made a twitter account for my niche real estate statistics site and the amount of answer I get from people that are following many users is minuscule. People with less followers are more prone to answering. (NB: I'm not spamming my site to them, but like trying to talk about estate prices with people that are talking about real estate prices). It's like what I write disappears when writing to those people. Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. Instagram the same thing. The feed algorithm is hugely favoring algorithmic "friends" and popular users, most likely.
- rchaud 7y ago> Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. I've often felt similarly. Twitter has always seemed more of a "broadcast" type of network, with personalities/small companies doing the "interact with users" thing only until they make it big, at which point it becomes all advertising, all the time.
- MrMember 7y agoProbably depends how you define "influencer." I remember reading a few months ago about "fake" influencers who aren't getting paid but pretend to shill products anyway so people think they are an influencer.
- cheeyoonlee 7y agoLooks like nearly 50 million accounts have been exposed. That's an alarming amount.. most of which Chtrbox had obtained/scraped themselves without the account owners knowing.
- 781 7y agoAccording to the recent LinkedIn court case, it's legal (at least in US) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-linkedin-claim-that-unauthorized-scraping-is-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- elorant 7y agoThe article is misleading. The data wasn't scraped because nowhere in the public profiles are emails or phone numbers visible. They were obviously obtained by hacking Instagram.
- oooshha 7y agoInteresting... Some of the "influencer search" platforms eg heepsy allow users to download a limited number of email/phone details for influencers. I always wondered how they managed to get this info in bulk to begin witht
- r_singh 7y agoI mean just like Twitter data is public, I always assumed that public Instagram profiles are public data too. Everyone can see their posts, likes, comments, followers and following, so what stops a computer from doing so? Update: it's against FB's T&C to scrape and store this publicly viewable data. Quite convenient, they'll only sue / take action when a rule breaker becomes non-trivial in size or a nuisance
- tzakrajs 7y agoInfluencers mostly succeed at influencing themselves to act like bourgeois cunts.
- dang 7y agoMaybe so, but please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y agoHow is this a story? The contact information is available, people and companies scrap the web all the time. There are tools and libraries for that purpose for any programming language. What's so surprising abut this piece of news then?
- save_ferris 7y ago> each record contained public data scraped from influencer Instagram accounts, including their bio, profile picture, the number of followers they have, if they’re verified and their location by city and country, but also contained their private contact information, such as the Instagram account owner’s email address and phone number. They make a point to note that some of the contact info exposed wasn't public.
- benzible 7y agoSloppy reporting. Email & phone number are available for Instagram accounts linked to a business profile: "Business Profiles include a Contact button near the top of their profile. You'll be able to include directions, a phone number and / or an email address. Keep in mind that you must include at least 1 contact option when setting up your Business Profile."
- oldjokes 7y agoIf you follow some links it wont take you long to find your favorite celebrity's personal cell phone number. I think that's kind of a story.
- benzible 7y agoThat's very unlikely. The article is misleading in that the reporter seems to believe that emails / phone numbers are never exposed by Instagram. In fact "influencers" typically choose to set up an Instagram Business Profile containing email and / or phone number. So this is almost ceratinly public information that was scraped, not private information obtained via a breach. Assuming your "favorite celebrity" is a movie star, popular musician, etc, any contact info is very likely for their social media manager, not for them personally.
- Cypher 7y agoisn't that what they want? how else can they influence if they're not contacted..
- jedberg 7y ago> Security researcher Anurag Sen discovered the database and alerted TechCrunch in an effort to find the owner and get the database secured. Wouldn't it make more sense to contact AWS, who presumably has the contact info of the owner?
- throwaway13000 7y agoAWS does not provide Anurag Sen with any exposure/advertising. (Note: I don't think this is wrong. Everyone has to earn a living)
- jedberg 7y agoThis may in fact be the right answer. Which is sad if true. Unless he tried AWS first and got nowhere. Then Techcrunch would be a reasonable place to go.
- technofiend 7y agoSecurity influencer Anurag Sen announced on his twitter feed... /s
- superfrank 7y agoAccording to the article the security flaw was just that the DB was not secured with any password. There could be a legitimate reason for that and it's not a flaw in the technology, so it's really not something AWS should be doing something about (other than maybe reaching out to the user to confirm that the lack of password is intended). Honestly, I would be a little worried if AWS saw that a user had a DB with no password and decided to either add a password or block access to the DB without the user's consent.
- jedberg 7y agoI wouldn't expect AWS to do anything like that. I'd expect AWS to understand the implication of a database of private data being publicly accessible and having the account rep reach out to the owner and let them know.
- sdeep27 7y agoNaive question - What is the process like for a security researcher to go about 'discovering' an open database like this?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kitotik 7y agoI’d imagine it starts by port scanning known AWS IP blocks.
- procinct 7y agoIsn’t this illegal? What happens if the owner decides to press charges instead of being thankful?
- chefkoch 7y agoYou get so many scans, failed logins that you can never press charges against them all. Imagine the reaction of law enforcement if you show up with 10 000 login attempts per day and you want to press charges.
- tushar-r 7y agoStart with running scans using shodan.io. Dig through results, start fine-tuning your searches and automating the digging.
- downandout 7y agoIt should be noted that most of this data (including emails and phone numbers) is published publicly by the influencers themselves. This headline is clickbait. Thousands of scrapers are constantly running all around the world, scraping any data that you choose to make public on social networks. Don’t make your phone number or email public if you don’t like this.
- HNLurker2 7y agoI would like to know the phone number and location though.
- downandout 7y agoMany influencers include this info in their bio.
- benzible 7y agoClickbait implies that this is intentionally deceptive. I think this is just uniformed reporting. This is made even more clear from this tweet by the author: https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1130525216038359041 https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1130525216038359041 "What's curious here is that the data contained non-public data — including phone numbers and email addresses of associated Instagram accounts — which, logic suggests it could've only gotten from Facebook."
- kitotik 7y agoIt seems that the data was not all public, so this was more than just aggregated scraped public info. So that means Chatr did some combination of: - Directly exploit the Instagram API bug before it was patched - purchased the leaked data from a 3rd party edit: formatting
- Sendotsh 7y ago> At the time of writing, the database had over 49 million records — but was growing by the hour. This implies it's still going, so not related to the patched bug. Which begs the question... how are they now, currently, scraping and adding people's phone numbers from public accounts?
- helloindia 7y agoDue to lack of strong data protection law in India and awareness, I won't be surprised if its been purchased from a 3rd party. There are some "Indian startup" groups on Facebook, where it's common for people to sell such databases, and nobody asks if the seller has consent from the people in the database. Such posts also never gets taken down, or the seller doesn't get blocked from the group.
- jmspring 7y agoIt speaks a lot to modern culture that "influencer" is a thing. Every article I've read about influencers, the majority sound like entitled, spoiled, children.
- Pigo 7y agoThere's these entire ecosystems of people involved in something that most everyone I know couldn't care less about. I don't think I've ever been on Instagram, and I wouldn't go to Coachella if it were free. I have a Twitter account, but mostly because I use them for oauth in a lot of apps. It's boring and I don't put much stock in celebrities or "journalists". I guess I'm jealous that many of them translate their online importance into a lot of money. But what they're spending their life doing is incredibly lame. Unless you're influencing people to give blood or vaccinate their kids, then it's just a huge jerk-off.
- rchaud 7y agoCouldn't the same thing be said about '90s grunge/alternative bands and rap/hiphop groups? They were "influencers" as well, with a clear impact in art and fashion. And they crafted their legend in part by wrecking hotel rooms, arriving hours late to shows and making public spectacles of themselves. The common thread among them is that they were polarizing. It was OK that lots of people hated them and would never buy anything they were pitching, as long as there were thousands of others who went the exact opposite way and bought in to the whole charade.
- teekert 7y agoWow, there are millions of influencers? Some must be influencing just 1-5 people I guess then.
- asadjb 7y agoThe audiences for different influencers can overlap. I guess even the smallest influencer I've seen have audiences of at-least 1K to be taken seriously.
- willdotphipps 7y agomicro influencers, the data's useless.. it's against Facebook T's and C's to scrape from Instagram.
- nippler 7y agoLmao who cares
- willdotphipps 7y agoBirmingham that's what it was called
- kot-behemoth 7y agoThis looks like the perfect time for some of the EU-based influencers to raise a GDPR infringement request against Chtrbox. They collected the geo-location of the people, so the company should've known they would be liable.
- backpackway 7y agoDon't get this. All influencers and wannabes on IG expose their email in their about section on purpose. Crawling them incl. further specs like followers, posts is the first thing every Instagram marketer does/should do. Before GDPR, there was even an open API which gave everything out.