6 ms·

$50 says they're not. This is something every organization has to say for PR reasons, but saying "we believe" is very fishy wording. It could well be this bug h

$50 says they're not. This is something every organization has to say for PR reasons, but saying "we believe" is very fishy wording. It could well be this bug has been around for months before it was discovered, and used by many black/grey-hat hackers.

sneak 6y ago
Governments. It was likely used by governments. Bi men who live straight lives with a wife and family are ridiculously common. The ability to blackmail those people is extremely valuable to certain state organizations.
- on_and_off 6y ago
  I wonder why you are getting downvoted so much. I don't know how common bi-men are (probably more than bi erasure makes us believe) but it feels like a least a portion of them are not ready to come out as bi.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > I don't know how common bi-men are (probably more than bi erasure makes us believe) They're not that common. The literature shows a bimodal straight/gay distribution of homosexual tendency in men and a more Gaussian distribution in women.
    - anchpop 6y ago
      The "bi erasure" phenomenon is that if a man is bi, many will believe he's just gay but in denial. Because he may prefer to be seen as straight than gay, he may just let everyone think he's straight. This would reduce how many men appear to be bi in surveys.
      - djaque 6y ago
        Alternatively, I'm gay and even though I grew up in an area of the US which wasn't that homophoboic. I still hated myself for being gay enough that if I had an even slight attraction to women then I would have just killed off the male attraction side to me. If you're bi and grow up in a world where everything tells you that being gay is wrong, then that part of you that is attracted to guys will probably never get explored.
      - mindfulhack 6y ago
        It also may be because of what I observe as 'masculine thinking' vs. 'feminine thinking'. It appears to be drawn biologically from the genetic male sex and 'male brain' vs. genetic female sex and 'female brain'. Natural variations exist in all things, but if you look at what's most common, with biological sex differences (whch feed cultural 'stereotypes'), they still are what they are. See Robert Green's book "The Laws of Human Nature" (2018) for his take on the following. It's very insightful. (Chapter entitled, "The Law of Gender Rigidity") 'Masculine thinking' prefers to categorise and bifurcate. (Dualism.) I'm a guy and I consider myself having a 'super' 'male' brain in some aspects even more than the average. I find it very hard to multi-task, and I easily hyperfocus. Male thinking solves problems by breaking things down and focusing on one part of the picture at a time. It's about specialisation. Female thinking treats things more as a whole, with everything connected. It solves problems by looking at the whole picture at once. It's about multi-tasking. I now see that 'male thinking' (as opposed to males), such as 'specialisation', dominates modern capitalism and public policy, and often to detriment. Most females at top levels in business at this time in our culture would appear to mostly have this success because they are 'atypically' strong in 'masculine thinking'. Personally, I think such leadership needs more female thinking. I'm slowly trying to understand it more, as my own starting point. Modern diversity policies that change what's on the outside (how many penises are around the table) don't actually solve the real problems. We're still picking what's taking place on the inside. We need diversity of things far deeper - to embrace and celebrate true 'feminine thinking' - not just what's on the surface. So anyway, this could help explain why female sexuality is seen to be more 'fluid', on average, than among males. It's not so much how people actually are, as how people see themselves, because of how they tend to be wired. And this is not even factoring in that there is greater cultural stigma around a male being bi vs. a female being bi. I am a male, and 100% bi.
    - distant_hat 6y ago
      The reason is that bi men round off to gay whereas bi women round off to straight. Bi women are even sought after by straight men so even women who aren't bi will sometimes claim to be, there is really no such equivalence to bi men. This will give the kind of distribution you are talking about especially when done by surveys as this kind of research often is.
    - lwhi 6y ago
      Literature? Seriously? Surely the way someone identifies public doesn't necessarily match with reality.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  I've never been gay or bi, and I've never used Grindr, but I have held government security clearances for almost 40 years. It's a lot different today than it was back then. Early on, I knew several people who had "experimented" in college, and they were denied clearances. (Actually the government never officially denied them because that would require an explanation of the criteria used for the denial. Instead, it was perpetually "pending".) Anyway, the basis for their denial was the potential for blackmail, which is a serious national security threat. Sometime within the past 25-30 years, they seem to have revised their policies so gay/bi people can get cleared, as long as they are open about it.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    It’s not really being bi that’s the problem here so much as cheating on a wife secretly
    - np_tedious 6y ago
      Are bi guys that much more likely to do this than straight ones? I could believe 2x, but it doesn't seem like an order of magnitude kind of difference
      - ohyeshedid 6y ago
        It's more about them keeping it secret; secrets are some of the most valuable currency.
        setr 6y ago
        But then it has nothing to do with being bi... unless they're secretely bi, in which case it has nothing to do with cheating...
        reanimus 6y ago
        Factually speaking yes but practically speaking gay/straight people tend to be doubly touchy about their partner "playing for the other team" so to speak. Which... I mean, cheating is cheating is cheating lol
- learnstats2 6y ago
  I'm not sure why being on Grindr is being seen here as a blackmail risk. If you are visible on Grindr, you have made a kind of public testimony. So, you have reduced your blackmail risk - since you're already at least somewhat prepared for this information to be public.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    A lot of the information a user who owns an account can see is not visible to the public. I don't see why being on Grindr in 2020 would be a blackmail risk IN COUNTRIES WHERE BEING GAY IS LEGAL.
    - learnstats2 6y ago
      OK, but in that case you're at (potentially much) greater risk than blackmail. Why is blackmail the risk that people on this page are going to, then, is my question. If you're willing to make a public statement then blackmail is lower risk, not higher risk.
      - neltnerb 6y ago
        I'm not sure, sorry. I'm not honestly sure why there's so much discussion about security clearances. If someone gets your grindr account they can get your (a) address, (b) phone number, and (c) private photos, none of which would otherwise be public. So let's just get that out there. A reasonable user would not expect that any of those three things are readily available to a stranger that they've never talked to who merely has their email address. Especially if they turn off distances specifically to avoid triangulation attacks on their location. Those pieces of information can be used together to harrass, commit violence, or threaten to leak your photos or personal (albeit sure, not "private") conversations. Those are the obvious ones, but other information in there can also hidden from public view, like HIV status. With this bug a malicious person could knowingly target you based on email address instead of finding you and even putting the work into catfishing you into sending them embarrassing photos. I'd say that's a higher blackmail risk but only because of the hack, a little. Catfishes still existed but this makes doing it invisible and massive in scale while associating it with a public ID like your email address.

sneak 6y ago

Governments. It was likely used by governments. Bi men who live straight lives with a wife and family are ridiculously common. The ability to blackmail those people is extremely valuable to certain state organizations.

on_and_off 6y ago
I wonder why you are getting downvoted so much. I don't know how common bi-men are (probably more than bi erasure makes us believe) but it feels like a least a portion of them are not ready to come out as bi.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > I don't know how common bi-men are (probably more than bi erasure makes us believe) They're not that common. The literature shows a bimodal straight/gay distribution of homosexual tendency in men and a more Gaussian distribution in women.
  - anchpop 6y ago
    The "bi erasure" phenomenon is that if a man is bi, many will believe he's just gay but in denial. Because he may prefer to be seen as straight than gay, he may just let everyone think he's straight. This would reduce how many men appear to be bi in surveys.
    - djaque 6y ago
      Alternatively, I'm gay and even though I grew up in an area of the US which wasn't that homophoboic. I still hated myself for being gay enough that if I had an even slight attraction to women then I would have just killed off the male attraction side to me. If you're bi and grow up in a world where everything tells you that being gay is wrong, then that part of you that is attracted to guys will probably never get explored.
    - mindfulhack 6y ago
      It also may be because of what I observe as 'masculine thinking' vs. 'feminine thinking'. It appears to be drawn biologically from the genetic male sex and 'male brain' vs. genetic female sex and 'female brain'. Natural variations exist in all things, but if you look at what's most common, with biological sex differences (whch feed cultural 'stereotypes'), they still are what they are. See Robert Green's book "The Laws of Human Nature" (2018) for his take on the following. It's very insightful. (Chapter entitled, "The Law of Gender Rigidity") 'Masculine thinking' prefers to categorise and bifurcate. (Dualism.) I'm a guy and I consider myself having a 'super' 'male' brain in some aspects even more than the average. I find it very hard to multi-task, and I easily hyperfocus. Male thinking solves problems by breaking things down and focusing on one part of the picture at a time. It's about specialisation. Female thinking treats things more as a whole, with everything connected. It solves problems by looking at the whole picture at once. It's about multi-tasking. I now see that 'male thinking' (as opposed to males), such as 'specialisation', dominates modern capitalism and public policy, and often to detriment. Most females at top levels in business at this time in our culture would appear to mostly have this success because they are 'atypically' strong in 'masculine thinking'. Personally, I think such leadership needs more female thinking. I'm slowly trying to understand it more, as my own starting point. Modern diversity policies that change what's on the outside (how many penises are around the table) don't actually solve the real problems. We're still picking what's taking place on the inside. We need diversity of things far deeper - to embrace and celebrate true 'feminine thinking' - not just what's on the surface. So anyway, this could help explain why female sexuality is seen to be more 'fluid', on average, than among males. It's not so much how people actually are, as how people see themselves, because of how they tend to be wired. And this is not even factoring in that there is greater cultural stigma around a male being bi vs. a female being bi. I am a male, and 100% bi.
  - distant_hat 6y ago
    The reason is that bi men round off to gay whereas bi women round off to straight. Bi women are even sought after by straight men so even women who aren't bi will sometimes claim to be, there is really no such equivalence to bi men. This will give the kind of distribution you are talking about especially when done by surveys as this kind of research often is.
  - lwhi 6y ago
    Literature? Seriously? Surely the way someone identifies public doesn't necessarily match with reality.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
anonymousiam 6y ago
I've never been gay or bi, and I've never used Grindr, but I have held government security clearances for almost 40 years. It's a lot different today than it was back then. Early on, I knew several people who had "experimented" in college, and they were denied clearances. (Actually the government never officially denied them because that would require an explanation of the criteria used for the denial. Instead, it was perpetually "pending".) Anyway, the basis for their denial was the potential for blackmail, which is a serious national security threat. Sometime within the past 25-30 years, they seem to have revised their policies so gay/bi people can get cleared, as long as they are open about it.
- kortilla 6y ago
  It’s not really being bi that’s the problem here so much as cheating on a wife secretly
  - np_tedious 6y ago
    Are bi guys that much more likely to do this than straight ones? I could believe 2x, but it doesn't seem like an order of magnitude kind of difference
    - ohyeshedid 6y ago
      It's more about them keeping it secret; secrets are some of the most valuable currency.
      - setr 6y ago
        But then it has nothing to do with being bi... unless they're secretely bi, in which case it has nothing to do with cheating...
        reanimus 6y ago
        Factually speaking yes but practically speaking gay/straight people tend to be doubly touchy about their partner "playing for the other team" so to speak. Which... I mean, cheating is cheating is cheating lol
learnstats2 6y ago
I'm not sure why being on Grindr is being seen here as a blackmail risk. If you are visible on Grindr, you have made a kind of public testimony. So, you have reduced your blackmail risk - since you're already at least somewhat prepared for this information to be public.
- neltnerb 6y ago
  A lot of the information a user who owns an account can see is not visible to the public. I don't see why being on Grindr in 2020 would be a blackmail risk IN COUNTRIES WHERE BEING GAY IS LEGAL.
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    OK, but in that case you're at (potentially much) greater risk than blackmail. Why is blackmail the risk that people on this page are going to, then, is my question. If you're willing to make a public statement then blackmail is lower risk, not higher risk.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      I'm not sure, sorry. I'm not honestly sure why there's so much discussion about security clearances. If someone gets your grindr account they can get your (a) address, (b) phone number, and (c) private photos, none of which would otherwise be public. So let's just get that out there. A reasonable user would not expect that any of those three things are readily available to a stranger that they've never talked to who merely has their email address. Especially if they turn off distances specifically to avoid triangulation attacks on their location. Those pieces of information can be used together to harrass, commit violence, or threaten to leak your photos or personal (albeit sure, not "private") conversations. Those are the obvious ones, but other information in there can also hidden from public view, like HIV status. With this bug a malicious person could knowingly target you based on email address instead of finding you and even putting the work into catfishing you into sending them embarrassing photos. I'd say that's a higher blackmail risk but only because of the hack, a little. Catfishes still existed but this makes doing it invisible and massive in scale while associating it with a public ID like your email address.