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Eventually the cloud is going to burst and everyone’s data will be public. The motive will be similar to this one, where a huge blast radius of collateral damag
by gfodor 5y ago
Eventually the cloud is going to burst and everyone’s data will be public. The motive will be similar to this one, where a huge blast radius of collateral damage is accepted in the name of harming bad people. Seeing people eagerly download this data that surely includes countless amounts of personal info of non-Nazis shows this clearly.
- kadoban 5y agoHow many just regular folks would actually pick Epik? Why?
- desine 5y agoIf you truly believe in freedom of speech, it makes sense to support companies who enable those ideals. I'm not familiar enough with the company/drama/story here, but if Epik does not do anything "problematic" other than allow "problematic" speech, then I would consider them. A certain quote often mis-attributed to Voltaire comes to mind [0]. It appears they do have some lines drawn in the sand for free speech, they cancelled service for 8chan. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall
- ohashi 5y agoI wouldn't support this borderline nutjob. Making employees watching a video of christchurch shooting and saying it was fake? Yeah, no. He has a lot of ties to extremist right wing too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Monster#Views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Monster#Views
- ryantgtg 5y agoThis message to epik customers about this "alleged security incident" ends with: > You are in our prayers today. We are grateful for your support and prayer. When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all.
- jonathanstrange 5y agoI don't think anyone really supports unlimited freedom of speech other than as a strategic rhetorical lip service. It's a very unreasonable position. What people mean is that they draw the line at different places, usually while ignoring the law. People disagree about the definitions of crimes involving publication. For example, almost everyone is against the freedom to disseminate child porn under the excuse of "free speech." Then, some people are against free dissemination of ISIS propaganda, especially when it contains concrete calls for violence. Then again, disseminating Neonazi propaganda with similar calls for violence is not more legal than ISIS propaganda in most countries. Revenge porn and sites dedicated to slander and libel are prohibited in most jurisdictions, too. The US has lax application of laws against right-wing calls for violence but is well-known to enforce against free speech if other groups like Islamists are involved. In the past, communists and civil rights advocates were also not too welcome. Other countries apply laws more stringently. In various modern and democratic countries content hosted by Stormfront is simply illegal and various posters on their forums commit crimes. Their servers would be raided and shut down by the police if they were under the country's jurisdiction. The US was never governed or occupied by full-blown Nazis, so it is only natural that people tend to be more liberal about these matters there, but that's more of a historical coincidence than an argument.
- tcmart14 5y agoYup. The same republicans proud of their party history saw no issue with dragging people in front of congress for interrogation because they might be a communist (thought crime). (House Un-American Activities Committee).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ryan29 5y agoSometimes they have the cheapest renewal rate for some of the TLDs, so if you're deal hunting on sites like tld-list.com you could end up registering via Epik. Before today the only thing I knew about them was that they were the registrar for a few controversial domains. I didn't realize they were soliciting that market.
- Syonyk 5y agoI intend to for future domain registration. - Register.com is an annoying cesspool of value-add upsells and is extremely expensive in the process, with added cost to not have your personal info attached directly to your domain whois. - GoDaddy, other than the creepy ads, has shown plenty of willingness to remove domains hosting content that they don't like, even if it's legal. - I think Google is a registrar, but I'm not at all comfortable with how easy it might be to move my domain out of their grasp if I care to host my content somewhere else. I'm sure it's possible, I'm sure it has weird issues, and I'm certain there's zero support to talk to. - Epik has, at least as far as I can tell, a reputation for simply hosting domain registrations, not asking questions, and ignoring just about every request for information. Of those options, I'm fine with the last. I tend pretty hard towards the "free speech" side of the spectrum, and a registrar that will ignore anything short of a legitimate legal request from the authorities of the nation(s) they operate in is perfectly fine with me. Even if they host domains I consider distasteful, I'd rather support that than someone who will bow to public outrage and go snooping around domains looking for reasons to remove their registration (GoDaddy and Arfcom come to mind here). There are probably other options, but those are the ones I know of, and why I'm intending to register future domains with Epik. I don't particularly care if a founder of a service is a scumbag in their personal life, as long as they reliably do what they promise to do.
- burkaman 5y agoEpik "ended its relationship" with The Daily Stormer because of content hosted on the site and the "entanglement" (meaning PR issues). If you're not ok with that, then I don't think Epik is what you're looking for. If you are ok with it, then you can accept service providers disassociating themselves with "distasteful" clients, it's just a matter of exactly how distasteful they have to be. Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965448572/meet-the-man-behind-epik-the-tech-firm-keeping-far-right-websites-alive https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965448572/meet-the-man-behind...
- Syonyk 5y agoIf the only ethical way to engage with modern consumer tech is to do a full analysis of the positives and negatives of every aspect of it (which is a position I think has some merit), then the only reasonable conclusion is to simply avoid all of it, because it's all corrupted, at some point or some level, by something someone will find distasteful or worse. I honestly haven't delved deeply into the list of domains each registrar has removed, decided if I agree or disagree with it, sat down to evaluate the severity of each violation, etc. And I fundamentally don't want to, either. If you've got a better domain registrar suggestion that isn't full on "bulletproof hosting Bitcoin only" stuff ending in .ru, I'm open to it, but... otherwise, at the end of the day, my goal is to register a domain. Though, don't get me wrong, I'm seriously considering ending my entire involvement in modern consumer tech and going back to a 1900s tech level once I retire...
- MileyCyrax 5y agoI bought a domain name from a domain squatter who used Epik and there's a 60 day waiting period before I'm allowed to transfer the domain away. Their site is one of the buggiest I've ever used (no, really), so this hack doesn't surprise me at all. Now I'm trying to remember how much personal information I would have given them.
- mtnGoat 5y agoA wait period is reasonably common. I’ve ran into it a well, really annoying. I think it’s a lame ploy to drum up business.
- kadoban 5y agoIt's an ICANN requirement, it's universal as far as I know.
- ZoF 5y agoNo comment on Epik but that 60 day wait is almost certainly ICANN lock because whois data was updated. They don't have a choice.
- bogwog 5y agoI almost picked them a while back because I searched for "domain registrars" and they came up. Nowhere on the website did it say anything about neo-nazis, fascism, conspiracy theories, etc. Just seemed like a simple registrar with no GoDaddy-esque sleaziness, and a neat, memorable domain name. So so happy that I ended up not signing up. I just wanted a domain for my personal site and email, but I would've ended up on a public list next to nazis.
- crocodiletears 5y agoI was considering moving my domains over. I'm tired of tech censorship, I don't want to support companies that engage in it without legal requirement.
- donatj 5y agoI’ve ran a website non-stop for over twenty years. I intend to keep it up as long as the internet exists. It’s not really had any major changes since 2008, but it’s a major source of nostalgia in my life. Beyond that it hosts my email address. I was curious about prepaying for years of my domain in advance, and stumbled upon Erik. Epik offers a “forever registration” where you get a domain “forever” for something like $500. I was seriously considering it before I heard about all the negative shit associated with them. I suspect they’ve sold that service to at least a few average Joe’s.
- oefrha 5y agoFind me a service open to the public and I’ll find you “nazi” customers by someone’s definition. Hell, people were and probably still are “boycotting” GitHub (as in, they put feel-good slogans in their profile while still using it) a while ago for having U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement as a customer. I’m sure if someone manages to completely hack GitHub, they will post everyone’s private repos and billing info, and it’s a just cause because GitHub hosts code for horrible people.
- opheliate 5y agoUgh, I did. I was unaware of Epik’s “reputation”, I’d just heard the brand name before so I thought it must be alright. I would have gone with someone else, but most registrars don’t offer the TLD I wanted, and Epik seemed to have the best price amongst the registrars that did. Obviously regretting that decision now.
- Zancarius 5y agoYou're not alone. I wanted an alternative to GoDaddy whose prices perpetually increased to the point of ridiculousness and their removal of mostly innocuous sites (ar15.com comes to mind) without prior notice was a bit ridiculous. Which, is fine honestly, because their ads left a lot to be desired over the years. I liked Epik's offerings because of the option of "forever" domains. So, I moved a bunch over there from GoDaddy; and as a Christian, I felt it wouldn't hurt to support a Christian business owner. Had I known a bit more about Epik, I likely would've picked a more reasonable registrar. Unfortunately, it looks as though any purchases prior to Feb 21st may infer that your payment info is in a new leak. Contemplating having my card changed at this point. What really irritates me is that there's been zero communication from Epik. Either they own up to it, or they ruin their business and what's left of their reputation anyway. I'm already bailing, because I don't want to have my domains associated with that degree of stupidity (though, it's probably moot at this point).
- veeti 5y agoI registered an account with Epik in 2017 before any notoriety over Gab or whatever (though I did not ultimately end up using their services). Apparently this justifies doxxing and slandering me as a neo-nazi. Considering that Epik have been in operation for almost a decade before a pivot to extremist hosting, I would assume that the vast majority of this """noble""" hack concerns innocent people.
- ev1 5y agoI had one domain there in 2017-2018 due to some generic domain forum promo codes making them the cheapest. Didn't know of reputation or it wasn't obvious then, predates Parler existence, etc.
- ryantgtg 5y agoI’m a regular folk that currently uses epik (just as a domain host). We (actually a volunteer who donated our domain name to us) registered with them like 12 years ago. I tried to move off of them a couple years ago, but I moved to lunarpages and they didn’t have enough dns options for my service. So then I had to move back to epik. Um, can anyone recommend another domain host? EDIT: transfer initiated.
- Zancarius 5y agoI know your question was already answered at this point, but I'm using Namecheap for the domains I didn't have on Epik (mostly personal and some parked that I'm planning on building out eventually). I've nothing but good things to say about Namecheap. Some of their employees post here from time to time and seem responsive to issues.
- gambas99 5y agoI signed up a few days ago on a friend's recommendation. I have nothing to do with whatever else. It sounded good that they weren't a fragile host (hosts that mess with your stuff without court orders or warrants or whatever).
- heyitsguay 5y agoFortunately, given the purported scope of the hack, it seems we'll be able to actually quantify that. How many of the websites weren't hosting violent or extremist content? If this is real, we should be able to get an exact percentage.
- dreadlordbone 5y agoI sure hope people don't jump to conclusions re what is violent or extremist.
- pletsch 5y agoPeople jump to conclusions? On the internet? No, I don't think that likely
- iammisc 5y agoTwitter hosts violent and extremist contents. Now please give me jack Dorseys address, phone number, and social security card so we can exact justice /s That there are people on this forum advocating for vigilantism is frightening. We are quickly approaching the point of lawlessness as a society.
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- peterthehacker 5y ago> Eventually the cloud is going to burst and everyone’s data will be public Why? This was Epik being hacked not AWS or Azure. It’s just a domain registrar. And a shady one at that. Their lack of security is not indicative of the rest of the cloud.
- southerntofu 5y agoToday on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532531 Microsoft bundling a super-insecure root daemon in all their Linux VMs. They developed it, published it on Github, embedded it everywhere, but when it turned out to be a security nightmare blamed "open source supply chain".
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoWhat would be extremely funny is if a different group of fake hactivists did a similar hack elsewhere but deliberately added junk data as a way to discredit all hactivism.
- gremloni 5y agoIt’s mostly nazis. If you’re not a nazi there should be enough pressure to stop you from associating yourself with epik.
- gfodor 5y agoHorrible argument. Textbook guilt-by-association, and in this case, the "association" is particularly weak.
- gremloni 5y agoYea guilt by association works well here. If you’re at the klan meeting, you’re probably a klan member.
- _-david-_ 5y agoLet's take your logic and apply it to HN. There are some Nazis here. If you do not stop posting here you are associating with Nazis. Since you post here you are either a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer.