8 ms·

What I find sketchy is that it is not easy to find out who is behind this service. The norm is an about us or a link to a parent site. Briefly skimmed the legal

What I find sketchy is that it is not easy to find out who is behind this service. The norm is an about us or a link to a parent site. Briefly skimmed the legalese (ToS & Privacy) and still not clear who these people or where they operate from. The linkedin link shows 8 people working there, mostly in BD from outside the US. I don't think there is a nefarious purpose going on, i.e. getting people to sign up and stealing their info or payments, etc. However, it contributes to the erosion of trust on the internet. You're no longer sure if you're talking to a real dog in pajamas online or an AI pretending to be one.

lancesells 3y ago
I find that a lot of Show HN (YC companies included) that make it to the front page have the same problems. I usually don't make comments on it but I find it crazy that someone would launch either a paid product or something that takes your private information without knowing where they exist or who they are.
paint 3y ago
It's also prominently asking you to upload a picture of your face along the rest of the controls
- exodust 3y ago
  You can upload any face. Here's Kurt Cobain in a universe where he gets a regular office job, goes to gym, and never starts a grunge band... https://generated.photos/human-generator/64e708a6190809000fba7c09 https://generated.photos/human-generator/64e708a6190809000fb...
dontupvoteme 3y ago
Why's that bad? Should every URL be doxxable?
- hnbad 3y ago
  Doxxing refers to private individuals not companies and organizations. In Germany for example every commercial website (which is defined very broadly and applies to most websites) is by law required to have an imprint listing the person/org responsible for the website and how to contact them (an e-mail address is not good enoguh). This means you can go to any German business website and get the full address, EU VAT ID and registration number of that company. Under the GDPR more broadly (which also affects foreign companies offering services to EU residents) every company is required by law to have a privacy policy and that policy must include whom to contact for concerns and requests regarding personal data of the user/visitor and who (which legal entity) processes and stores the data. This is the opposite of doxxing. It protects private individuals by making transparent to them who they are interfacing with and who holds their data. This is necessary for informed consent. Sidenote: the website/app's cookie notice is pointless as it's using the same "redirect to google.com if user says no" logic porn sites used to do (do they still do this?) for age checks. The app also works without accepting the terms, so either it can work without accepting them or (more likely) it doesn't actually wait for the user's consent. Either way it doesn't do anything and doesn't comply with any privacy laws I'm aware of that would require it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    Call it sitedoxxing then or urldoxxing. It's the same attack, to deanonymize, to hunt people down from the internet because you don't like what they say or do. Germany is the only country in the world with that Impresseum policy because of it's highly leagalistic Prussian background, and you would find that many in the hacking community (e.g. CCC) take huge issue with it
    - hnbad 3y ago
      The hacking community takes issue with it because it is overly broad and applies to sites any reasonable person would consider personal and non-commercial. The infamous precedent were early 2000s era personal homepages with banner ads on them to pay for the hosting. The presence of ads made them commercial and thus subject to the Impressumspflicht. The CCC has a strong anarchist tendency unlike the US tech bubble which has a more libertarian (i.e. free enterprise) streak. They absolutely do not want companies to hide from accountability, which completely abolishing the Impressumspflicht would do. Also note how I said the GDPR also requires transparency with regard to who processes and stores your data. This doesn't translate to the same requirements that exist for an Impressum but for companies and registered organizations it's enough to make them identifiable and recognizable, especially in combination with the Transparency Register, which is also part of EU law.
upwardbound 3y ago
It could be an attempt at entrapment by a hostile foreign power attempting to get blackmail material on western engineers by tricking people into accidentally viewing CSAM, and then leveraging that to try to turn western engineers into unwilling foreign agents by blackmailing them with the threat of turning them in to law enforcement and/or ruining their marriage. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory but this is an anonymous site, which is free to use, targeted at English-speaking engineers, which generates extremely sketchy content. Some of the comments in this thread make it pretty clear that this site generates CSAM some percentage of the time. If you use the site you are rolling the dice and might become guilty of a crime, putting yourself in a position to be a pawn of a N Korean or other foreign country's intelligence agency. Edit: If you get contacted by a foreign intelligence agency attempting to blackmail you, please report them to https://www.inscom.army.mil/isalute/ https://www.inscom.army.mil/isalute/ and also to 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hnbad 3y ago
  [dead]
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  > I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory Yes but why North Korea? This sounds like US 3 letter propaganda from a decade ago It would be China looking to Exfiltrate IP/Data as that data war has already begun. See : Azure keys.
imposter 3y ago
This could just be a side-project by some guy working in a tech company with a 'no inventions/IP clause' in his contract. People prefer to stay anonymous in such cases, and launch silently, as to not pull attention from their main org. Not everybody can be a twitter-tech bro announcing his creations on ProductHunt and not get in trouble for it.
dannyw 3y ago
The FAQ https://generated.photos/faq https://generated.photos/faq directly answers this: it's made by the same company as Icons8, which has a long track record. The founder is Ivan Braun, who is indeed a real person (I've known him since the Icons8 days).
- colinrand 3y ago
  Fwiw, I read the FAQ yesterday. It was either not there or else my blinders were on to not find anything.

lancesells 3y ago

I find that a lot of Show HN (YC companies included) that make it to the front page have the same problems. I usually don't make comments on it but I find it crazy that someone would launch either a paid product or something that takes your private information without knowing where they exist or who they are.

paint 3y ago

It's also prominently asking you to upload a picture of your face along the rest of the controls

exodust 3y ago
You can upload any face. Here's Kurt Cobain in a universe where he gets a regular office job, goes to gym, and never starts a grunge band... https://generated.photos/human-generator/64e708a6190809000fba7c09 https://generated.photos/human-generator/64e708a6190809000fb...

dontupvoteme 3y ago

Why's that bad? Should every URL be doxxable?

hnbad 3y ago
Doxxing refers to private individuals not companies and organizations. In Germany for example every commercial website (which is defined very broadly and applies to most websites) is by law required to have an imprint listing the person/org responsible for the website and how to contact them (an e-mail address is not good enoguh). This means you can go to any German business website and get the full address, EU VAT ID and registration number of that company. Under the GDPR more broadly (which also affects foreign companies offering services to EU residents) every company is required by law to have a privacy policy and that policy must include whom to contact for concerns and requests regarding personal data of the user/visitor and who (which legal entity) processes and stores the data. This is the opposite of doxxing. It protects private individuals by making transparent to them who they are interfacing with and who holds their data. This is necessary for informed consent. Sidenote: the website/app's cookie notice is pointless as it's using the same "redirect to google.com if user says no" logic porn sites used to do (do they still do this?) for age checks. The app also works without accepting the terms, so either it can work without accepting them or (more likely) it doesn't actually wait for the user's consent. Either way it doesn't do anything and doesn't comply with any privacy laws I'm aware of that would require it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  Call it sitedoxxing then or urldoxxing. It's the same attack, to deanonymize, to hunt people down from the internet because you don't like what they say or do. Germany is the only country in the world with that Impresseum policy because of it's highly leagalistic Prussian background, and you would find that many in the hacking community (e.g. CCC) take huge issue with it
  - hnbad 3y ago
    The hacking community takes issue with it because it is overly broad and applies to sites any reasonable person would consider personal and non-commercial. The infamous precedent were early 2000s era personal homepages with banner ads on them to pay for the hosting. The presence of ads made them commercial and thus subject to the Impressumspflicht. The CCC has a strong anarchist tendency unlike the US tech bubble which has a more libertarian (i.e. free enterprise) streak. They absolutely do not want companies to hide from accountability, which completely abolishing the Impressumspflicht would do. Also note how I said the GDPR also requires transparency with regard to who processes and stores your data. This doesn't translate to the same requirements that exist for an Impressum but for companies and registered organizations it's enough to make them identifiable and recognizable, especially in combination with the Transparency Register, which is also part of EU law.

upwardbound 3y ago

It could be an attempt at entrapment by a hostile foreign power attempting to get blackmail material on western engineers by tricking people into accidentally viewing CSAM, and then leveraging that to try to turn western engineers into unwilling foreign agents by blackmailing them with the threat of turning them in to law enforcement and/or ruining their marriage. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory but this is an anonymous site, which is free to use, targeted at English-speaking engineers, which generates extremely sketchy content. Some of the comments in this thread make it pretty clear that this site generates CSAM some percentage of the time. If you use the site you are rolling the dice and might become guilty of a crime, putting yourself in a position to be a pawn of a N Korean or other foreign country's intelligence agency. Edit: If you get contacted by a foreign intelligence agency attempting to blackmail you, please report them to https://www.inscom.army.mil/isalute/ https://www.inscom.army.mil/isalute/ and also to 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 3y ago
[dead]
dontupvoteme 3y ago
> I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory Yes but why North Korea? This sounds like US 3 letter propaganda from a decade ago It would be China looking to Exfiltrate IP/Data as that data war has already begun. See : Azure keys.

imposter 3y ago

This could just be a side-project by some guy working in a tech company with a 'no inventions/IP clause' in his contract. People prefer to stay anonymous in such cases, and launch silently, as to not pull attention from their main org. Not everybody can be a twitter-tech bro announcing his creations on ProductHunt and not get in trouble for it.

dannyw 3y ago

The FAQ https://generated.photos/faq https://generated.photos/faq directly answers this: it's made by the same company as Icons8, which has a long track record. The founder is Ivan Braun, who is indeed a real person (I've known him since the Icons8 days).

colinrand 3y ago
Fwiw, I read the FAQ yesterday. It was either not there or else my blinders were on to not find anything.