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Stolen Patreon User Data Dumped On Internet 161

After the personal data breach at crowd-funding site Patreon reported a few days ago, there's some worse news: the information isn't just in limbo any more; Patreon reported Saturday that the compromised information has been leaked in the form of a massive data dump. (The slightly good news is that no credit card information was leaked.)
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Stolen Patreon User Data Dumped On Internet

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  • data dump link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04, 2015 @10:49AM (#50656351)
    • So there is a list of names and addresses on the Internet.
      There is also a list of names and addresses in the phone book.
      I don't really see the difference.
      Who is harmed by this?

      • There are artists who use a pseudonym in public and their legal name for the account info. The only reason Richard Bachman got revealed as being the pseudonym of Stephen King was a bookstore clerk searching through the copyright registrations at the Library of Congress and found the name Stephen King accidentally included on a form for Richard Bachman.
        • The only reason Richard Bachman got revealed as being the pseudonym of Stephen King was . . .

          Woah, woah, hold up a sec. Are you saying that Stephen King is married to Michelle Bachmann? His stories make so much sense, now.

          • by ZipK ( 1051658 )

            Are you saying that Stephen King is married to Michelle Bachmann?

            Not married in the traditional Western sense. It's more of a matrilineal clanship union.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The SQL file in the dump contains all the private messages sent on the site. It's likely that many Patreon users will be embarrassed by the nature of those messages, e.g. they are getting paid by unsavoury individuals, being encouraged to harass and abuse other people for money, or speaking candidly about their motivations (e.g. bigotry) while trying to maintain a respectable public face.

        There is also information on who is funding whom, so a lot of people who might have wished to remain anonymous will now b

        • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @05:04PM (#50658155)
          Spinning this hack as bad for Gamergate requires some desperate mental gymnastics.

          Gamergate exposed many undisclosed financial relationships between the gaming journalists and article subjects, forcing their employers to reform their ethics policies and add appropriate disclosures.

          A significant chunk of those relationships were through Patreon, and at least one of the resulting ethics policy updates made direct reference to Patreon. Also note that many gaming journalists "responded" to Gamergate's successful push for greater ethics scrutiny by . . . hiding their Patreon donations by making them private.

          I doubt the hack is good for either side of the "culture war", but anti-GG has a history of trying to hide where the money is coming from (and going to).

          Remember how people reacted to Eich's support of an anti-gay-rights bill.

          Sure do [slashdot.org]. How the reaction was widely reported in the mainstream tech news media is a completely different matter.

          • spinning Gamergate as anything but a misogynist crusade against anyone who might criticize the game industry for its questionable treatment of women is laughable at best.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Patreon has very liberal standards for the types of content they want to be funded. Everything from normal pornography to animated pony porn is on there. Now you've got a phone book that also lists the weird shit that an individual is into

      • Does the phone book include sexual preferences?

        https://www.patreon.com/animop... [patreon.com]

      • by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Sunday October 04, 2015 @12:52PM (#50656989)

        Who is harmed by this?

        A quick experiment to demonstrate that you have not thought about this ... post your name and address here. Right now.

        If you do not, then your question really was stupid.

    • by bmo ( 77928 )

      So does this mean I can stalk Nataly Dawn?

      --
      BMO

  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @10:50AM (#50656355)
    That brand of Tequila never did anything for me after two or three shots.
  • Expect drama (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @11:05AM (#50656415) Homepage Journal

    This is going to be interesting as people start using the data to target their enemies. There is already an effort to get people like Thunderf00t and Sargon of Akkad defunded, and this is bound to help the campaign. All those "private" messages between users and the people who funded them are now public.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      There is already an effort to get people like Thunderf00t and Sargon of Akkad defunded, and this is bound to help the campaign.

      ^^^^^THIS.

      Yes, beware the wrath of the self-righteous Social Justice Warriors. To them the ends do justify the means, and simply disagreeing with them puts you on their enemies list.

    • Re:Expect drama (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TWX ( 665546 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @11:32AM (#50656521)
      There is a very good reason that for a long time, charity was considered best when it was anonymous. I don't mean anonymous to the world but known between the benefactor and the recipient, but truly anonymous where the recipient did not know who the benefactor was. It protected the benefactor because no one knew who the benefactor was, and to a degree it protected the recipient because the recipient was not placed in a position of having to publicly defer or otherwise kowtow to the benefactor if they should encounter each other in public.

      It might make sense for this to be considered in the future.
      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Patreon is almost literally "Patronage".

        There is a very good reason that for a long time, charity was considered best when it was anonymous.

        Charity and Patronage are not really the same thing.

        Patronage in many respects has as much in common with charity as it does to an employer/employee relationship. Patronage is somewhere in the middle of that continuum.

        That said, I don't disagree with you that there are definitely situations where anonymous charity and patronage have benefits... BUT there are lots of situations where patronage doesn't need or benefit from anonymity; and where benefits are realized for

  • Confession (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 04, 2015 @11:10AM (#50656435)

    The only reason my name is on the list is because I thought it was Ashley Madison.

  • Gg, sjw? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noah Haders ( 3621429 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @11:28AM (#50656499)

    Can anybody articulate more the motivations behind this hacking all the surrounding drama? I see some comments about gamer gate and social justice warriors, but I don't understand the whole picture.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Some prominent users of Patreon have been involved in GamerGate harassment, and others have been victims of that harassment. The hack could be of interest to either side, but is most likely to benefit the victims.

      For example, YouTube retards Sargon of Akkad and Thunderf00r use Patreon to make quite a lot of money posting their anti-feminist videos. While they themselves maintain a careful distance from the worst abuse (although Thunderf00t was kicked off Twitter) there is likely to be some damning private m

    • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @02:48PM (#50657493)

      Can anybody articulate more the motivations behind this hacking all the surrounding drama? I see some comments about gamer gate and social justice warriors, but I don't understand the whole picture.

      A unethical journalist tried to blame the hack on Gamergate, despite the fact that the apparent hacker has made many anti-Gamergate statements [reddit.com]. The journalist then went to a popular pro-Gamergate hub to make a show [reddit.com] of doing the due diligence and research he should have done before publishing his inaccurate article, and got deservedly ripped to shreds in the comments.

      The bottom line is the hacker appears to be third-party troll, so you should take any motivations he voices (pro- or anti- GG or SJW) with a boulder of salt.

      Note that both pro-Gamergate and SJW content creators make money from Patreon, but IMO this hack has very little to do with the usual animosity between the two groups.

      Some of the comments that confuse you are probably AmiMojo's, because he is trying to conflate unrelated issues and shoehorn the hack into long-running false narrative that Gamergate is a harrassment campaign against women, so he can justify censoring its voices.

      For those who didn't hear about it a week ago (there was strangely no Slashdot story), a recent event pusshing that narrative was the presentation of the "Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls" report to (by?) an offshoot of the UN (UN Women). The most ridiculous (and most widely publicized) assertion in the report was that "cyber-violence" exists and is similar to actual, physical violence:
      http://time.com/4049106/un-cyb... [time.com]

      The U.N. defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts.” The report notes that cyber violence is an extension of that definition, that includes acts like trolling, hacking, spamming, and harassment. The report also argues that “cyber touch is recognized as equally as harmful as physical touch,” suggesting that online harassment might be just as lethal as domestic violence or sexual abuse.

      It's a such a blatant attempt to redefine criticism and disagreement as harassment and threats, to demonize free speech as a pretense to censorship.

      The report also attacks video games by citing ridiculous sources (all at least a decade old) which say "Nintendo of America, Inc.: Manufactures Pokémon, Game-Boys, and equipment for satanic video games" and references Jack Thompson himself.

      So it should come as no surprise that two of the invited the speakers (Quinn and Sarkeesian) were "SJWs" best known as prominent opponents of the Gamergate movement. Yep, Gamergate, the customer revolt demanding more ethical game journalism, whose criticism of and disagreement with the demonstrably unethical gaming press was mischaracterized as (you guessed it) "harrassment" and "threats" and widely censored in an attempt to protect the corrupt journalists, all because those journalists expressed the right politics.

      Gamergate (and the FTC, responding to Gamergate pressure) succeeded in forcing many corrupt websites to update their ethics policies and start disclosing personal (and financial) relationships to the subjects of their articles, which is why you always see so many disingenuous and corrupt individuals shitting a brick over it. Two outlets that anti-Gamergate was notoriously unsuccessful at shutting down were tweets and youtube videos, which is why you saw Quinn issuing a false DMCA (against youtuber MundaneMatt) a year ago, and Sarkeesian whi

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Some of the comments that confuse you are probably AmiMojo's, because he is trying to conflate unrelated issues and shoehorn the hack into long-running false narrative that Gamergate is a harrassment campaign against women, so he can justify censoring its voices.

        I'm not interested in censorship, merely preventing further harassment. Note that Thunderf00t, for example, has already been kicked off Twitter for his abuse. It's not about censoring his speech, it's about stopping the cycle of harassment that he perpetuates for financial gain. It's obvious he s motivated by money rather than ideology, so once the money goes away so will he.

        The most ridiculous (and most widely publicized) assertion in the report was that "cyber-violence" exists and is similar to actual, physical violence:

        Your dismissal of mental health issues as somehow less real or serious than physical health issues is disgusting. If someone is beaten

        • it's about stopping the cycle of harassment that he perpetuates for financial gain.

          So, it is about silencing his speech because you don't agree with him (even though he quite clearly shows the truth in video evidence).

          Yeah, we're not trying to censor anyone but the ones who don't agree with us, real generous there AmiMoJo.

          It's obvious he s motivated by money rather than ideology, so once the money goes away so will he.

          Yeah, I imagine if you are successful in getting his university to stop funding the research he works on, he won't be able to post online anymore as he will be living in a box. But in your world, lying about someone to get them to lose their jobs is perfectly acceptable

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            I will defend Thunderf00t's right to speak to the death, but what I won't defend is his incitement to mob violence. He has already been kicked off some platforms for things he said, and every video just fuels the fire. If he really cared about the issues he would take a very different tone, but instead he does what makes him the most money regardless of the consequences.

            He can say what he likes, but others are free not to listen or give him a platform. If he breaks their terms of service, they can kick him

        • I find it funny you post a link to an XKCD where it states:

          Cueball: Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say.
          Cueball: It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it.
          Cueball: The 1st amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences.
          Cueball: If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Can you cite a single example of Sarkeesian taking a specific, well reasoned and articulated criticism of her work (not her personally, her work) and claiming it was harassment? Just one.

            • Would she (I'll even settle for you) ever admit there are "well reasoned and articulated" criticisms of her work in existence? Just one. I've noticed a pretty distinct trend of complete silence on any critiques and seemingly an attempt to frame it as the only opposition is in the form of harassment. Maybe I'm wrong and I'd love for you to correct me. Will you label me as anything other than a "gamergater" for simply asking the question?

              Thunderfoot isn't particularly nice to her but he really doesn't have to

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Troy Hunt recently posted an (IMHO) excellent blog entry about why leaked credit card info is much less of a problem than leakage of other personal data.
    See: http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/09/relax-its-only-your-credit-card-near.html

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