Millions of Instagram Influencers Had Their Private Contact Data Scraped and Exposed (techcrunch.com) 37
A massive database containing contact information of millions of Instagram influencers, celebrities and brand accounts has been found online. From a report: The database, hosted by Amazon Web Services, was left exposed and without a password allowing anyone to look inside. At the time of writing, the database had over 49 million records -- but was growing by the hour. From a brief review of the data, 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.
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, which pays influencers to post sponsored content on their accounts. Each record in the database contained a record that calculated the worth of each account, based off the number of followers, engagement, reach, likes and shares they had. This was used as a metric to determine how much the company could pay an Instagram celebrity or influencer to post an ad.
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, which pays influencers to post sponsored content on their accounts. Each record in the database contained a record that calculated the worth of each account, based off the number of followers, engagement, reach, likes and shares they had. This was used as a metric to determine how much the company could pay an Instagram celebrity or influencer to post an ad.
I have to admit... (Score:2)
...the first analogy that came into my head is that this is like a prostitute complaining that because the John tried to kiss her.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly my point.
Someone who posts regularly to instagram (attention whore) is complaining about their 'personal' details being spread around. Ie as if they have standards to their attention whoring.
is like
An ACTUAL whore (who allows herself to get fucked by anyone) complaining about someone kissing her. Ie as if she has any self-respect to start with.
Re: (Score:2)
Strangely, I've had a prostitute try very hard to kiss me when I was trying to avoid it. She managed to get one on my lips in the end when we were saying goodbye. Prostitutes not kissing is a bit of a meme, popularised by the film Pretty Woman. A significant proportion of them advertise "DFK" (deep French kissing) in their list of services, and a lot of the ones who don't advertise that are still fine with light kissing, just not sharing spit.
There are millions of influencers!?? (Score:2)
The Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B is becoming mighty full!
Re: (Score:2)
That's it! They're assembling a passenger manifest!
Re: (Score:2)
It's ok, though, since they'll be controlling the purse strings [theregister.co.uk] for the next few years at least.
It's a weasel word for "viral marketer". (Score:1)
The kind of plastic grin pupper that gets paid to go in the Internet, act "totally natural", like he's just another person like you and me, and just found these awesome things to show you on his "vlog".
You wonder where he got the mone to do all that traveling, or buy all that gear...
But mostly, the're just one-off idiots of the Internet, that had a shitty little "vlog", "blog" or something, were found by some marketing company's algorithms, and approached with the question "Do you want to make a few bucks b
Re: (Score:2)
49 million influencers, celebs and brand drones? (Score:2)
seems like a very high number to me.
Hasn't anyone learned how to actually secure Amazon cloud services yet?
It seems like there are a couple "breaches" a week lately.
Usually before deployment, responsible companies do a vulnerability scan of outsourced services...
Re: (Score:2)
Hasn't anyone learned how to actually secure Amazon cloud services yet?
Well considering how some deploy to AWS, if it's not there in the Stack Overflow post they're copying, then nope.
So where did the private info come from? (Score:1)
Some of that data doesn't sound like it was scraped...
Re: So where did the private info come from? (Score:3)
Apparently you totally misunderstand Facebook.
They used a Facebook service ... (Score:2)
Is this not the intended use for Instagram? (Score:4, Insightful)
People are exposing all kinds of things on their Insta accounts. Supported by thir Facebook posts and maybe WhatsApp group messages.
Ha! Good! (Score:1)
And the problem is ... (Score:2)
Glasnost. It's a good thing.
Never forget (Score:1)
"Influencers" deserve it. Think for yourself, kids (Score:1)
The whole thing, the influencers, Facebook/Instagram, their "business," none of it/them deserve my respect. I(almost) feel sad for those so shallow and unthinking that they can be "influenced." The whole concept of it all makes me want to barf. When I see this sort of sh... tuff, I'm a lilbit more grateful to be old, to have been young when I was, and that I won't be around to see what sort of world these people will have to suffer through. Between the misery of global warming and the evils that influenc