Spy Pet vs. Real Predators
Discord is a terrible environment, just stop.
There are two types of readers for this article, those who get it and who will never suggest Discord again, but who may tolerate it where it’s established, with the understand that it is not safe. And the others? Those for whom my breaking into their homes to short sheet their beds is the least bad thing in their future.
Discord banned a mass of accounts that were part of a service that scraped and sold user data, including messages posted across servers and what voice channels they joined, 404 Media has learned. The move comes after 404 Media reported on the service, called Spy Pet, last week and verified it was selling access to genuine user messages ripped from Discord servers.
So this is what 404 Media Reports on Spy Pet. That’s all gone, it’s safe now, right?
SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT ALREADY!
If a skiddie service is selling your messages on a public server for $5/month, do you not immediately understand there are bespoke solutions costing 100x that which are and which will continue quietly operating?
A Maltego subscription costs $1,000 a year, which immediately screens out the $5/month Crack Babies of Kiwi Farms. If you qualify, and simply having a Maltego subscription is not nearly enough, you might be able to get some information about other services these companies provide. They were either using Spy Pet, or they’re busy figuring out how to reverse engineer it today since it got taken down.
One of those companies is a tentacle of Russian intelligence. Another is run by some swivel eyed Trump loons. I doubt any of them would ever have done the sort of work I posted on my Figshare - the right wing bias of any service with law enforcement customers has always been painfully obvious in my experience.
Conclusion:
If it can be corrupted … it already has been. If you’ve been reading this site for a while and don’t instinctively understand that already, you are de facto volunteering to serve as what the Russians refer to as “cannon meat”. I do my best to ensure readers here are not going to blunder into harm’s way, but I accept that there are a lot of people like some Ukrainians, who continue to use Telegram even at this late date, because it’s familiar, comfortable, and everyone else they know uses it. Except the people who were in key positions who are now dead because they used it, but what do I know, really?
If it doesn’t have end to end encryption, it’s not safe. If they offer you SSL encryption and swear they’re not peeking, well … you get what you deserve.
If it doesn’t have open source components and security audits by third parties … see above.
If you’re paying for it with a credit card and it’s not based in Sweden or Switzerland … see above. Better yet, hunt up something that takes Monero.
There are two sorts of people that will belligerently refuse to use products with security, both are I words - idiots and informants. Both are potentially useful to you, but the latter are harder to employ, so practice on the former a good bit first.