South African Parler Users Detected After Data Dump

South African Parler Users Detected After Data Dump

Speak, another social media app dominated by right-wing users, was banned by Google and then abandoned by Amazon Web Services, but not before hackers were able to dump data and expose its users. . Talk has been a hot topic for some time now, as it has become the go-to site for far-right individuals whose content is removed on more traditional sites like Twitter and Facebook for breaking their rules. It was started by two conservative programmers in the United States who were mobilizing for a real "free speech" platform. As we know, Twitter and Facebook had pretty lax rules on racism, sexism, homophobia, and bigotry, so you can imagine how bad the content must have been if they needed to upgrade to a new one. platform. The app became even more infamous and is now banned as it is believed to be a key portal through which many rioters masterminded the attempted coup on Capitol Hill in the United States on January 6. That same day, a Twitter hacker named @donk_enby began archiving the messages. Ultimately, he gathered 56 terabytes of data, which ultimately captured 99,9% of the app's content. This saved content that would have been lost after Amazon shut down. He also helped law enforcement track those who broke into the Capitol and posted videos during their stay.

South African users exposed

Disinformation researcher Jean le Roux tweeted a link to the interactive map display of this data dump for South Africa. The map showed all the places where a user uploaded a video while having their geolocation and the results are very interesting. Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria are present, which is understandable since they are the largest cities. A user even shows up in Robertson and near the coast at Park Rynie. The map does not show what type of content was shared, but rather exactly where it was sent from. Depending on the phone's GPS signal, some of these locations are accurate to the person's backyard. < p lang="en" dir="ltr">Talking data dump video metadata was viewed on an interactive map, and even the sleepy town of Robertson features: https://t.co/ANUWhYCBYf The data Geolocation are fairly granular, but depend on the GPS accuracy of the phone at the time. pic.twitter.com/PbNtX8B7Qv January 13, 2021