MAGA-Friendly Twitter Clone, GETTR, Coughs Up 90,000 User Email Addresses To Hackers

Failures

from the gettr-(un)done dept

GETTR, the Twitter clone created by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, seems to have rolled out just as smoothly as every other attempt to replace the social media service that’s still inexplicably popular with people who claim to hate it for moderating their speech.

It’s yet another “free speech” platform that claims it upholds the lofty ideals of allowing those banned from other, more functional sites to speak their minds… just as long as said mind speech does not include any of the following:

Without limitation, we may, but do not commit to, do so to address content that comes to our attention that we believe is offensive, obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, pornographic, violent, harassing, threatening, abusive, illegal, or otherwise objectionable or inappropriate, or to enforce the rights of third parties or these Terms or any applicable Additional Terms.

Just like Gab, Parler, and whatever the fuck the thing is that the MyPillow guy is doing, GETTR is finding out it has a host of moderation problems that can’t easily be dealt with, especially when you’ve promised to not “censor” your users’ speech.

On top of that, GETTR — like the other platforms listed above — seems to have been cobbled together somewhat incompetently and rolled out hastily, opening itself up to an unhealthy blend of toxic content, trolling (both expert and inexpert), and security stress testing from those interested in this new collection of user data.

GETTR, whose surprising surge of early users appears to be mostly a mirage created by the importation and deployment of Twitter data, is no exception to the Far Right Twitter Clone™ rule. Toxic content abounds, as do multiple trolling efforts that only add to the mess. And it appears that while GETTR claims it wants to protect speech, it doesn’t care nearly as much about protecting speakers.

Hackers were able to scrape the email addresses and other data of more than 90,000 GETTR users.

On Tuesday, a user of a notorious hacking forum posted a database that they claimed was a scrape of all users of GETTR, the new social media platform launched last week by Trump’s former spokesman Jason Miller, who pitched it as an alternative to “cancel culture.” The data seen by Motherboard includes email addresses, usernames, status, and location.

New platforms are often a bit leaky, usually thanks to the inexperience of those creating them. This is all part of the learning curve. But GETTR had some advance notice its uncensored ecosystem had some security problems, given that it was successfully breached on opening day.

On July 4, the day of the site’ official launch, a hacker broke into and defaced some of the site’s most prominent users, including its founder Jason Miller, former CIA director Mike Pompeo, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, and pro-Trump congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, as first reported by Insider.

Less than three days later, the platform was coaxed into coughing up user data. Not exactly a sign things are improving. The site’s CEO says otherwise, claiming this scraping was related to the first breach, which allowed a hacker to deface several prominent accounts. Jason Miller claims the security hole has been closed and that GETTR “takes cybersecurity seriously.”

Maybe so, but we’ll see what happens. Alt-right Twitter also-rans Gab and Parler both gave up plenty of user data — some of it proving instrumental in federal prosecutions — and those sites had plenty of time to harden themselves against attackers. A quick patch of a service that seems to rely heavily on someone else’s API to give the appearance the platform is heavily used is still a very tempting target, both for malicious hackers and those whose efforts are just another form of trolling. When your social media alternative is more performative than functional, little things like securing user data tend to be afterthoughts.

Filed Under: emails, hack, jason miller, scraping, security
Companies: gettr