Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’ | Hacker News Reader

Hacked: Private Messages From Dating Site ‘Muslim Match’

motherboard.vice.com

This is a serious security threat for many Muslims abroad, given that premarital sex is severely punishable in several Islamic countries (including Pakistan mentioned in the leak), and even within countries where it isn't punishable by law, those who get caught frequently risk honor attacks from their families as has happened in the US, UK, India and elsewhere.

Obviously dating != sex but there's probably enough 'smoking gun' evidence of the latter to satisfy any sadist looking to inflict harm on these doxed folks.

Its a sad reality of the culture prevalent amongst poor and rich muslims. Hopefully no one becomes a target of any blasphemy laws.

With that said, as someone who grew up as a direct witness to honor cultures and strong religious roots, labelling people who carry out violence as sadist is deluding yourself to reality. This isn't sadism, this isn't even fundamentalism. This is basis of a culture in which honor and religion are above anything else, and anything which deviates from the set rule is eliminated. Not doing so is considered outside the norm.

For an easy read on honor cultures, check out chapter six of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and also watch HBO's doc on honor killings called A girl in the river.

Why call it a honor culture? That almost sounds positive. Here (Netherlands) it is often labelled as shame culture, where people do everything to avoid shame or put it under the carpet.

It's something of a standard term[1]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...

There is nothing cut and dry: is the person in the crowd stoning a woman to a slow and painful death virtuous behind the cultural curtain ? Or part of a religious exploitation? Or part of a political exploitation ?

It may not be cut and dry but you do people a great injustice if you blanket there beliefs and values held over generations as acts of religious or political exploitation. People have a choice, and they can choose the change if they want. Freedoms arose from people choosing to do so.

And yes, if they have a strong belief in the hadith and the local cleric has ruled that there person is an adulterer and proves 4 people witnessed it (not hard to due in corrupt regimes anyway), then why wouldn't you feel virtuous while carrying out the punishment given by God.

Those believes manufacture the circumstances that lead to atrocities. Enough of this chicken egg blame game

I hope those in the 'nothing to hide' camp (also quite prevalent here on HN) will take their lessons from this too.

The whole 'honor killings' stuff disgusts me, what is even more disgusting is that in plenty of places the authorities will tacitly allow this stuff to take place.

There is no honor in it whatsoever.

People trading marriage proposals doesn't seem that salacious, unless Vice is just picking uninteresting samples.

I would hope Vice is being prudent in their examples. It'd potentially be hazardous to expose people's privacy even more.

This is a matrimonial site, not a dating site.

At the risk of making a tenuous (and inflammatory) connection, I'm struck by the difference in tone between this and the Ashley Madison leak.

Here, there's sentiments of "how terrible", "leaked users might have severe consequences", and "this ruins the privacy where people get away from repressive social mores".

Ashley Madison, by comparison, was met with sentiments of "good!", "glad we're outing adulters", and "these people are getting what's coming to them".

Yes, I know AM was explicitly based on having an affair, where this dataset might just include people who are committing adultery (with varying cultural definitions of "adultery"). But other than impressing our own values on the situation (e.g., "cheating on your wife" = bad; "premarital relations" = ok), how do you explain the difference?

One big difference is that people outed by Ashley Madison were not at risk to the degree that muslim daters are at being harmed violently.

And even though the definition of adultery may vary between cultures, ignoring the difference between a website where you purposely go in blatant disregard of a personal and somewhat legal trust you established with someone versus a website where you go in an attempt to build a new relationship with the goal of finding a partner, are totally different things. This isn't "impressing" values. There is a clear difference in the acts.

To drive that point home, there is a clear difference between a 8 year old stealing something versus a 40 years old man. The 40 year old man knows the difference and the consequences while the 8 year old does not. When making a decision on punishment, it shouldn't matter what cultural values you have, there is a clear difference between the two that cannot be ignored. And that is the same things here. Dating versus adultery are more different than just different values.

So I wouldn't label this as hypocrisy as you are attempting to.

Without looking up the statistics, I'm confident that "being outed as a cheater" is one of the leading causes of people being "harmed violently" by their spouse.

But that's generally discouraged by law. Don't some muslim countries have laws violently that punish sexually promiscuous people?

Please look it up before you say things like this.

Just one of many examples http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/courts/couple-deny-k...

And the US of A:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/is-adultery-illegal-...

This shows laws against PDAs, not private "promiscuity" whatever that is

If an eight-year-old hasn't been impressed with the immorality of theft by that point then there has been a serious lapse of parental and even basic community policing.

Apparently it is not okay to expect parents to teach their children that it is not acceptable to steal shit by the time they have reached school age...

A major difference is that most AM users were in committed relationships and were attempting to cheat on their SO without their consent or knowledge, and the entire idea of the site was based around this. (I say "attempting to" because one of the more amusing tidbits from that leak was the fact that the site was pretty much useless.) They're hurting other people, not just themselves, not only emotionally but potentially physically due to the risk of STDs and such.

There's no such thing here. I'm sure there are some cheaters using this site, but I doubt it's the majority, and it doesn't appear to be the whole point of the site. Most people there were harming nobody.

I see a big difference between adultery, which is a broad category including many victimless behaviors, and cheating, which is a much narrow category where someone is necessarily being hurt. Attitudes toward adultery are very cultural, but I have no problem lumping cheating in with emotional abuse and physical harms as something which is objectively bad.

Example: HN gleefully ate up analytics on the AM dataset. What men were saying, searching for, the ratio of men to women, etc. Will we do the same here?

The following ramble will try and address the disagreement I'm having with the subtext I'm inferring from your post, that the desire to look over such a dataset is something to be looked down on.

It's a rare dataset with some very interesting implications, as someone who works with data (and humans) I'm curious to better understand parts of behavior one can't often observe.

Now; I will say that if used, it should be handled properly, anonymized to whatever degree possible, and would reject analytics use cases which aim at attacking the subjects.

However, to deny that there are fascinating and valuable questions to be asked in how different population strata interact is to deny a basic curiosity present in many I've met from tech-centric communities.

(Edit: to answer the child since reply limited: Perhaps I misunderstood you, since I read your statement as implying that people only wanted the data to "punish" the users or as some morbid curiosity in the prior case; since as you say I have equal (significant) desire to look at the datasets in both cases; I took the OP comment to focus more on the _sentiments_ and not on the data usage itself as you held up to example.)

And I'm struggling with the same thing: hence the comment thread here. Wouldn't Muslim Match have "interesting implications" as well?

I think it's an important point to bring up, but I don't feel like the same people who were passing judgement on the AM leak are the ones raising concerns here.

But if I had to explain the difference, I think it's the differences in potential backlash on the affected users. Majority of Ashely Madison users were not in countries that would severely persecute them for their activities.

Yet the consequences for AM users could be severe as well (divorce, stigmatization, etc.). Yes, physical harm is worse than divorce, but it's a spectrum.

Also, interesting thought exercise: there probably was a percentage of AM users that were Muslim. Was it a larger percentage than those users on Muslim Match who would face persecution?

Also note that at least two people committed suicide over the AM leak. Not killed, but death nonetheless.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506

I'm not trying to pretend that was a victimless crime - it was bad and it negatively affected people, some to a deadly extent. But the degree of risk here for all involved is night and day compared between the two.

Well of course people impress their own values on the situation. Yes, if you step back and put on your impartial glasses, there's no difference. But people aren't robots, and it's difficult to be impartial, even when you don't have a horse in the race. I find it completely natural, in our society, for people to be rather gleeful about the whole Ashley Madison thing—having cheaters (which goes against a large portion of the population's send of morality) be "punished" for their crimes feels just and karmic. It isn't really, but it feels that way. It rubs that high ground moral compass part of your brain (or maybe it's just schadenfreude). Either way, it's not necessarily wrong or unexpected—it's just the way people's brains tend to work.

I can guarantee you there are some rabidly anti-muslim folk out there that feel gleeful about this hack, but that segment of the population is far, far smaller than the segment that feels adultery is wrong.

The most important difference, IMHO, is this release puts at risk a vulnerable minority. It's like the difference between 'discrimination' against white-skinned Americans and against black or brown-skinned ones:

The majority controls almost all the levers of power and institutions, from Washington to the state capital to courts to law enforcement to industry to medicine to everything else. They can and do create structures and make laws to protect themselves, and make a phone call to a buddy if those don't work. People in this group have the empathy and understanding of the rest of the majority, who see you as individuals (for example, they don't tend to write ignorant, thoughtless blanket stereotypes on HN - about their own group; or police don't pull you over when they see driving).

If you're politically weak, you're powerless; you depend on the goodwill of the majority, which historically has often attacked you. Ultimately, there is no way to protect yourself - they can kill you and the institutions won't care, or put you in jail if they don't like you. And your only appeal is to more people in the majority; you're trapped. It's a precarious, dangerous position to be in.

If you're correct in that the same users are presenting different tones (which I don't necessarily agree with), then perhaps it could be summed up by, as you say, impressing our own values on the situation.

Perhaps we think it's fitting for adulterers to be outed & shamed, but we don't think it's fitting for them to be attacked or jailed or executed.

That last part is an excellent point. Approximately nobody suffered legal prosecution, mob justice, or honor killings due to the AM leak. The potential consequences here are much more severe.

Agreed, well put on the severity of the consequences.

Was anyone in the AM leak Muslim and persecuted? I didn't hear about any stories. Will anyone here be persecuted for their actions? We don't know and are supposing.

Who has a value system where it's OK to lie and cheat on a person you entered into vows with? Regardless, it's not relevant what yours or my values are anyway on this. It's the person who is being cheated on that matters who obliviously doesn't have the same value system as the cheater so the behavior can only be seen as 'bad".

I don't think people have a good response to this point.

People don't really look at the statistics, they are reacting based on their assumptions based on what they see on TV.

All the people who make this honor killing claim would be shocked to see the statistical difference between those and the violence with cheating.

Do note there were multiple threads made on the same topic, and even within the individual ones, the responses vary over time (perhaps some of us didn't have our morning coffee yet).

I remember reading a lot over the people impacted adversely from the hack - who were not just failed adulterous men.

As far as I'm concerned there is absolutely no difference.

Maybe you should only make this connection if it is the same individuals that make contradictory responses. Otherwise, HN is not as homogeneous as you seem to think.

I don't think it's homogeneous, but the sentiment "feels" different. (Scientific, I know.) For instance, there aren't people here who are saying, "It's good we're outing adulterers: they deserve it."

I went back and looked at two of the largest HN posts on AM from last year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083536

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914024

And yes, there are a lot of good comments.

* In3d noticed the same thing then that I'm noticing now: "It looks like the reaction of most commenters is very different compared to when Gawker exposed the Conde Naste executive. This hack might have done this very same thing to many people."

* ulrikrasmussen sees the sentiment: "I see a few comments sympathizing with the vigilantes behind this, implying that the exposed users had it coming."

* nicholas_t makes the point about implications to Muslim users: "There are people who live in countries where adultery is punishable by death. Likewise for being gay. There's already one person from Saudi Arabia who expressed his concerns on Reddit but there's likely to be a lot of other people affected."

* dsacco shared an anecdote: "I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a punishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about infidelity that she didn't care."

So yes, the general attitude is the same. You're right. There are just more assholes who said things like: "Zero sympathy. I have zero sympathy for both this site and for the users whose information was stolen. You all deserve it, for being selfish, amoral animals." (A comment that was rightfully downvoted to hell.)

Most comment threads on HN only stabilize after 24 hours, if you want to draw long term sentiment information from comment threads I'd suggest to only do that after the threads are archived. Initial responses and final picture can be quite different.

Obviously? I'm not doing longitudinal sentiment analysis here; I'm pointing out the absence of "they deserve it" comments (or comments referring to same) that were present in the same timeframe for AM.

This isn't an indictment on HN. This is musing on a similar dating site leak.

The comments about honor killings and stoning for adultery are a bit ridiculous. Honor killings usually happen in tribal and rural segments of Pakistan--not the kinds of people who use Muslim Match. Not all of the users are even from Pakistan, many were probably from the US and the UK, and a lot of the people on there were just genuinely looking for a spouse.

Do you guys really think that nobody has premarital sex in places like Pakistan? All that surfaces in the media are stories of some poor raped woman getting tried for adultery (usually in a Gulf Arab country, not Pakistan), or stories of honor killings. Those are real problems for sure, and the cultures of most Muslim countries have devolved during the past century in many ways, but a catalog of dramatic headlines doesn't capture what actually goes on in these countries and how people actually live.

I would expect the jump from "Muslim dating site" to "honor killings and stoning" from the comments section of a common newspaper, not Hacker News.

>usually

That word is the sad qualifier to this statement. There are plenty of instances of this happening in popular areas, even outside a well protected courthouse in Pakistan's second largest city by the person's own family: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pregnant-pakistani-womans-public...

We even have these so called 'honor' killings here in NL:

http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/04/25/honor-killings-rise-netherl...

Here are several examples of honor killings in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing_in_the_United_St...

I'm sure you can find them in other countries too.

The people who use Muslim Match and the people who would commit honor killings aren't the same people. I don't see why it's so unimaginable that a child might use Muslim Match and their parent might think honor killings are necessary.

A few examples of something happening in a country of 300 million is meaningless; I expect more people were struck by lightening.

(Also, a Wikipedia article on a hot button issue isn't reliable, IMHO; it's only the product of some partisan(s) willing to spend more time editing than everyone else.)

The claim isn't that there will be lots of these, so a small number isn't in any way meaningless. If some incident was going to result in a few more people getting struck and killed by lightning, that might well get a similar reaction.

If you don't like Wikipedia as a source, the original news stories are all linked at the bottom.

> If some incident was going to result in a few more people getting struck and killed by lightning, that might well get a similar reaction.

I disagree. How many things cause people to die in higher numbers? We wouldn't have time to read about all of them.

If you are suggesting that stereotype and demonization of Muslims isn't involved in the response, I have a very hard time believing it. Just look at those things here on HN (where apparently it's ok to say those things about Muslims; the TOS apply only to other groups).

HN tends to follow stories about tech, science, and other hacker-y things. The fact that this story may involve death is interesting, but it's not why it's getting attention here.

But since it gets attention due to its tech content, and since it seems quite possible some death may result, I don't see why that should be ignored just because the numbers are small.

I don't see this as stereotyping or demonization. If people were saying that all of these people were going to die, then I could see it. But merely stating it as a possibility is just being realistic. You'd see the same sort of reaction if gaydar.net's user database leaked, just with "Christian" and "driven to suicide" in place of "Muslim" and "honor killing."

It's interesting to me that people seek to deny the obvious, the prejudice against Muslims. You can find many such statements on this page.

It's not obvious to me. Maybe you could point to some examples?

Acknowledging that the group contains some crazy people is not prejudice, it's just fact, unless one also chooses to ignore similar situations in other groups. I don't see that here.

This is infuriating.

Have you seen the infanticide statistics in the US? About 450/year.

That is per year, btw.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/10/parents...

One of the top reasons? "A parent acting out of revenge against a spouse or partner."

Yet, you didn't express any concern that the Ashley Madison leak is going to lead to a spate of child murders.

Honor killings are like that: rare, perverse, unrepresentative.

Very interesting and I'm glad you brought that up.

I'm curious, though, in which way does this infuriate you? Are you infuriated that people are unaware of the potential infanticide in the AM case? Or are you infuriated that people are aware of the potential for death in this case? The former I can totally understand, but I'm guessing it's the latter and that seems like misdirected rage to me.

I am infuriated that people think that crime in Muslim countries represents Muslims, but crime in other countries represents criminals.

I don't see anyone here saying that this represents all Muslims.

There is a difference between stereotyping an entire group based on the actions of a few, and merely acknowledging the actions of a few. The fact that some Muslims practice honor killings is just reality, same as the fact that some Christians murder gay people or drive them to suicide.

Pointing out that some may suffer due to the actions of those few does not in any way imply that the whole group is in any way represented or complicit.

Well, to give an example, I didn't see people worried that Madison Ashley leaks would lead to people murdering their spouses and children, even though that happens in these cases.

How come no one took some time to point that out?

Its important to note that Pakistan is pretty damn liberal. The tribal regions and the main land have nothing in common. People have affairs, drink and everything without worrying about death. The tribal regions probably don't even have internet.

I didn't expect hacker news to also jump to conclusions like this lol.

It's exactly the kind of people who use Muslim Match that are at risk. I'm not suggesting that people will die, but there will be awful consiquences from this - especially for females.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090106224426/http://www.bbc.co...

> Honor killings usually happen in tribal and rural segments of Pakistan--not the kinds of people who use Muslim Match.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing#By_region

Of course premarital sex happens, but I think it's one of those things that people know happen and allow to happen so long as it's not flaunted.

The jump may be an expression of concern for the people who could be negatively affected by the disclosure of their activities.

That's legitimately a shame. This is one area where people deserve privacy and lack of privacy can injure people in real life in various ways.

Hopefully they figure out who is responsible and they're from a country which cares.

Does the hacker have any religious motivation? As an ex-Muslim, I cannot comprehend how someone in his/her right mind can do something like this. The people whose identities are revealed will be socially rejected in the best case; in the worst case, physical abuse, honor killings, and whatnot. These hackers should be prosecuted for intentionally risking other peoples lives.

While I do agree with you that the hackers should be prosecuted (but in the same way than any other hacked service), what should be really prosecuted and repudiated are the regimes that allow that kind of "behavior". And I saying this assuming that you, as ex-muslim, agree completely with that statement, after all the punishment for leaving Islam is... a bit extreme.

Wow no HTTPS, makes you wonder what security measures they did take.

None, obviously. If you don't have https, you don't even have the illusion of security.

This is clearly a criminal and very evil act that will likely harm many people, not just emotionally but also physically. I wonder how anyone could be so deranged to do something like this.

But it is also a cultural problem of these Muslim societies that they actually stone people to death for adultery. This is horrific.

If I were to make a dating app then I would outright ban all of these countries because I don't want to have their blood on my hands if I made an error and data was leaked as a result.

Of course in some cases people might be harmed physically even in our societies, but it'd occur much less frequently and what's most important - it wouldn't be something that is supported by our institutions, culture and society.

> Muslim societies that they actually stone people to death for adultery

This is false. Put on your skeptical, critical thinking cap:

1) Do you really know that stoning is prevelant, and not just a few sensational news stories?

2) Is there a high correlation? That is, are there Muslim societies that don't stone people (maybe in wealthy parts of the world)? Are there other groups that do stone people and do similarly brutal things (maybe in poor parts of the world)?

It's very serious to spread this misinformation; this is how hatred and discrimination spread, and how brutal things happen to minorities. Consider that many of the worst calamities in history are based on ignorance and hatred of the 'other' ethnicity, including what has happened in the wealthiest nations.

This is about a leak from a dating app for Muslims. So it doesn't make sense for me to write about the risks that someone in Hawaii or Germany might face after a similar leak.

And sorry, but there are many types of sexual acts that are criminalised in Muslim countries.

Not just adultery which is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Jemen, Qatar (and I'm sure there are many more) but also homosexuality where also the death penalty is applied in 11 Muslim countries.

You can't brush that away by pointing to discrimination. Compared to the West these societies have in some areas truly horrific laws. Yes this is not true for all Muslim countries (Turkey, Bosnia and Indonesia comes to mind), but it is most of them. And where there is no death penalty, we often see honor killings which are not persecuted by their governments. (Pakistan)

If no one speaks up about this then these societies will continue like this forever. I don't mean to hurt normal people in Muslim countries that just go about a normal life, but I also wont say everything is fine when it clearly isn't. And who could I hurt with this except for radicals or people unknowingly following or being played by radicals?

There's also many things that are wrong in our societies, but one thing is for sure: You wont see US or EU citizens burn embassies to the ground or declaring Fatwas because someone criticised our society or culture.

> You can't brush that away by pointing to discrimination.

I don't, I point to very poor reasoning and analysis. I challenge you to answer my questions above instead of posting more insubstantial analysis.

I do point to discrimination where I see it; as you say:

> If no one speaks up about this then these societies will continue like this forever

But if one spreads ignorance, it persists forever, with great harm to the victims. So we must be careful to do the right thing. Let's look in the mirror first, and point out our own problems; we are just as flawed and human.

----

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Do you know that it isn't? Do you know that there's not?

You call DominikR's statements "misinformation", which amounts to a claim that they are false. You're every bit as much on the hook to substantiate your claims as he is to substantiate his. Please do so.

> You call DominikR's statements "misinformation", which amounts to a claim that they are false. You're every bit as much on the hook to substantiate your claims as he is to substantiate his

I strongly disagree. He makes the claims; it's up to him to substantiate them. It doesn't work if people say anything they want and ask others to falsify them; we could all make up statements all day.

If the question is as clear as you make it sound, falsifying his statements should be trivial, with the beneficial effect of preventing anyone who cares about factuality from taking his claims seriously. Sounds like an easy win to me, if you can do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning#Afghanistan

Its trying to be phased out but remains surprisingly pernicious.

The fact that it exists in Afghanistan (if Wikipedia is to be believed), at whatever frequency, doesn't address any of the questions I brought up.

And it exists in Saudi Arabia, Iran to name a few of the larger Muslim countries.

And how about people that are homosexual. Right, death penalty in 11 Muslim countries.

It's entirely possible that also homosexual people would have used this dating app.

Again, this isn't evidence. I assume people on HN have better analytical ability than that, skepticism, and the ability to filter meaningful data from the large universe of assertions. Let's try taking this very serious issue seriously (see my above statements).

I find this comment offensive. You're implying the primary harm here is done by the hacker, not the people actually stoning others to death.

Sorry, but where exactly did I blame the victim? And where did I weight the guilt of the hacker vs the guilt of these societies that engage in such horrific acts?

Is there even a point in doing this? I despise both and that's what I said.

Besides, people would get hurt after such a leak even in the West. In most cases emotionally, but still there's a lot of people out there that could snap if they find out their wife has been cheating on them. It still happens.

> This is clearly a criminal and very evil act that will likely harm many people, not just emotionally but also physically. I wonder how anyone could be so deranged to do something like this.

I would imagine its probably a family member of someone killed in a terrorist attack. Trying to take vengeance against a whole segment of humanity is not unknown.

Which makes him or her no different from the terrorists themselves, though I can understand the suffering if you have lost someone. These are just normal people after all that will be harmed. Some random teenagers sexting in the Middle East.

I'm not advocating or commenting about the morality either way. I was just saying who I thought it probably was based on who was targeted and what was disclosed.

Yes I know, I didn't down vote you.

If anything this will just show that generally speaking people are people.

Regardless, I expect the staff of the various network evening comedy shows to be combing through this for raw material and will be disappointed if (after this hits mainstream media) those shows don't throw around some politically incorrect jokes.

edit: my comment was misinterpreted. I meant jokes along the lines of "this guy is very religious, went to school in $place" -> take some words out of context -> some joke about stereotypical thing about $place"

I did not mean to imply that they'd just read funny excerpts of people's conversations, take them out of context and then tell everyone who said it.

I'm not sure which comedy shows you're watching, but I've never seen then use non-famous people's leaked personal correspondence to make fun of them, nor would I find that very funny.

I was thinking more along the lines of reading a message about a dress/laundry, etc that's followed up by a joke about Bill Clinton.

this is why you don't have a comedy show.

>> "I expect the staff of the various network evening comedy shows to be combing through this for raw material"

I would be disgusted if they did. It's private information. Just because someone stole it and made it public doesn't mean you should propagate it further.

You're absolutely correct, but I really wish we could get away from this idea that anything on the Internet can be private. If it's on the Internet, it should be considered public, especially if it's on someone else's servers. Maybe some day this won't be true, but today in 2016, it is. Don't put private data on the Internet.

>> "You're absolutely correct, but I really wish we could get away from this idea that anything on the Internet can be private."

I don't think that's possible. It's too integral. Think about communications you make that are intended to be private between you and the person receiving it (your doctor, the government). No matter how important the communication I think in 10-20 years there will be no option to snail mail that. Snail mail could be 'hacked' much easier but there are laws in place to prosecute people for violating that expected privacy. The same thing should happen with communications online. Of course this all depends on your views on privacy. I believe privacy is a essential right, one which we must defend or there will be severe consequences. It's very difficult to do that online but just saying 'anything you post online should be considered public' erodes privacy rights massively as it is such an important communications mechanism.

Sure, that's the ideal, but that's not the reality on the ground. People treat logins to websites like it's a guarantee of privacy, and it's just not. Maybe once we have standardized and widely used end-to-end crypto (keybase), have some real authentication (extension of end-to-end crypto), and take computer security seriously (stop using C and C++, to start) we can start to consider things communicated via the Internet to be private. But we're not there yet and we need to get across to people that if you put your name and photos up on a dating site, that information is public and you should be prepared to deal with the consequences.

I think "this one guy writes said $stuff" "and she replied $morestuff" followed by a punch line that draws on some fairly recent gaff by a (Muslim) head of state, diplomat, CEO, etc is sufficiently within the envelope of what's acceptable. You don't have to reveal names and details to be funny.

Except that then encourages people to go through the leaked info to find more "funny" stuff.

the people that will dig through this for negative purposes will do it regardless of who makes jokes about it.

If my info (I'm not muslim) was leaked in a dump I wouldn't care if some intern in an office somewhere went through it to find something useful as long as long as a large fraction of it isn't published all together.

Given the other comments here and the longtime and blatant surveillance of Muslims by the FBI and NYPD, to name a few alphabet agencies, one would imagine that there is ample market opportunity in providing secure services and communications for Muslim clients. Might even have Islamic-appropriate functionality, such as allowing families to discuss potential marriages but forbidding the presumptive couple from communicating directly, or facilitating Islamic loans in a similar fashion to WeChat Pay.

Or maybe there is and I don't know about it since there aren't that many Muslims in my community or social circles. So if that's the case...success?

"there is ample market opportunity in providing secure services and communications for Muslim clients."

You mean aiding and abeitting terrorists? That's the nonsense they'll mention when they target that company or its founders. "They" means about any country in the Wassenar Agreement, part of many Eyes coalition, prone to mass surveillance, or concerned about terrorism. That's unfortunately about every democracy or powerful non-democracy you can develop crypto in.

I'm not saying you can't do it. I have no idea what outcome will be. I just know it's one of riskiest, business models for crypto.

If a terrorist organization wants secure communications, they will find a way to get them, whether by an app with encryption by default like Telegram or something they make in-house. You can't stop or prevent that unless you intend to do so for everybody on Earth.

It has nothing to do with being Muslim.

Shit, you could encode a ton of secret communications in imgur with a tiny amount of steganography. There's a lot of junk bits that could be used here and there to store sensitive data in places that would not be looked into.

Security through obscurity

"If a terrorist organization wants secure communications, they will find a way to get them"

That's what people keep saying. Yet, remember that outreach has to be convenient, use wide-spread tech, and deal with the kind of idiots who blow themselves up for twisted interpretation of religion. ISIS isn't running exclusively on GPG infrastructure despite Snowden leaks showing it was about all that worked to stop surveillance. Instead, they're all over social media, regular messengers, and so on. Black markets are still mostly on ICQ & email. Recent terrorist had iPhones and burner phones (don't recall brand).

So, they can theoretically use nearly impenetrable, pain-in-the-ass stuff but are more likely to use what's convenient and popular. Make ultra-secure stuff convenient and popular for Muslims specifically will likely lead to large uptake among Muslims who are terrorists. It will make you a target for doing so as helping those criminals gets more attention, pressure, and even legal might than most.

"It has nothing to do with being Muslim."

Sure does. Prior comment and rest of this one assume the non-Muslim government profiles Muslims as terrorists, assumes specific countries with potential users aid terrorism, and/or assumes some Muslim countries will oppose encryption that threatens their rule. So, in Five Eyes and even some Muslim countries, the perception might be that Muslims seeking encryption cops and spies can't break means they're up to no good. That might be a problem for both supplier and any users if a surveillance dragnet exists. Less likely to be the case if they were, say, Arab Buddhists in a 15 person church that doesn't evangelize. No perceived threat there. ;)

This link is basically a summation of this Vice article: http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/hacked-private-messag...

Thanks, we updated the link from https://thestack.com/security/2016/06/30/muslim-match-dating....

really? the most interesting messages where only sweet romantic stuff? This should be a treasure trove for journalists.

Ah yes, the old Dating-Site-That-Is-Actually-An-ISIS-Terror-Cell-Coordination-Site ploy...

Oh wait, that's not a real thing at all. Why should this be a treasure trove?

because groups talk differently amongst themselves than they do in a survey. i live in a muslim dominated neighbourhood. i had them for classmates so i heard them talk amongst themselves and they said some stuff that did shock me (not just related to jihad, but also things like: some girls talked about how they where not allowed to look western boys in the eye). but more importantly because we want to know this. how do they (the other) think. what is a 'moderate muslim'. its fascinating to get some insight on these things.

You live with many Muslim neighbours and you look to leaks of dating sites for gaining insight into their lives?

Why don't you just plant microphones directly in their homes? You are their neighbour so you should be able to find a pretext to be invited for dinner if you just talk to them a bit.

You live in a Muslin neighbourhood yet to understand them you need to look at stolen private information? How about talking to them instead?

"what is a 'moderate muslim'."

WOW! How do cope with such a high level of paranoia?

I'd say it's less paranoia and more "all we get from the media is anti-Muslim propaganda and reports of horrible things extremist Muslims do, it'd be nice to have something to point to that's not about that."

Honestly I'd rather the mainstream media just starts doing consistent positive coverage on individuals in the Muslim community to counteract the negative news, but I'll take what I can get.

I've had discussions with several 'normal folk' Americans (note: I am American) that are totally brainwashed into believing being Muslim is synonymous with being pure evil, and I'm afraid of what that mindset leads to, especially on a large scale.

I've had discussions with several wealthy upper class Americans (who should know better) that are totally brainwashed into believing being poor white trash, pro gun, pro gay marriage or pro abortion is synonymous with being pure evil.

The ability to fail to understand the difference between a group and it's most visible members is one that is common across ethnic and economic subsets of the population.

> not just related to jihad

The prejudice is strong with this one.

edit: Changed "racism" to "prejudice"

is it a race now?

And by "it" you mean the Islamic religion I assume?

I don't see what distinction you're trying to make. Is it somehow more acceptable to be prejudice against an entire religion than it is to be prejudice against an entire race? Is that really the discussion you want to have, that some prejudice is acceptable and other prejudice is not?

Well, yes. The nominal standard here is whether the prejudice is against something the individual has choice over. One does not choose one's race, whereas once does choose one's own religion, even if raised in an environment suffused with it.

Choice and agency is the standard by which most people draw the line between generic prejudice and hate. It's no coincidence that gay rights dramatically improved along with widespread acceptance that, regarding sexual orientation, "I was born this way".

It's still the result of stereotypes and over-generalization. Islam is a religion with over a billion followers: trying to make any sort of statement about all of its followers is a fool's errand. I'm reminded of what my religious studies professor said: "There is no such thing as Christianity: there are Christianities". The Christianity of Pope Francis is not the Christianity of the Westboro Baptist Church, and the same holds true for Muslims.

Just as much as white/black are races.

A less snarky answer is that just like Jews there is a separation of cultural Muslims and religious Muslims, the former representing a race.

Oh really? Expand on this?

It's an important disclaimer that race is ultimately a human construct so when if say that something is a race I mean that people either identify themselves or a class of people as belonging to that race.

Back to the point, certain religions are so ingrained culturally and politically that people start to identify themselves culturally and ethnically with the faith because of the people's shared ethical values, history and background. This would have also happened with Christianity if it weren't for the fact that it's the 'default' in the western world.

A person who grows up in the Muslim world, is taught Islamic history, is raised with Islamic values, and practices national and ethnic 'rituals'^1, but is nonreligious might choose to identify themselves as racially Muslim but not religiously.

Conversely a light skinned person in predominately Christian area who finds Islam later in life might say they are racially white, American, or identify with their ancestors ethnicity, but identify themselves as religiously Muslim.

^1 Despite the connotation this isn't necessarily religious. The 4th of July celebration in the US is a ritual.

I'm not sure what the criterion here is. Certain Muslim countries legally prohibit certain sects from identifying themselves as Muslims, and Israel prevents Messianic Jews from identifying as Jewish. Perhaps you mean culturally or civilizationally? This line of thinking can lead to dark places, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sells#Christoslavism

Words no longer actually have meaning, or did you not get the memo?

There was a meeting scheduled to go over it, but it was on Google Calendar...

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