Skip to main content

Spy.pet data harvester taken down by Discord

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support

Spy.pet, a website that offered billions of Discord chat logs for sale, has been taken offline by the chat app provider. Discord accounts associated with the service are also believed to have been banned from the service. 

In confirming the news, Discord itself said that the site and the database it was selling broke its terms of service.

"Scraping our services and self-botting are violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,” the company spokesperson said in a statement for The Register. “In addition to banning the affiliated accounts, we are considering appropriate legal action."

Last week, news broke that a website was selling more than four billion public messages, made by roughly 620 million users, logged into more than 14,000 servers. 

On the surface, it seemed as if there was no foul play, because the data was already public-facing. Discord is essentially an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) service, meaning that with the right bots and automation, all of its data could be harvested.

Backup domain

The website advertised the database as something that could be used by law enforcement agencies, or companies looking to train AI models on large logs of human interaction. Spying on people was also an option. 

The service used an unknown number of Discord accounts, which accessed open servers, or those with an easy invite link. Despite the open availability of the data, Discord confirmed that this, too, was prohibited. Some of the accounts that were engaged in data scraping have also been terminated:

“We identified certain accounts that we believe are affiliated with the Spy.pet website, which we have subsequently banned."

The Spy.pet website administrator allegedly told their followers on Telegram that they were working on propping up a backup domain, but at press time, the site was still showing as offline.

More from TechRadar Pro



via Hosting & Support
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Web Hosting
Remote IT Support
Sites & Socials

Popular posts from this blog

Last orders! Breville’s Birthday Sale ends in 24 hours – save an extra 10% on already-discounted espresso machines with our exclusive code

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support It’s been a busy month for coffee machine maestro, Breville. Not only did it celebrate International Coffee Day at the start of the month, but this October is also the company’s birthday month. And to mark the occasion, you can save up to AU$550 on a range of top-performing espresso machines . And that’s not all, as you can save a further 10% on discounted models with our exclusive Breville coupon code . Alternatively, you can use our exclusive promo code sitewide on the complete range of Breville appliances. You’ll need to hurry though, as the Breville Birthday Sale comes to a close at 11:30pm AEDT 21 October. Breville is, of course, responsible for some of the best coffee machines in Australia , and as a result, it can make choosing the ideal model for your household a little bit trickier. To help guide you to cafe-quality coffee at home, I’ve picked out so...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mova V70 Ultra Complete review: a full-featured robovac let down by subpar performance

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Mova V70 Ultra Complete: Two-minute review If you've never heard of Mova as a brand, you're not alone as it was initially only available in select European and South-East Asian countries. The brand, which is owned by Dreame Technology, is now expanding and is supposed to be value-focused side of the company — although you'd be hard pressed to believe that when its latest flagship robot vacuum costs upwards $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$3,000. However, the Mova V70 Ultra Complete brings everything you expect from such an expensive robovac, including some industry-first features that are now being adopted by other brands. This includes suction that's a whopping 42,000Pa at its maximum, as well as the impressively long reach of the side brush and mopping arm (12cm and 17cm respectively). I even love the fact that it eliminates the need for dust bags by us...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK small businesses are spending big on Anthropic — but OpenAI isn't far behind as expenditure on AI tools hits new high

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support An estimated 1 out of every 8 UK small and medium businesses are paying for AI tools Over 28% of SMEs are using two or more AI platforms Publishing is the main UK sector adopting AI British SMEs are moving toward AI solutions, with adoption increasing from 1.1% in 2023 to 12.8% in 2026, new research has claimed. The study , by small business credit card providers Capital on Tap, also shows that while smaller companies may have more modest budgets, they’re still happy to spread their bets when it comes to choosing an AI solution. Over 28% of SMEs are using multiple AI platforms – with Anthropic’s Claude just edging out OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with the average quarterly spend growing to a quarterly average of £75.60 per SME. SMEs explore AI Anthropic is the most popular AI provider among British SMEs according to the research, with those businesses devoting 54.1% of ...
Post a Comment
Read more