It’s since emerged that Parler’s site could be thoroughly scraped and users’ posts accessed without permission. Those posts included metadata such as location. It is thought that the unauthorised dump of Parler data is now being used to investigate those who participated in the storming of the US Congress.
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One hacker bragged he hacked Parler and downloaded all of its last few weeks of taffic. Obviously including the protests in DC. Seems to be true. Could Free Republic be hacked like this and they get our IP adddresses?
Sure, depending on the depth of the hack and the degree of sophistication. Probably the Apache logs are readable, unless JohnRob only switches them on when debugging, which might be the case. Those logs have your (and my) IPs in them, which is why using an anonymizing VPN is recommended if you need/want to be obscure.
I figure, since I donate monthly, if FR gets hacked, having my IP is the least of my worries -- they'd get my PayPal identity (yeah I use my real one, that was probably unwise, but it's too late now).
NEVER! NEVER! get on the internet without a good VPN. Free is not good.
Bongino said specifically that they were not hacked.