Well, that was fast. Just days after a Twitter clone from former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller launched, the new social network is already beset by problems.
For one, hackers quickly leveraged Gettr’s API to scrape the email addresses of more than 85,000 of its users. Usernames, names and birthdays were also part of the scraped data set, which was surfaced by Alon Gal, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock.
“When threat actors are able to extract sensitive information due to neglectful API implementations, the consequence is equivalent to a data breach and should be handled accordingly by the firm [and] examined by regulators,” Gal told TechCrunch.
Last week, TechCrunch’s own Zack Whittaker predicted that Gettr would soon see its data scraped through its API.
The scraped data is just one of Gettr’s headaches. The app actually went live in the App Store and Google Play last month but left beta on July 4 following a launch post in Politico. While the app is meant to appeal to the famously anti-China Trump sphere, Gettr apparently received early funding from Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, an ally of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that Guo is at the center of a massive online disinformation network that spreads anti-vaccine claims and QAnon conspiracies.
On July 2, the app’s team apologized for signup delays citing a spike in downloads, but a bit of launch downtime is probably the least of its problems. Over the weekend, a number of official Gettr accounts, including Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Steve Bannon and Miller’s own, were compromised, raising more questions about the app’s shoddy security practices.
