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When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

mango.pdf.zone Essays & writing Essays & articles Security & privacy Class of 2024-08 Hall of Fame
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Resurfaced independently across 4 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
6
submitters
6
observed span
2020–2024
peak thread · 340 comments
2326 pts
latest 20+ return · 2023-02-28
132 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

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Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery. I didn't use any…

kccqzy·2326-point thread·

It's interesting how Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, was genuinely interested in understanding the technology behind the hack. It reminded me of a nice anecdote from Chris Miller's book Chip War. When former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was deciding whether to ban Huawei from the country's 5G network, he "bought himself a 474-page-book titled a Comprehensive Guide to 5G Security to study the topic so that he could ask better questions of his tech experts." Nice to…

0898·132-point thread·

The author has a really fun talk about the experience as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWT6Y0YDJUo

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
2466

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
382

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission