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MAMJJASONDJFM7,8,9,
'S&P 500 Industry Group SnapshotIndustry GroupDaily %
Chg
-56.8% Chg % 1Yr +56.8%Trading Co's & Distr 8.
Automobiles 8.
Electrical Equipment 7.
Commercial Banks 7.
Computers & Peripherals 7.
Water Utilities -2.
Health Care Technology -1.
Gas Utilities 0.
Electric Utilities 0.
Leisure Equipment & Prod 1.$1000 invested over 1 MonthBritain £
0.BloombergMAMJJASONDJFM23,26,29,
'Futures Close 1D % Chg
Copper 2.52 0.
Crude Oil 34.36 10.
Gold 1660.30 -0.
Natural Gas 1.94 8.
Orange Juice 0.96 2.
Futures Close 1D % Chg
Silver 16.96 -0.
Sugar 12.59 -0.
Soybean 8.76 0.
Wheat 5.22 0.
Corn 3.78 1.Currency Exchange2-yr note
Yield:
0.54%Bank Prime
4.25%Exchange-Traded
(Ticker) 1D % Chg
$539 $
Coffee (COFF.L) 5.
Copper (COPA.L) 0.
Corn (CORN.L) 1.
Cotton (COTN.L) -1.
Crude Oil (CRUD.L) -0.
Gasoline (UGAS.L) -1.
Gold (BULL.L) -0.
Natural Gas (NGAS.L) 11.
Silver (SLVR.L) -0.
Close8,344.
1D % Change
4.9%LIBOR 3-Month
0.77%Consumer Rates1D % Change
5.0%Money Market Natl
0.1-Yr ARM
3.40%Gainers and Losers from the S&P 1500 Index
Company Close1D %
Chg
Laredo Petroleum Inc 0.89 110.
CypressSemiconductor 22.75 48.
Oasis PetroleumInc 0.41 23.
WPX Energy Inc 4.34 23.
Titan International1.68 21.
United Natural Foods 6.78 21.
Marathon Oil Corp 4.40 21.
NextGen Healthcare 11.25 21.
Diebold Nixdorf Inc5.99 20.
Transocean Ltd 1.82 20.
Pioneer Natrl Res Co 79.86 20.
Hess Corp 39.68 20.
SM Energy Co 1.78 20.
Callon Petroleum Co 0.49 18.
Cimarex EnergyCo 17.7 217.
PDC Energy Inc 8.55 17.
KBR Inc 22.24 16.
Cadence BanCorp 9.73 16.
Century Aluminum Co 4.75 16.
Sabre Corp 10.52 16.Company Close1D %
Chg
HighPoint Resources 0.21 -24.
Newpark Resources 1.32 -19.
Oil States Intl 2.57 -17.
Fossil Group Inc 4.05 -16.
Nabors Industries 0.44 -14.
Perdoceo Education 11.11 -13.
Vera Bradley Inc 6.39 -11.
Archrock Inc 3.93 -11.
Valaris plc 1.10 -10.
Meridian Bioscience 6.86 -10.
Chico's FAS Inc 2.78 -10.
Calavo Growers Inc 52.64 -9.
Zumiez Inc 22.10 -9.
Edgwll Prsnl Care Co 32.90 -7.
Garrett Motion Inc 4.93 -7.
US Ecology Inc 35.98 -7.
TETRA Technologies 0.51 -6.
HealthStream Inc 22.36 -6.
Guess? Inc 11.56 -6.
ProPetro Holding 3.77 -6.5Yr CD Natl
1.5-yr note
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0.67%RATESNASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX$1000 invested over 1 Year6Mo CD Natl
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20.MAMJJASONDJFM2,3,3,
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New Car Loan Natl
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S&P/ASX 200 INDEX 5939.60 3.
CSI 300 INDEX 4082.73 2.
HANG SENG INDEX 25392.51 1.
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STXE 600 (EUR) Pr 335.64 -1.
CAC 40 INDEX 4636.61 -1.
DAX INDEX 10475.49 -1.
FTSE 100 INDEX 5960.23 -0.10-yr note
Yield:
0.80%Close2,882.
Dow Jones 30 Industrials
Company Close 1D %Chg Chg %YTD
3M Co 153.30 6.4 -13.
AmerExpCo 103.30 5.1 -17.
Apple Inc 285.34 7.2 -3.
Boeing 231.01 1.7 -30.
Caterpillr 106.49 2.3 -28.
Chevron 84.98 5.3 -29.
Cisco Sys 40.08 5.6 -17.
Coca-Cola 53.66 3.5 -3.
Dow Inc 31.40 2.8 -42.
ExxonMobil 43.41 3.7 -38.
Gldman Schs 184.35 6.7 -21.
Home Depot 225.70 7.2 3.
IBM 124.77 5.9 -7.
Intel Corp 53.98 6.2 -9.
J&J 141.64 3.8 -3.
Company Close 1D %Chg Chg %YTDJPMorgan 100.70 7.8 -27.
McDonald's 199.86 7.0 0.
Merck & Co 82.02 3.9 -10.
Microsoft 160.92 6.8 2.
NIKE Inc 88.30 5.0 -13.
Pfizer Inc 34.59 2.5 -12.
Prcter& Gmbl 120.55 3.9 -4.
Travelers Cos I 119.57 2.9 -13.
UnitedTech 119.37 3.5 -21.
UntdHlthGr 280.00 2.4 -4.
Verzn Comm 56.52 1.2 -8.
Visa Inc 182.60 6.7 -3.
Walgreens 49.16 1.5 -17.
Walmart 119.79 2.2 0.
Walt Disney 111.46 6.8 -23.1Yr CD Natl
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% Chg
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BRAZIL IBOVESPA INDEX 92214.50 7.
S&P/TSX COMPOSITE INDEX 14958.09 3.
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6.STANDARD & POOR'SData and graphics by:DOW JONES'Brazil R$
4.YTD % Change
-12.3%“Get h onest. What was t he last lie
you told?”
The database of posts, called
“whispers,” was loaded with sen-
sitive personal confessions. “My
son was conceived at a time
when I cheated on his father... I
just hope he will never find out,”
one post read. Another, written
by a user who said she was a
16-year-old girl, said, “I really
really really really need advice
from a mom right now.”
Researchers said they were
also able to access any user’s
account. The data also showed
which messages a user respond-
ed to and the time of their last
log-in.
Included in the data was a list
of hundreds of international mil-
itary bases, including location
coordinates. The feature, Jamar
said, allowed users to speak can-
didly and publicly from such
locations. The company had in
years past gathered d ata on posts
related to suicide around mili-
tary installations as part of an
undeveloped research proposal
for the Defense Department.
The user data also revealed
how the company policed forBY DREW HARWELLWhisper, the secret-sharing
app that called itself the “safest
place on the Internet,” l eft years
of users’ most intimate confes-
sions exposed on the Web tied to
their age, location and other
details, raising alarm among cy-
bersecurity researchers that us-
ers could have been unmasked or
blackmailed.
The data exposure, discovered
by independent researchers and
shown to The Washington Post,
allowed anyone to access all of
the l ocation d ata and other i nfor-
mation tied to anonymous “whis-
pers” posted t o the popular s ocial
app, which has claimed hun-
dreds of millions of users.
The records were viewable on
a non-password-protected data-
base open to the public Web. A
Post reporter was able to freely
browse and search through the
records, many of which involved
children: A search of users who
had listed their age as 15 re-
turned 1.3 million results.
The cybersecurity consultants
Matthew Porter and D an E hrlich,
who lead the advisory group
Twelve Security, said they were
able to access nearly 900 million
user records from the app’s re-
lease in 2012 to the present day.
The researchers alerted feder-
al law enforcement officials and
the company to the exposure.
Shortly after researchers and
The Post contacted the company
on Monday, access to the data
was removed.
Early Tuesday, the company
said in a statement that much of
the data was meant to be public
to users from within the Whisper
app. The database found by the
researchers, however, was “not
designed to be queried directly,”
a company official said.
The exposed records did not
include real names but did in-
clude a user’s stated age, ethnici-
ty, gender, hometown, nickname
and any membership in groups,
many of which are devoted to
sexual confessions and discus-
sion of sexual orientation and
desires.
The data also included the
location coordinates of the users’
last submitted post, many of
which pointed back to specific
schools, workplaces and residen-
tial neighborhoods.
“This has very much violated
the s ocietal a nd ethical norms we
have around the protection of
children online,” said Ehrlich,
who also discovered the data
leak last year of home-camera
company Wyze. He called the
company’s actions “grossly negli-
gent.”
Lauren Jamar, a vice president
of content and safety at Whis-
per’s p arent company, MediaLab,
said in a statement that the
company strongly disputed the
findings. The posts and their ties
to locations, ages and other data,
she said, represented “a consum-
er-facing feature of the applica-
tion which users can choose to
share or not share.”
The researchers, however, said
the ability to download all t he
data in bulk — and potentially
combine it with other sensitive
data sets — represented a huge
risk for users’ privacy.
“The big issue here is that they
have exposed their users’ data en
masse,” said Kyle Olbert, a hu-
man rights activist and research-
er who reviewed the research.
“This is the difference be-
tween a user handing you their
business card and Whisper leak-
ing an entire phone book,” he
added. “ This is the most intimate
data laid bare in a massive
unprotected database for the en-
tire world to see.”
The app says in promotional
materials that it is “the largest
online platform where people
share real thoughts and feelings... without identities or pro-
files,” with more than 1 billion
anonymous posts. Users are
urged to “share secrets” and
“express yourself openly and
honestly” on the app, which
regularly sends smartphone no-
tifications with notes such as,
Secret-sharing
app Whisper
left data exposed
Intimate messages, some
left by children, were tied
to users’ locations
crimes and misbehavior. About
195,000 accounts were marked
as banned for sharing spam or
inappropriate content, the data
showed. More than 40 percent of
those banned accounts were
fl agged as having solicited mi-
nors. This figure, Jamar said,
included blanket bans of ac-
counts from questionable Inter-
net addresses.
The app also appeared to rate
users on the potential that they
were a sexual predator. It’s un-
clear how the company deter-
mined that data point, which is
called “predator probability”;
about 9,000 users had a score of
100 percent. Other data points
were called “banned from mes-
saging” and “banned from high
schools.”
The “predator probability”
data point, Jamar said, referred
to a company data-science proj-
ect around predicting whether a
user would be banned for send-
ing sexual solicitations, in viola-
tion of the app’s rules. “We found
it had little success and shelved
the project,” J amar said.
The company gathers users’
confessions into blog posts onthe Whisper website, including
“My Parents Sent Me to Boarding
School Because I Got Pregnant”
and “True Life: I Married The
Wrong Person.” Data in those
posts could be used to identify
the users’ location at the time of
posting, the researchers said.
Account data could also be
used to identify sensitive person-
al details or locations. One user’s
account included group refer-
ences to sexual orientation, gen-
der and work at a secure U.S.
military missile facility. Such in-
formation, Jamar added, was
“already publicly exposed by the
users themselves.”
The app has fallen from its
peak popularity and ranks 122nd
in social networking in the
i Phone app store. The company
said 30 million people still inter-
act with the service through
social media, the Web and by
using the app every month.
Whisper is o wned by t he Santa
Monica, Calif.-based holding
co mpany MediaLab, which also
owns the m essaging app Kik, mix
tape service DatPiff and online-
exam app CoCo E-Learning.
The company drew heavy criti-cism in 2014 when the Guardian
reported that the company gath-
ered location data on its users,
including some who had opted
out. Users at the time were
posting more than 2 million
messages a day.
The company said in a state-
ment then that it “does not
follow or track users” and that i ts
internal database is “not publicly
accessible.” But the exposed re-
cords showed that the company
continued to record users’ loca-
tion coordinates and other data
following that controversy.
Beyond the broader invasions
of privacy, Ehrlich said the data
was “ literally the fuel you need to
run a secret police,” adding that
it could have been weaponized
around the world to expose and
punish members of vulnerable
minority groups based on their
sexual orientation, ethnicity,
health status or religion.
“No matter what happens
from here on out, the data has
been exposed for years,” Olbert
added. People could “have their
lives ruined and their families
blackmailed because of this.”
[email protected]stephane Mahe/reutersA flock of fuzz
Chicks huddle a t a poultry farm near Le Mans, France. Early this year, the French government pledged to outlaw an industry-wide
procedure known as culling, in which male chicks are put to death as soon as they’re hatched. Germany has already banned the practice.So handy. So reliable. Home delivery. 1-800-753-POST washingtonpost.com/subscribe
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