It’s free because you are the product.

  • Written by TechFlow Intern

On July 10, the once little-known blockchain on-chain monitoring platform Arkham seemed to be well-known due to the news that "Binance Launchpad will be launched on Arkham".

Immediately, everyone began to find private messages sent by Arkham in their Twitter private message lists, inviting users to use its products. After breaking their thighs, various registration invitation links immediately flooded the social space.

Currently, Arkham still uses an invitation-based registration system, but it is this invitation link that puts Arkham at the forefront of public opinion.

Some netizens discovered that Arkham’s referral link seemed to leak the user’s email address.

Because, Arkham uses Base-64 encoding to generate personalized referral links. So if you have a referral link, you can decode the Base-64 hash and get the email of any user.

In its privacy policy statement when registering, Arkham also indicates that they may use email for direct marketing, interest-based advertising, and share information with third-party platforms and social media networks.

Previously, a user Matsumoto sent a private message to Arkham with this question, and the reply he received was, "Yes, we know."

In the Western encryption world, where privacy breaches are considered a no-go zone, a spark seems to have ignited greater anger, and more criticisms are pouring in.

Adam Cochran, a well-known crypto KOL involved in the construction of SNX/YFI, said angrily, “Arkham also sniffed and recorded their own user data, including binding their wallet addresses, device IDs, locations, etc. Then, they compared it with data from public sources. Public data is removed from the mix (like Twitter) and if you share the link it's free because you are the product."

On the relevant privacy details page, Arkham stated that it will collect the following information: account and contact data; interests, usage and links; marketing data; communication data; transaction data; blockchain address; third-party information sources; device data; online activities information……

Why does Arkham collect so much data?

Everyone immediately thought of Arkham’s upcoming on-chain intelligence trading platform Arkham Intel Exchange, which allows users to anonymously buy and sell wallet address owner information. Buyers can post information requests through bounties, and sellers can obtain rewards by submitting the requested intelligence. .

Many people have begun to speculate in a slightly "conspiracy theory" style. Arkham is trying to establish an anonymous human flesh market and track it from the chain to the off-chain.

The skinning doesn't stop at Arkham itself. Its founder, Miguel Morel, has also been implicated, linking it to the CIA.

Angry netizens found a video showing off their wealth, titled "How much did he spend?!" in which Miguel Morel was described as the "fucking god of cryptocurrencies" and spent £2,500 on sunglasses.

In addition, it was discovered on his LinkedIn page that Miguel Morel’s interest is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States.

Meanwhile, their company description reads that their investors include the founders of Palantir and OpneAI.

Most of you may not be familiar with Palantir, which is known as the most mysterious big data analysis company in Silicon Valley. It was founded in 2004 by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, Stanford University classmate Alex Karp, software engineer Stephen Cohen and others.

They hope to use the human-machine collaboration mode of Paypal's security authentication system to identify criminal activities such as terrorists and financial fraud, and create a software company that helps people extract useful information from different information sources. This concept coincided with the needs of the U.S. government, so soon after Palantir was founded, the CIA became its first customer, and later expanded to the FBI and the National Security Agency.

Some netizens even revealed that Arkham’s logo resembles the Pentagon of the United States. Don’t underestimate the imagination of angry netizens.

In June 2023, Miguel Morel published an article titled "The fact is, no one really cares about whether cryptocurrencies have privacy", which gives a glimpse of his inner thoughts.

However, amid much criticism and pressure, Arkham appears to be beginning to compromise.

Arkham CEO Miguel Morel responded in a social media post, saying, “This system was created at the beginning of the beta version to be able to track user recommendations via email to reward users. In addition to communicating with users and tracking recommendations, we They will not be used for any other purpose. All referral links going forward will contain an encrypted version of the referrer's email so they cannot be reverse engineered. This change has taken effect."

However, the seeds of doubt have been sown, and it is actually more difficult to repair. "It's free because you are the product" and various labels such as "Anonymous Human Flesh Market" have made Arkham a target of public criticism.

It is undeniable that Arkham is indeed an excellent on-chain monitoring and analysis platform, but the value of "privacy" needs to be re-examined.

Someone commented, "Don't look at everyone scolding Arkham now, but let them make money and call them dad again."

So the question is, does blockchain need privacy? Or is it just about making money?

This article is reprinted from TechFlow Shenchao with permission

This article Arkham, the on-chain data monitoring platform, was accused of leaking privacy: establishing an anonymous meat search market? First appeared in Zombit.