It appears there may have been a major violation of the privacy of the Elite
angerous community, through the actions of a group known as the Paladin Consortium.
The PalCon bot, which has been (and continues to be) used on "[...] 30+ Discord servers and 240+ channels"[1] has been gathering information from every Discord channel to which it has been given 'read' privileges. It has been doing so without the knowledge or consent of other server owners, and of the members of those groups; the only people aware were the members of the PalCon Council (as the details of the bot were apparently mentioned several times in there), and from what I understand only higher PalCon members had access to the 'take'.
If you are on a server with the bot, you should ban it immediately or cage it in an IFF room for that function only. It will very likely disappear shortly.
While I was myself for a time a proud member of Paladin Consortium, I am extremely glad that I was never promoted to any higher position in which I might have been exposed to this - and subsequently been obliged to do as I am doing now. This information came through CMDR Dutch Foster, who was given a copy of a fragment from a csv file to which PalCon bot output its data. If possible, the file will be made available here and on the Frontier forums. I should make it clear at this point that there is NO REASON TO ASSUME that any person outside the PalCon Council was in any way complicit: the only people who could possibly have been aware of this occurring were those with Council access, and even that is not entirely certain (as messages may have been missed, and to my knowledge the vast majority of them were not granted access to the take from the bot).
What you will see in the csv file only a small portion of the take, over a short period of time, which shows a search for instances of the word 'dutch'. If you are/were a member of a Discord chat in which this bot was present, you may safely assume that anything and everything you have said in that chat was similarly recorded, and is accessible to the executive of Paladin Consortium.
The intention for the future of the bot was that it be expanded into an app, which would have access to your PC. Whether the data capture would be acknowledged at this point, none can say - but it suffices to say at this point that none of the server owners were aware of PalCon's capabilities until very recently.
So, what comes next? I can't say. We are leaving this in the hands of Frontier, Discord, and the community: I know that others have been in contact with members of the Frontier team; I contacted Discord's privacy and security team last night/today; and obviously, you are now all being made aware.
We have CMDR Dutch Foster to thank for exposing this when it came to light, and an anonymous source within Paladin Consortium to thank for providing supplementary intel.
Again, to be clear: very few people actually knew about this until now. This was done for several reasons: we wanted to protect those involved from potential attack before we had a chance to release the information, as well as to contain whatever damage might be caused as a result, and to control its release as much as possible. As I am posting this, some members of other groups are no doubt informing members of their discord servers. I hope the community will forgive we few who had access to this knowledge before them for waiting as we did (rest assured, it was not for long) before informing the community at large. The few days allowed us the chance to gather as much information as possible, coordinate our release, and let Dutch say his farewells (as he fully expected to be hunted to the ends of the earth for this). PalCon is by no means a small or insignificant group, and I fully realize that by stepping out as I have I will probably become the primary target for any future aggression. This is, however, something I willingly accept. My actions are not representative of any organization within the E community, and any fallout from this may safely be directed back at me - if you want someone to come after, direct your anger toward me. Please refrain from searching out other groups to which I may have been a member, as they have no part in my words or actions here.
I encourage you not to withdraw from the community as a result of this: those who acted did so alone, and by no means represent most of the Discord-based community. Again, the majority of their members are entirely without blame, having no knowledge of this information and themselves being victims, similarly recorded without their knowledge or consent. Most people you will encounter are worthy of your trust, Paladins included.
To conclude, I wish to convey the personal hurt and deep disappointment of myself, of those others who have become involved, and of those on whose behalf I have decided to bring this information forward here.
[1] The images from the Paladin Inn detailing PalCon's current access and future plans for the bot, as well as a screenshot of the csv file, are available here: http://imgur.com/a/5wn3u
A censored version of Dutch's original message to Delmonte is here:https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308731279711404034/308953305068077057/Untitled-1.jpg (The word 'Dutch' has been blanked out, as at the time there was concern for his safety and privacy)
As a final note to Paladins who may be orphaned by this: there will, I have no doubt, be a place for you to go. Please keep an eye out; you're all in the same boat, but you were betrayed just as much as the rest of us - if not moreso. Go forward knowing this was not your fault.
(The csv file has been converted to xml to upload here. It has been attached to this post.)
angerous community, through the actions of a group known as the Paladin Consortium.The PalCon bot, which has been (and continues to be) used on "[...] 30+ Discord servers and 240+ channels"[1] has been gathering information from every Discord channel to which it has been given 'read' privileges. It has been doing so without the knowledge or consent of other server owners, and of the members of those groups; the only people aware were the members of the PalCon Council (as the details of the bot were apparently mentioned several times in there), and from what I understand only higher PalCon members had access to the 'take'.
If you are on a server with the bot, you should ban it immediately or cage it in an IFF room for that function only. It will very likely disappear shortly.
While I was myself for a time a proud member of Paladin Consortium, I am extremely glad that I was never promoted to any higher position in which I might have been exposed to this - and subsequently been obliged to do as I am doing now. This information came through CMDR Dutch Foster, who was given a copy of a fragment from a csv file to which PalCon bot output its data. If possible, the file will be made available here and on the Frontier forums. I should make it clear at this point that there is NO REASON TO ASSUME that any person outside the PalCon Council was in any way complicit: the only people who could possibly have been aware of this occurring were those with Council access, and even that is not entirely certain (as messages may have been missed, and to my knowledge the vast majority of them were not granted access to the take from the bot).
What you will see in the csv file only a small portion of the take, over a short period of time, which shows a search for instances of the word 'dutch'. If you are/were a member of a Discord chat in which this bot was present, you may safely assume that anything and everything you have said in that chat was similarly recorded, and is accessible to the executive of Paladin Consortium.
The intention for the future of the bot was that it be expanded into an app, which would have access to your PC. Whether the data capture would be acknowledged at this point, none can say - but it suffices to say at this point that none of the server owners were aware of PalCon's capabilities until very recently.
So, what comes next? I can't say. We are leaving this in the hands of Frontier, Discord, and the community: I know that others have been in contact with members of the Frontier team; I contacted Discord's privacy and security team last night/today; and obviously, you are now all being made aware.
We have CMDR Dutch Foster to thank for exposing this when it came to light, and an anonymous source within Paladin Consortium to thank for providing supplementary intel.
Again, to be clear: very few people actually knew about this until now. This was done for several reasons: we wanted to protect those involved from potential attack before we had a chance to release the information, as well as to contain whatever damage might be caused as a result, and to control its release as much as possible. As I am posting this, some members of other groups are no doubt informing members of their discord servers. I hope the community will forgive we few who had access to this knowledge before them for waiting as we did (rest assured, it was not for long) before informing the community at large. The few days allowed us the chance to gather as much information as possible, coordinate our release, and let Dutch say his farewells (as he fully expected to be hunted to the ends of the earth for this). PalCon is by no means a small or insignificant group, and I fully realize that by stepping out as I have I will probably become the primary target for any future aggression. This is, however, something I willingly accept. My actions are not representative of any organization within the E
community, and any fallout from this may safely be directed back at me - if you want someone to come after, direct your anger toward me. Please refrain from searching out other groups to which I may have been a member, as they have no part in my words or actions here.I encourage you not to withdraw from the community as a result of this: those who acted did so alone, and by no means represent most of the Discord-based community. Again, the majority of their members are entirely without blame, having no knowledge of this information and themselves being victims, similarly recorded without their knowledge or consent. Most people you will encounter are worthy of your trust, Paladins included.
To conclude, I wish to convey the personal hurt and deep disappointment of myself, of those others who have become involved, and of those on whose behalf I have decided to bring this information forward here.
[1] The images from the Paladin Inn detailing PalCon's current access and future plans for the bot, as well as a screenshot of the csv file, are available here: http://imgur.com/a/5wn3u
A censored version of Dutch's original message to Delmonte is here:https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308731279711404034/308953305068077057/Untitled-1.jpg (The word 'Dutch' has been blanked out, as at the time there was concern for his safety and privacy)
As a final note to Paladins who may be orphaned by this: there will, I have no doubt, be a place for you to go. Please keep an eye out; you're all in the same boat, but you were betrayed just as much as the rest of us - if not moreso. Go forward knowing this was not your fault.
(The csv file has been converted to xml to upload here. It has been attached to this post.)
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![Cmdr Delmonte[VR]](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/82/82957.jpg?1711998379){kind=avatar}
