MuSuLPhReAk
18-09-2009, 11:07 PM
Alright, with all the stuff that's been happening lately I was doing a lot of thinking on security, privacy and trust online. Canada takes privacy issues extremely serious. Releasing of peoples info, etc is against the privacy act, and people can be taken to court for violating the act and/or libel. As of late it got worst, seems harrassment has been added to the list.
Now what others do off this site is up to them and they are held accountable for it if things catch up to them one day whether in court or anywhere else.
But for my members and the community in general, you need to learn to protect yourselves. There is no rule ANYWHERE online that says you must use your real name for anything. Please make use of that.
Ways to protect yourself:
-If you are on a forum, never associate your handles with your accounts on facebook or sites like that if you are going to get into heated discussions with anyone.
-This one is SUPER IMPORTANT: a lot of you have been on my sites or sites I admin at for 8-9 years now and got a feeling of security with me. I feel I may have been a bit too nice. Not every admin/site owner is like me. Some have plans and VERY malicious intent. As a bunch of you have learned, the hard way now, some site owners will log everything about you in hopes of scaring you or blackmailing you. These are CRIMINAL ACTS in Canada. If it ever happens to you, you should report it to your local police ASAP.
So a bunch of you have seen what malicious intent can do. IP's logged, emails logged, and I am starting to believe PASSWORDS logged. I have no confirmation of a hack yet but it seems this may be the case. So you say, what malicious intent can a person have with a password that associated with a forum. Well do you use that password for your email? Admins can't see your password but they can see your email. If a site software is modified to not encode your password, then your password can be read by an admin as clear as day. Grabs that, goes into your email and so on and so on. So a standard rule. Any site you register on, NEVER use the password you are using for your emails. Make it different, also make it different for every site you register on.
Many of you know me for many years now so the ones that do, I am more or less sure they would vouch for me in a heartbeat as I never screwed anyone over, I never did stuff that would tarnish my reputation as I spent many years earning trust. The guys/gals that are new, time will let you form your opinion about me.
So this thread is mostly about sites that just pop up trying to get you to join, either in a subtle way or in an agressive way like it happened this time.
As you've seen, everything there was logged, recorded and used against whoever it could be in a malicious way. If you logged in there, make sure you're passwords are secure on every other site. So try to recognize that because someone is screaming rat rat at a member of a community, doesn't mean its true. Turns out this whole time the accuser was actually the one who was doing what he was accusing another or others of doing. This person has become a rat, has harrassed people in real life, has or may blackmail someone, is posting up all kinds of stuff that if he is found, will surely get him sued in any court of law in Canada.
There are guys like this on the streets and guys like this on the internet. They are more aggressive here as they go under an anonymous handle. But if a crime is commited, the law can find a person even using the most advanced proxy. If not, poxies would have been made illegal in the western countries under the homeland security laws. So I would reiterate it again, if anything has happened to you that you have been harrassed, blackmailed in any way, threatened, etc, your best option would be to contact your local authorities and give all the info you can on who is doing it to you. From my end, I will give all the info I have.
Let this be a lesson to all, never trust anyone online that has not built a reputation over years. Even that is no guarantee of trust. But a hell of a lot more likely to be ok than a member that has registered a handle for a few months. Time does mean something online. If a member spends 5 years using a handle and building a reputation, most would not go throw it away for something petty as an argument. There are people with malicious intent on the interent. Learn to protect yourselves.
Now what others do off this site is up to them and they are held accountable for it if things catch up to them one day whether in court or anywhere else.
But for my members and the community in general, you need to learn to protect yourselves. There is no rule ANYWHERE online that says you must use your real name for anything. Please make use of that.
Ways to protect yourself:
-If you are on a forum, never associate your handles with your accounts on facebook or sites like that if you are going to get into heated discussions with anyone.
-This one is SUPER IMPORTANT: a lot of you have been on my sites or sites I admin at for 8-9 years now and got a feeling of security with me. I feel I may have been a bit too nice. Not every admin/site owner is like me. Some have plans and VERY malicious intent. As a bunch of you have learned, the hard way now, some site owners will log everything about you in hopes of scaring you or blackmailing you. These are CRIMINAL ACTS in Canada. If it ever happens to you, you should report it to your local police ASAP.
So a bunch of you have seen what malicious intent can do. IP's logged, emails logged, and I am starting to believe PASSWORDS logged. I have no confirmation of a hack yet but it seems this may be the case. So you say, what malicious intent can a person have with a password that associated with a forum. Well do you use that password for your email? Admins can't see your password but they can see your email. If a site software is modified to not encode your password, then your password can be read by an admin as clear as day. Grabs that, goes into your email and so on and so on. So a standard rule. Any site you register on, NEVER use the password you are using for your emails. Make it different, also make it different for every site you register on.
Many of you know me for many years now so the ones that do, I am more or less sure they would vouch for me in a heartbeat as I never screwed anyone over, I never did stuff that would tarnish my reputation as I spent many years earning trust. The guys/gals that are new, time will let you form your opinion about me.
So this thread is mostly about sites that just pop up trying to get you to join, either in a subtle way or in an agressive way like it happened this time.
As you've seen, everything there was logged, recorded and used against whoever it could be in a malicious way. If you logged in there, make sure you're passwords are secure on every other site. So try to recognize that because someone is screaming rat rat at a member of a community, doesn't mean its true. Turns out this whole time the accuser was actually the one who was doing what he was accusing another or others of doing. This person has become a rat, has harrassed people in real life, has or may blackmail someone, is posting up all kinds of stuff that if he is found, will surely get him sued in any court of law in Canada.
There are guys like this on the streets and guys like this on the internet. They are more aggressive here as they go under an anonymous handle. But if a crime is commited, the law can find a person even using the most advanced proxy. If not, poxies would have been made illegal in the western countries under the homeland security laws. So I would reiterate it again, if anything has happened to you that you have been harrassed, blackmailed in any way, threatened, etc, your best option would be to contact your local authorities and give all the info you can on who is doing it to you. From my end, I will give all the info I have.
Let this be a lesson to all, never trust anyone online that has not built a reputation over years. Even that is no guarantee of trust. But a hell of a lot more likely to be ok than a member that has registered a handle for a few months. Time does mean something online. If a member spends 5 years using a handle and building a reputation, most would not go throw it away for something petty as an argument. There are people with malicious intent on the interent. Learn to protect yourselves.