- Joined
- Aug 23, 2009
- Messages
- 414
- Reaction score
- 19
All,
I would like to take a few moments to explain a few things that have transpired over the last 24 hours. There will be more details posted later, but for the moment I would like to just point a few things that we are doing in light of these events.
Essentially, our security system caught someone who had registered at least 3 separate user accounts in which two of these accounts were used to post fraudulent reviews of a particular service in Tokyo.
We contacted the person who was responsible for these actions and informed that creating multiple accounts and moreover, posting fraudulent reviews were against our policies and the whole purpose of what TAG is here for.
After contacting this person, he became enraged about the situation and vowed to take down our website using '1000's' of fake accounts and other techniques to discredit or otherwise make TAG unavailable to the general public. As you can see, we are still here and nothing really happened.
TAG receives threats of blackmail, extortion or even in some cases, flat out violence because of actions we take against those wishing to pollute our site with what we consider to be spam or otherwise misleading material.
The points that set this particular attack apart from others was that TAG was accused of being owned or influenced by Asian Mystique's owner, known as Dave. From what I have seen, this individual had personal dealings with AM in the past and has a severe dislike for AM's owner. Of course, TAG is a wholly independent site that does not collect fees for advertising nor do we allow our content to be influenced by any agency that may have reviews posted here.
As mentioned earlier, more details will be posted later. For now, we will be closely monitoring new user registrations and will be manually reviewing each new member until such time we feel that any risk has passed. We apologize to new members that may be temporarily blocked, however this is necessary to prevent abuse to our site members and content posted here.
We appreciate your continued patronage and will keep everyone posted on the situation as needed.
If you have any questions or concerned, please use the contact us link at the bottom of this page and choose the site owner options.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to Chris (TAG Manager) who was handling most of the technical monitoring over the last 12 hours. I'd also like to thank Karen for keeping tabs on our membership database. She's hiding in the shadows, but she's out there.
-Eliah
TAG Administrator/Owner
I would like to take a few moments to explain a few things that have transpired over the last 24 hours. There will be more details posted later, but for the moment I would like to just point a few things that we are doing in light of these events.
Essentially, our security system caught someone who had registered at least 3 separate user accounts in which two of these accounts were used to post fraudulent reviews of a particular service in Tokyo.
We contacted the person who was responsible for these actions and informed that creating multiple accounts and moreover, posting fraudulent reviews were against our policies and the whole purpose of what TAG is here for.
After contacting this person, he became enraged about the situation and vowed to take down our website using '1000's' of fake accounts and other techniques to discredit or otherwise make TAG unavailable to the general public. As you can see, we are still here and nothing really happened.
TAG receives threats of blackmail, extortion or even in some cases, flat out violence because of actions we take against those wishing to pollute our site with what we consider to be spam or otherwise misleading material.
The points that set this particular attack apart from others was that TAG was accused of being owned or influenced by Asian Mystique's owner, known as Dave. From what I have seen, this individual had personal dealings with AM in the past and has a severe dislike for AM's owner. Of course, TAG is a wholly independent site that does not collect fees for advertising nor do we allow our content to be influenced by any agency that may have reviews posted here.
As mentioned earlier, more details will be posted later. For now, we will be closely monitoring new user registrations and will be manually reviewing each new member until such time we feel that any risk has passed. We apologize to new members that may be temporarily blocked, however this is necessary to prevent abuse to our site members and content posted here.
We appreciate your continued patronage and will keep everyone posted on the situation as needed.
If you have any questions or concerned, please use the contact us link at the bottom of this page and choose the site owner options.
I'd like to extend a special thanks to Chris (TAG Manager) who was handling most of the technical monitoring over the last 12 hours. I'd also like to thank Karen for keeping tabs on our membership database. She's hiding in the shadows, but she's out there.
-Eliah
TAG Administrator/Owner