Tag: internet

Hijackers Attempt Sabotage of WTF Magazine

Image of a message from a fake Facebook account.
He’s part a group of fan page hijackers, and WTF Magazine is not his only target.

WTF Magazine has been rebuilding their presence on Facebook after their old fan page was deleted.  On Tuesday, Jason Fyk and his admin team have had to ban several fans.

It turns out they aren’t who they say they are.

They tried adding 400 fake accounts to my personal page and are currently adding a flood of fake accounts to WTF Magazine.” Fyk said.

A screenshot of fake accounts that were banned.
Here’s a list of some Facebook accounts that were banned from the WTF fanpage.

This isn’t the first time he’s dealt with this group.  Business Insider has details on a group dedicated to hijacking fan pages for fun and profit.

Hijackers send a flood of fake likes to a fan page so they can report content that is posted.  “Jack Evans along with Austin Harrig, Anthony Machia (Ortiz), Ken Ballou, George Portillo, Dexter Hyman and others have attacked us without cause for years.” Fyk said.

Pages that reach 100,000 likes are a prime target for the group lead by Evans.

Duplicate accounts are used to hijack pages.
Note how the same name appears twice.

In some cases, duplicate accounts are created.  They can be used to evade banning while continually harassing the intended target.

The group is known as “The Community,” and their profile claims to be against cyber bullying.  The group’s description is only a ruse.

The hijacking of pages began as a way of pulling pranks and was only for fun before things got serious.

Now it can be done for fun and profit.

Below are a couple of screenshots showing the impact of fake likes.

Screencap showing impact on WTF's fan page as a result of fake likes.
“The idea is to add the fake accounts and use those to report everything. This kills the reach on the page.” Fyk said.
These are the likes on his personal page. The spike in organic likes caught his attention.
Note the spike in organic likes on his personal page.

“I managed to get 99% off my personal page but that was a small page and 400 likes in 2 hours is noticeable.” Fyk said.

The lack of legal precedent has left little recourse, though Anthony Ortiz appears to admit some wrong doing in his interview with Alyson Shontell, especially when it comes to defamation.

The only current recourse is to continually ban fake accounts.  We’ll keep everyone here updated as new information becomes available.

Throwback Thursday: Dial-Up

Old School Modem
Image Courtesy of Leon Brooks under Public Domain.

By Thomas Holbrook II

I went to school at the Leeton R-X school district in Missouri.  The computer lab was quite humble.

There were mostly DOS machines with some Windows 3x machines connected together via Novel Netware.  It wasn’t until about 1996 that Internet access became available.

Before I graduated high school in 2002, we had one major upgrade.  Windows 98 with Office 2000.  It’s amazing how a school could fall behind on technology.

At least the Internet connection was fast.  I remember to this day having to deal with dial-up.  It was mostly through my dad’s AOL connection, and heaven help me if I had any Windows Updates.

This was before I delved into this thing known as Linux, or rather GNU/Linux.  One of the reasons I wanted to have regular access to hi speed Internet was due to the prevalence of soft modems.

Linux-based drivers were difficult to come by back then.

Access via Ethernet was an appropriate way around that problem.  I do have fond memories of dial up, though I’ll admit that I’d be frustrated today, though not nearly as much as with a mobile hotspot that’s going at Edge Network speeds.

Truth be told, I came into the computer culture late in the game.  I never got to experience the dial-in BBS’es that others had the pleasure of using to talk to each other and trade files with.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I actually utilized IRC.  I can only imagine the amount of lag from all the conversations at once.

These days, I feel fortunate.  There’s a straight up monthly fee for access (while a price guarantee is in effect).  Long distance fees for access are a thing of the past.

Yet I still remember the excitement while exploring vast communities and dreaming of things that I wouldn’t have otherwise attempted to accomplish.

Dial-up modems still exist to this day, and there are still plenty of dial-up users out there.  Sometimes, the old reliable is all that’s needed.  Hopefully, I won’t have to use that as an only option.

With that said, I appreciate the legacy.  What are your memories of dial-up access?