Greetings to those who have found me on ROR, and greetings to everyone else!

I initially was not going to engage but I felt compelled to expose people trying to take advantage of those who are less interwebs savvy.

Evidently I’ve become targeted by a group of “hackers” trying to extort money via an “online reputation” company.   I put “hackers” in quotes because real hackers are quite intelligent and slick.  These guys clearly went to the Laurel and Hardy School of Hacking. Silly little “hackers”, you kids are adorable.

I received an email from 2 agencies based in India this past week.  On Oct 26 “someone” made 2 bogus reports about me, and around the same time, 2 companies offered their services to remove these complaints.  What was most clear is, these complaints were forged from using keywords gathered from my website and my most commonly used Twitter hashtags such as “storyteller” and “motion capture”.  It’s not that difficult to connect those dots.

The 1st “claim” states that I “take photos professional, but [he] can not.”  Um…yeah well that’s like…your opinion man….  Anyone can take a look at my photos and decide for themselves.  Liking my photography is subjective, and unfortunately your anonymous opinion on the subject has no gravity.  The same post also states “He as a bad editor of motion…”  (direct quote) and there’s the give away.  Too easy and I don’t need to explain why, my industry colleagues will know.  My photography and my day job are unrelated to each other and have never crossed paths in the field, so I find it difficult to believe someone making a legitimate claim would have hired me to do both tasks.

The 2nd “claim” states I “… ended up getting fired from that job.”   I’ve never been fired from a job in my entire life, so that claim is 100% false and easily certifiable.  If these complaints were warranted and valid, I’m confident the “victims” wouldn’t need to Google Translate a pathetic attempt at incoherent slander.  Everyone I’ve ever worked with has been exceptional at what they do and can formulate proper sentences, the polar opposite of these plaintiffs.

Concurrently, my website was getting bombarded with spam comments through my blog, which is commonly used by hackers to attack someone’s website.  The traffic on my personal site spiked drastically – I haven’t posted anything recently, so it was pretty obvious what was going on.

I immediately had my web person install the proper security measures, and what do you know?  All the web traffic has ceased , although now I’ve been tracking malicious login attempts and there have been quite a few of those (228 as of today), but with the new security in place, yeah…good luck with that.

The story doesn’t end there.  The next day, I suspiciously started to receive “friend” requests on Facebook by people who only have 4 friends and are “new” to Facebook.  I also had a few more than usual Linkedin requests from total strangers, and I was sent an email from a random guy who is a “visiting Schoolar” and wants my opinion on a paper he wrote.  I simply have to click a link, fill it out,  and send it to all of my co-workers as well!  Hey I bet he’s from Nigeria and I have inherited 50 million dollars too!  He simply needs my bank account number and social security number to give me the money.  Where do I sign up?

It’s pretty hilarious the efforts these guys will go to.  Getting a regular job is much easier than this without any risk.  Since it’s abundantly clear English isn’t their native language,  they most certainly won’t know what GFY means, but gifs are the universal language *see below.  It’s unfortunate to think about someone who isn’t inept in this sort of thing, like my mom or grandma, or any other person who is innocently using the internet – these guys are assholes and will be exposed.

To conclude, the bottom line is 3 things:

1. Most of you good folks have a brain and can see how transparent the complaints on ROR are.  I’m going to leave them there because they are quite frankly HILARIOUS.  I also HAVE to leave them there, ROR wants $2000 to remove them – hence the GFY post.  That deserves it’s separate rant post – coming soon 😛
2. Try to be as secure as you can in your web practices – pay the web guy what he/she deserves to implement proper security for your website, or learn it yourself.  If possible keep your accounts private – my Facebook and Instagram accounts are private for this reason.
3. Hacker friends, I’ve sent all of your IP addresses my website has collected to the FBI’s Cyber Crime Division.  It’s not too difficult to track you down and I hope you enjoy your prison time.  Perhaps you should consider using your “powers” for the greater good?

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