Public Safety Reassessment

[Twisted Fairytale]

Forum Promotion Community,

It has recently come to the attention of myself and other administrators that the public has concerns about safety against hackers, scammers, and other frowned upon behaviors. In the past, we have held the notion that "If they didn't occur on Forum Promotion, we can't punish the user."

However, we also have a top priority to protect the honorable users of the community. We want to make sure that these ill-mannered individuals can not use our safe community to exploit others. Therefore, starting today, any user found to have participated in any illegal online activity, including but not limited to scamming and malicious hacking will have their account banned from Forum Promotion.

A handful of users are already being looked into. Please understand that we will not discuss these users in this thread.

We hope to establish a safe community, void of threats such as these. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them below.

If you have information and proof regarding a member who
falls into these categories, please contact [user]Twisted Fairytale[/user].​

 

[User500]

Any chance of using SSL on FP to make it a more secure community?

 

[John]

Thank you Admins for doing this!

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

Any chance of using SSL on FP to make it a more secure community?

SSL would not help with what we are trying to do at the moment, but there may be a possibility of adding it later on when we implement bigger community changes.

 

[Chris K]

Good move guys, I'm all for this.

 

[Gio]

as well receive a notice on their profile summarizing their actions.

Usernotes, or publicly?

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

as well receive a notice on their profile summarizing their actions.

Usernotes, or publicly?

It will be a public note on their account for users to see. Understand that we will not take action unless we are sure of the actions taken by the user. We understand that it can be extremely easy to destroy the reputation of a good user by a false accusation, so we're going to be cautious with this.

 

[Scarface]

wow finally FP admins great job this is exactlly what we needed and it shows that Admins do care. great job

 

[Luiz187]

What if you are a hacker but haven't done anything to FP members. And btw not all hackers are bad or do illegal actions. I can post a part of an article I found showing this. If no hackers are allowed on the forum every cloudflare developer should be banned, lol.

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

What if you are a hacker but haven't done anything to FP members. And btw not all hackers are bad or do illegal actions. I can post a part of an article I found showing this. If no hackers are allowed on the forum every cloudflare developer should be banned, lol.

I will clarify this later, but the general idea is any harmful hacking that's purpose is malicious is the hacking we're talking about here. It's a broad and general term, I understand. That's why I added the ill-mannered behavior bit.

 

[Black Angel]

This is an excellent move, and after yesterday's Houdini topic, I gotta admit that I am actually very surprised by this development.

However, I think this a great idea.

This will give admins an additional means of protection. Running a forum can be difficult, but it is even harder without some type of support system.

I have seen forums be saved by info shared by admins who've been victimized by a certain individual, pooled with information from those who hadn't been yet and so this really is a great move.

However, I only have one question/suggestion.

Could you also include the word "cracker" as a cracker is the type of person that would destroy a forum, or break security for malicious purposes etc., and despite the massive misconception, the two terms aren't interchangeable because as mentioned, any mod developer, rom cooker (See XDA Developers) or coder could be a hacker, but they aren't necessarily a cracker. There are a lot of people who know the difference and it would be a lot less confusing.

http://www.security-faqs.com/what-are-t ... ckers.html

For example, you could technically say that I am a hacker because of the fact that I root my phones and help people do the same to help them gain more control over their device, remove carrier installed spyware, remove bloatware, and help security software like Cerberus Anti Theft to work better, and to help people get the most out of their device, but because I use what I know to help people, instead of hurting them, I am not a cracker.

See what I mean?


Thank you for stepping up to the plate on this issue. 😎

 

[Deleted member 7467]

Good move. 🙂

 

[D]

as well receive a notice on their profile summarizing their actions.

Cool idea, but airing users dirty laundry in public, really? For things un-related to FP too?

Q) Does this mean FP will FINALLY start taking action against the 1234567890987654 websites promoted here that use nulled scripts?

Another Q) I make scripts that scrape content, resolve IP addresses, use scrapebox and other blackhat-ish stuff although I would never scam anybody. Does this mean I'm going to banned and a notice saying *this user scrapes stuff and does dodgy things* written on my profile?

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

Cool idea, but airing users dirty laundry in public, really? For things un-related to FP too?

Q) Does this mean FP will FINALLY start taking action against the 1234567890987654 websites promoted here that use nulled scripts?

Another Q) I make scripts that scrape content, resolve IP addresses, use scrapebox and other blackhat-ish stuff. Does this mean I'm going to banned and a notice saying *this user scrapes stuff and does dodgy things* written on my profile?

Yes, while these actions may not be happening on Forum Promotion, the community has a right to know a user's history (on or off of the forum) before dealing with them.

Nulled scripts have always been against our guidelines. If you know of any sites promoting nulled scripts, please report them and the Community Team will take care of them!

No, we are looking more at users with a reputation of harming other members in the community. If the blackhat-ish stuff crosses over into having an effect on another member, it is possible you'll be contacted.

 

[D]

Yes, while these actions may not be happening on Forum Promotion, the community has a right to know a user's history (on or off of the forum) before dealing with them.

Possible FP could get sued for defamation?

Nulled scripts have always been against our guidelines. If you know of any sites promoting nulled scripts, please report them and the Community Team will take care of them!

Have reported a few in the past, FP staff members have even been ripping things/using nulled scripts. Nothing ever happened, I got a verbal warning for asking somebody if their forum was using a nulled script.

No, we are looking more at users with a reputation of harming other members in the community. If the blackhat-ish stuff crosses over into having an effect on another member, it is possible you'll be contacted.

Awesome. Nothing I do affects anybody here, apart from my skype resolver. Which allows people to get an IP from a skype username. Is this something I could get banned for?

 

[kasem]

Awesome. Nothing I do affects anybody here, apart from my skype resolver. Which allows people to get an IP from a skype username. Is this something I could get banned for?

I feel like you want to get banned haha

 

[D]

Awesome. Nothing I do affects anybody here, apart from my skype resolver. Which allows people to get an IP from a skype username. Is this something I could get banned for?

I feel like you want to get banned haha

Nah. Nothing wrong with being open and honest though. Whilst I would never scam or hack anybody, I do make useful tools and do some blackhat things. I'd like to know off the bat if the things I do outside of FP will get me banned.

 

[Finn]

Goodbye 80% of all FP members.

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

Your questions are certainly valid, Dean; and I appreciate you thinking about these things.

I'm not worried about defamation because a defamation claim calls for the original accusation to be false. We will not be taking action unless we are certain of a user's actions. In addition, if there ever comes to a time where a suit is threatened, we have the right to remove the claim and terminate the account.

There isn't much I can do to help things that have happened in the past, but any future nulled script reports will be taken seriously.

No, your Skype resolver isn't an issue in my opinion. Anyone connecting to the internet should understand that their location is not private.

 

[Black Angel]

Out of curiousity, why would nulled scripts be against policy? I mean, I know what they are, but perhaps there are various reasons for using them as there are people who would use them in the first place. For example a person using a nulled IPB to get an actual true experience of what it would be like to host an ipb in real time on their own server or hosting where they can get actual hands on experience, outside of the extremely limited environment with IPB's hosted demo.

Mind you, I am not saying I support it, or would do it myself, just that I think that there would be as many different reasons for using it as there would be users doing so. One size does not fit all.

I know that IPB will help users with nulled scripts become legit if they purchased a license and will give them the updated files if they dont want to upgrade.

http://community.invisionpower.com/topi ... questions/

This was an option I considered myself before I went with MyBB, I loved IPB 2.3.6 and have been disappointed with IPB since they went beyond that. The reason I didn't go through with it was because I didnt want the risk of new threats being unpatched and also because I didnt want to have to square off with some self-righteous, nosey moron here trying to throw me under a bus and getting me into trouble over something that really isn't any of their business.

So if a nosey user decides to snitch on that person for using a nulled script, and it resulted in a ban, then they've just gotten a legit user banned just because they couldn't mind their own business.

But really, I would think those that use them would be open to far greater risk of an attack from those that provided it than not, which I've also seen happen. If these people are dumb enough to use one to avoid paying, then the risks are theirs to have.. but I've certainly got better things to do than to be running around and snitching on those for using it. Especially since I don't know their reason for doing so and it isn't really my business either.

Also how would you even know whether that person was using one, and furthermore why is it even your business? I've heard about peopIe demanding that admins show their license as proof of purchase and it reminds me of those nosey neighbors who always peek into their neighbors back yard and windows, while being "shocked and appalled" by what they see, even though they refuse to stop looking..

Personally, I would be more concerned with someone selling a blacklisted license or a fake one or someone cracking forums than getting self righteous about someone broke using a nulled script, but that's just me.

I do think that there should be a consequence over a false report, though, so that if the person using a nulled script does in fact have a license and permission to use it, then the person who reported them should be subject to the same or similar consequences.

Anyway, I apologize for the digression but this was something that I always wanted to know but never asked due to the scrutiny surrounding the subject.