Woops I did it Again
Hurray to John for revealing this just now. I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by Phill Ryu of Macheist and asked if I was interested in helping him promote MacheistII. Phill said that a series of blogs we’re going to be hacked in jest, and following this the Macheist site itself would succumb and MacheistII would be revealed to everyone. The entire ploy sounded harmless, incredibly inventive, and a lot of fun, so I jumped at the chance to help out.
Aiding the decision I also saw that one of the founders of MacApper, Glenn Wolsey, had already gotten involved. With dozens of active staff members at MacApper it made it a bit painful that I was not able to let any of my writers know what was up, but if I had let anyone know I knew the cat would be out of the bag very fast. So the decision was made to keep quiet and nobody was told aside from a couple close friends.
So last Tuesday I followed Phil’s instructions, took MacApper down for a day leaving the prebuilt defaced page, and I felt good knowing that I was part of such a goofball stunt. I figured MacHeistII would be a smash success, developers would sell Mac software, and we would all get a laugh out of it when Phill and the guys revealed the plot.
I never received any money to help out Phil and the MH crew, and I don’t think Glenn did either. I was glad to help out because I know that when we do cross blog promotion (as we have in the past), it’s always great to have support from your peers. I also know that Mac software is what gives MacApper its subject matter, and helping developers sell software has always been a part of our modus operandi here. I wanted MHII to be a success, and helping Phill out was an easy decision.
Alright so the entire story seemed air tight until those crafty Norwegians over at mac1.no (nice!) started to poke some holes in it. This was when I made a really bad and stupid mistake for which I feel awful about. In a blog post I tried to justify the hacking by blaming it on my Wordpress install. This was a really stupid thing to say, and it honestly didn’t occur to me at the time, but I inadvertently scared the crap out of thousands of WP users. For this I am genuinely sorry and apologize to Wordpress and anyone who I annoyed or scared with my comments. Which was a sh*tload of people.
So in retrospect the other people I ended up hurting are both the readers and writers here. I really hadn’t thought out how angry you people would get if the plot was uncovered early, which is what happened yesterday. I guess I just want to say that none of the writers here at MacApper knew about the stunt. In fact keeping it away from them was not that easy, and a few of them are not happy with me today. The stunt did not go over as we thought it would and I hope you understand that I couldn’t let anyone in on it without risking the entire story unravelling on us. I also wasn’t willing to ‘blow the whistle’ until the Macheist guys spilled the beans as I wanted to honor my commitment to their promotion. So this made it kind of difficult on all of us.
So I guess in closing I will just say again that my intentions were not meant to draw attention to MacApper in a shady attempt to gain readers, or sell out to an advertiser, or to screw over the good people at Wordpress in any way. People will draw their own conclusions about the whole thing and if people feel compelled not to visit MacApper anymore, nothing I can say will change that. I guess I would just remind those people that MacApper is the result of dozens of voices, of whom I am just one, and I really hope that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the lot.
Now if you’ll just excuse me while I slip into this asbestos layered suit.
Whatever respect, which was very little from me, is now gone. The manner you managed us knowing you faked it was terrible and makes me sick. You got caught with your pants down, you couldn’t admit it.
I hope a lot more people have the same opinion as me.
@Warbrain,
Come off it. You got played, that was the point. Let’s not act like Miles slept with your wife. Personally, I thought it was a funny prank. It’s unfortunate that a vocal few got upset about it. Guess no one has a sense of humor anymore.
Pathetic. You won’t be getting my time again.
And to Phill – leave the Apple scene. Your sleazy used car salesman tactics are better suited for another industry. Like pimping. Give that a go as I can bet MacHeist 2 is going to be shunned by anyone with a brain.
Cool by me. I’m just sorry it went sideways on you.
[...] MacApper was not really hacked! None of the folloing blather about Wordpress is true in any way. We love you [...]
We all make bad decisions from time to time. Learn from this ill conceived stunt and make up for it by doing your service to the site as best as you can. Humans are fallible *shrug*
Oh, and here’s Jamie’s comment to Warbrain a few days ago in response to the “hack”:
Jamie Diamond said on
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
“Oh come on Warbrain…
So you’re asserting we’d hack our own and a friend’s site as a PR stunt…take a step back. Do you honestly think we’re so desperate for publicity that we’d ever do that?”
That’s it. I was not amused by some of the stunts pulled last MacHeist – but this is way too far. There was no “it was a funny prank” and “we got played – haha”. No. It reeks of awful PR stunt, where you readers get played for chumps.
MacApper, and everyone else involved has lost any credibility in my eyes, and I will not be returning to this site. In fact, I might just email your advertisers to and let them know why I won’t be coming back either.
I am just sorry you had to take the fall for Phill. I can’t stand the guy. He might as well be called the “mac software pimp”. He comes across as rude and conniving, and has no respect for the mac scene or other mac software developers. Even now, he will probably let you take the fall on his behalf, barely making a peep.
And this is from someone who knows…his own poorly written website broadcast my personal email address out to thousands of people…and after it was all said and done, I had to berate him for almost a week to receive the free macheist package that he promised me in return. (I would have much rather not had my email broadcast out).
Maybe I am a little harsh given my previous experience, but that is just what I have gathered thus far…so take it or leave it.
@Nathan, @Josh, @any other readers who feel the same way
How were you affected by this, really? How was your life ruined so much by this that you’ll email advertisers to complain? How does one prank affect the credibility of the rest of our writing?
Also to minimize any damage to Wordpress I updated my initial Malcor post to read:
@Jordan
Although I tend to agree with you, I don’t know if being adversarial is the best approach to assuage the situation. People like to vent, people like to bitch…it’s the narcissism the internet cultivates. Keep on putting out quality stuff, and even if they leave, they will come back. Just leave it be!
I thought the whole stunt was quite amusing…
I also got to learn about a few new websites.
Jordan – my life is not ruined by the prank, no. But thanks for being so defensive.
No, what the stunt shows though, is a complete lack of respect for your readers. You know, those people who come and read the articles, and click on your ads, which create the income. The whole reason the site exists. This lack of respect, and the cheapness of it all, says to me that you’re not willing to maintain some sort of standard – ethically and journalistically, and that says a lot of things about any other article that may be published on your site.
I’m also very sure your advertisers don’t want to be associated with such a stunt. Hence emailing them complaints.
And that sir, will be the last I have to say on the matter
[...] l Macapper Enviar a: Iconos de marcadores [...]
Well u just lost your self a user.
Very poor form, I would like to know what exactly when through ur head when you thought this would be “funny” and a good idea to wast peoples time worrying about their blogs, if they are venerable to hacking and all the other BS you went on about.
I hope a real hacker can come along and take this site down for real now. Then we can see how u react
@Nathan
It is one thing to voice your opinion on the board, but it seems a little bit sensationalistic to go through the trouble of sending emails to the advertisers. I mean seriously…
@Jordan,
I don’t speak as a reader, but as a site operator (I’m ed. in chief over at dtgeeks.com). When I woke up this morning and saw Hadley explain that malcor was a hoax, I wasn’t really angry, but I was still a little annoyed and disappointed. And at the same time, I was relieved.
I was relieved that malcor wasn’t real because I didn’t want my own site to be a target. But at the same time I was a little peeved because as this was all unfolding, I became concerned for my own site. I didn’t want my own site to be tagged for excessive fanboyism (especially since we make a concerted effort at Deep Thought to avoid fanboyism; it wouldn’t be a badge of honor for us).
Thanks to this hoax, out-of-the-loop site operators had every reason to worry that they would be a target (if Apple Matters is a fanboy site, then any site that discusses the Mac is) and that their CMS platform is unsafe (we run on the same platform as Apple Matters).
I’m all for pranks, don’t get me wrong. But please be more careful in the future!
Nick
Editor in Chief
dtgeeks.com
I think that most people are disappointed that Malcor wasn’t real. The prospect of having a real Mac hater, like in the old days (5 to 10 years ago), was thrilling. And for him to have the skills to hack our favorite sites really perked our attention. Even I bookmarked the Malcor blog.
But alas, he wasn’t real. And that just drives in the fact that the Mac hater is a dying breed. Even John C. Dvorak has retired from the Mac flaming community.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2162397,00.asp
And I know that I’m going to miss reading those old flame wars on PC Mag.
But anyway, the Malcor scare was fun while it lasted.
Disappointing that this ever happened. I have no respect for anyone who gets involved in things like this and the people who organize it
I say forget the vocal few that are wining about it. MacHeist is cool because it got the community to interact a bit more and work together. It brought the community together. To be a part of that is cool in my opinion.
The only real harm that was done was the finger pointing at WordPress. We all make mistakes though the important thing is to learn from them.
@Sean
I wholeheartedly disagree. As a Mac user on every front, computer, phone, music device etc…I still abhor nothing more than the mac zealotry, fanboyism, and apologism that is so prevalent on the mac blogs. Why can’t we talk about the platform itself, instead of having to always resort to vitriol? Instead of sticking to the topic at hand, like underdeveloped kindergartners, Mac bloggers color outside of the lines by publishing diatribe after diatribe of anti-Windows garbage. At what point is it enough?
I for one chuckled when the idea of Malcor was introduced…hoping it would induce change…
I want unbiased Mac news and commentary, without the political agenda (gruber), the apologism (macalope), and nepotism (all the bloggers amongst themselves). When is Mac blogging going to stop being such a damn circle jerk?
I’m stunned that anyone is still giving Phil and crew the time of day.
Defaming well respected developers (WP etc) for profit doesn’t seem like something that’s going to earn you respect.
And even worst: “I never received any money to help out Phil and the MH crew”… so you’ve helped MH and received nothing in return. Your name is momentarily tarnished for their profit. Doesn’t that make you feel a little like you’re being taken advantage of?
I honestly think the entire Mac community will be better off with these guys gone. I’m surprised anyone wants to be associated with them.
So it was an elaborate prank taken a bit too far. No big deal. Still love the site. If someone pulls a worked-out and intricate practical joke, you can be the one who storms away in a huff or the one who laughs and appreciates the complexity of the setup. I choose the latter.
But as Sean said, the only real harm was the WordPress gaff. But I’m sure anyone who is blog-savvy enough to know about “malcor” will quickly learn that WordPress was not to blame, and problem mostly solved. In any case, nice prank, just please don’t do it again.
Unbiased news!?!? Hello this is a Mac site and of course it is going to be biased just like any site that caters to Windows is biased and any site that only deals with Linux is going to be biased. Unbiased news is a myth.
Mac users are proud of their decision to use a Mac and there is nothing wrong with that. I will admit that at time the fanboyism, as you put it, gets a bit thick but I have seen the same thing on every other device, platform, OS, Programming Language, Car, Phone, Etc… That’s life though, people are going to talk up the things they like and why shouldn’t they.
Anyway there is nothing wrong with this site or any other site having a bit of fun to get ready for the huge games that our MacHeist. Like it or not, many people enjoyed the event last year and are looking forward to it this year.
@Sean
I think you might be lead astray by the notion that since you can’t be completely unbiased, that is a justification for being completely biased.
The problem with your line of thinking is that it doesn’t take into consideration the disservice that the bias does to the community. Every time the fanboys rationalize, downplay, or dismiss a security issue, design flaw, defect, or missing functionality, they do the Mac community as a whole a disservice. Let’s keep the innovation up by RECOGNIZING the competition as formidable. I don’t want to be hoodwinked…I want the objective truth.
I absolutely disagree with you that Windows and Linux sites are as biased as the Mac blogs. Windows and Linux blogs are more than willing to be quite self-effacing, writing scathing reviews about their own beloved platforms on a regular basis. Yet, you can’t seem to find a review on anything related to Mac without some asinine banter about how much better it is than everything else, and how shitty the alternatives are. I guess if you want to verbally fellate Steve Jobs on a regular basis, that is your call, but it won’t get me off.
What a great load of tosh.
Stupid, dodgy stunts. I’d much prefer a simple honest approach, not this nonsense.
I’m removing this site from my bookmarks.
O, come on!
People don’t have to be so god damn asses.
Nothing bad really happen. You ALL enjoy this site and get out of it a lot more then you give.
IT’s not like Miles raped your dog or killed your nanny.
It was a joke and it didn’t harm anyone.
Where the hell did all these responses came from “Whatever respect, which was very little from me, is now gone” what the fuck?
Miles, you didn’t do anything wring and people should get with the program?
Really, guys, why don’t you just sue him? I bet you could make tons of dollars for this evil act of aggression made by miles against… the world actually, Ye miles once I figure out where Internet criminals are judged I’m coming for you.
Fuck.
LOL @ Ziv
“Whatever respect, which was very little from me, is now goneâ€
That does in fact sound pretty pretentious. I can see the Monopoly man, sitting around drinking Earl Grey, saying this…prefacing it with “salutations”, and ending it with “indubitably”.
I shouldn’t wake up and write comment (why can’t a comment be edited…)
“Where the hell did all these responses came from…”
Should be:
“Where the hell did these responses came from…”
And
“Miles, you didn’t do anything wring and people should get with the program?”
Should be:
“Miles, you didn’t do anything wrong and people should get with the program.”
@ E.T.Cook
ROTFL, you killed me with that one
i still think is funny and it got me some nice sites i already visited glenns through youtube but then i got this one and some other that were being siggested to be hacked lol althought the words of malcor were kind of harsh but still it’s funny
You sir are an idiot. You do not make jokes about the security of such widely used software….
Please, be more mature. Having readers means having responsibility or loosing them.
I’m not judgemental or whatever, mostly because if I was Miles and approached by a big site like MacHeist to do this, I would probably say yes too. Would you really not do that?
Miles, I forgive you. I have to admit, I actually found it fun to see what Malcor had to say every day, there never really seemed to be a real threat since every site just came right bck up.
So, life goes on. I think the whole thing about un-bookmarking the site – it’s stupid. Do what you want but if there isn ‘t some fun and comedy in the world then it’s boring and dull.
That’s all I have to say. (Sorely missing the absence of smilies in these comments)
Well, I’m gonna delete my MacApper bookmark. Hope that you at least enjoyed yourself.
Bye,
G.
Bitch please. All of you whiners have to get over yourselves. It was a joke with good intentions to launch a kickass site (well another version of a kickass site) and I’d say the majority of you “readers” and “commenters” couldn’t see the good in this harmless joke.
Miles, you need no apology. People are wound up too tight and can’t take jokes. To all of you who have “lost respect” and “won’t ever come back” and “will contact advertisers”, I invite you to buy a tub of ice cream, go home, and eat it all while reminiscing and crying on/about how terrifying this is. You think the advertisers care? Most likely, their apps are going to be in MacHeist. To those of you who are “removing MacApper from your bookmarks” and going to cry in a corner while convulsing and spitting random words about how bad this site is, you obviously didn’t like MacApper much in the first place, and you leaving has no impact. In fact, it doesn’t even matter.
This was all in good fun, and yet people can’t take jokes. Miles was simply trying to help a friend and promote a kickass site.
Unsubscribe, remove it from your bookmarks, do what you want. You’re still a bunch of whining idiots.
I’m surprised that this many people are so angry that they’re going to top reading the blog…
The whole thing was handled poorly, and I was frustrated for a while, but now that it’s all come out I don’t really think it was all that horrible to begin with.
It was just a fun PR stunt for MacHeist! If the credibility of the hosts hadn’t been questioned and Mac1 hadn’t blown the cover of it all, we’d all be laughing about it later when MacHeist 2 rolled around.
It is amazing to me the power of the press! Or the blog, in this case.
People get so upset and take it so personally, as if you were out to get them individually. Sheesh!
Its not like you caused mass panic across 2 states, a la Orsen Wells’ “War of the Worlds”.
And, you had the balls to stand up and apologize.
As a fellow small business person, I can dig it. You tried something on the advice of a collegue. It didn’t work. You move on.
As for those who are “unsubscribing”, why tell us? Its like you are trying to get us to open a dialog to invite you back.
On the one hand, I had never heard of macapper.com before this whole heist.
On the other hand, now that I know you were part of this sophomoric little hoax, I won’t be visiting your site — or trusting news or articles that you post again.
It’s called “credibility,†and you have just squandered any you might have had. And yes, I do think that Small Dog and other respected vendors should be thinking twice about maintaining an association with a site whose publishers display such heinously poor judgment.
Wow. I did not expect a reaction like this. Either here or on the MacHeist forums. Bashing MacApper. Bashing Phil Ryu. You guys are acting like malcor.
Ok, they made some mistakes. They should never mentioned Wordpress. They even got out of hand denying it, because some readers kept bashing them. But that doesn’t mean they lose my respect. They came out, and apologized very humbly. They are changing Macheist 2 to remove malcor. They learned from their mistakes. Thank you Miles and Macheist. You did the right thing in the end.
As for the people saying it was a horrible idea from the beginning, what was so horrible. It worked so well in principle, but just got out of hand down the road. No one could have calculated the impact this would have on everybody.
As for the Macheist and Phil bashing. Cut it out. What’s wrong with Macheist? What’s wrong with Phil Ryu? Ok, he acts a little like Steve Jobs is the genius-secretive way, but what’s wrong with that? Macheist is helping developers. I’m in it for the sheer fun and excitement. I find most of the year dull (especially November and December), but Macheist adds a little excitement to my year.
Miles, I’ll still be reading/writing, and I’ll be first in line for Macheist. For anyone else besides Wordpress and Expression Engine, there was no harm done to you. One of your sites was down for 24 hours. Move on. Wordpress and EE, we’re really sorry.
[...] their involvement, and asking for everyone’s forgiveness. You can read their posts here, here, and here. But the backlash of MacApper’s readers isn’t going so good, truth to be [...]
I dunno. The whole things seems silly. Go forth and do your work, don’t be deceptive again. ‘Nuff said.
“For anyone else besides Wordpress and Expression Engine, there was no harm done to you.”
Right, because why would a hosting company care if one of their clients had their site hacked? I mean, obviously Media Temple will get more customers out of this right? Wrong.
Bad publicity exists, and this is a perfect example of it. Wayy more people saw this, and read the comments on Digg, than actually followed up on this story. So there’s a whole lot of people out there right now who know by the Digg comments that Glenn is hosted at MT, and they think Glenns site was hacked. That’s the worst publicity MT could get and guaranteed they will lose potential customers because of it.
Also, Expression Engine isn’t free. It’s a business. Every customer they lose is a loss in income. You really need to look at the big picture.
“How does one prank affect the credibility of the rest of our writing?”
You’re making the whole thing worse by just not owning up to it. When you admit that you screwed up and apologize, don’t follow that up with “But ..” and further explanations trying to justify your actions.
People are pissed off and venting. Don’t continue to add fuel to the fire. If you’re lucky, it’ll blow over if not .. Maybe Phil needs some employees.
I agree this was in bad teaste and should have not been done. Its going to take sometime for this site and the other sites involed to relize the damage they done.
@Watcher: Oh man I hate to egg you on but dude you’re killing me. Show me one post where MT or Expression Engine was said to have been hacked due to their negligence/unpatched server/bad code etc. I never could understand what the uproar at EE was to begin with since they were never mentioned nor was it implied they were to blame for the ‘hack’. And I probably shouldn’t mention this but I have it on good authority that someone at MT did know about this before it happened.
The only one dumb enough to cast any doubt on any CMS platform or company was by me towards Wordpress, and I seriously didn’t think that one through as I posted above.
Anyways this was a lot of fun but like I said over at Macheist:
You compromised your credibility to further an agenda, and you did so with disreputable tactics. What part of the “The Boy Who Cried Wolf!” story didn’t you understand?
You sold out any trust people might have had for you for others gain. If you blow this off, you lose.
How are you going to pay back to those that believed in you? Or don’t you think you need to? Go ahead, keep treating people like suckers. Karma’s a bitch and you’ve built up a ton of crap that’ll come back to you in the future.
Enjoy!
Geez, what a twatload of fagboyz! All y’all are Teh Gayerz.
The MAN made a mistake and the MAN held his hand up (which, unlike most of you fagboyz, apparently isn’t covered in his boyfriend’s jizz). It takes a MAN to say, “I was wrong.”
Don’t worry, boiz, maybe one of your gnat-sized nogonadz’ll drop one day and you’ll get a chance to bash a real woman for a change instead of bloggers and Windoze. And if old Mary Jane rottencrotch DOES let you into her perty pink panties, you’ll realize there are far more important things in life than some Mac blogger making a mistake that, let’s face it, doesn’t actually make any difference to those of us who actually have lives outside our mommies’ basements.
Y’all have a nice day, now.
@Jordan
The idiot comment wasn’t necessary, I am glad you deleted it.
@Michael
Regarding Phill Ryu, I think it is fair to offer him criticism, especially since most of my beliefs are based on experiences outside of this particular instance.
I think you guys need to go to google, and type in “how to apologize”. One of the big no no’s of attempting to apologize is to rationalize or downplay your behavior. You can’t apologize for something if you are still trying to defend your actions tooth and nail.
I am on your side in this guys, I don’t think it was nearly as bad as some people say it was (although if there were any lost sales as a result, you bet your ass you would be legally liable to Wordpress and EE, which build their business on reputation). However, if you are going to apologize, do it sincerely.
And you really didn’t expect this kind of reaction? This is the internet. People get very narcissistic on the internet as I stated above. When they have the wool pulled over their eyes, they are going to lash back.
But on the other hand…the way some of you guys are acting…seriously. You guys are so sensationalistic. This is like a Shakespearean tragedy to you guys.
“OH WOE IS ME. I AM TRAPPED IN A FOREST OF WOE. HOW DARE THEE MISREPRESENT THYSELF”.
Goodness guys…come on. If you don’t have a blog that was affected because you thought there might have been security concerns, or you weren’t the companies involved…and are still bitching about it this bad on a forum. I want your life…because obviously if this has affected you in this manner…you don’t do jack shit all day…you might not even have a job.
@Miles: I never said that was the case. But I think you can see how easy it would be for someone to infer that a vulnerability on the hosting side caused a site to be hacked. Things to don’t have to be spelled out explicitly for them to have an effect.
The uproar at EE was that most people knew Apple Matters was running on EE. Therefore if Apple Matters got hacked, there was either a vulnerability on the hosting side, or with EE. Again, this wasn’t stated explicitly, but it’s the only logical conclusion.
Hosts are essentially a dime a dozen, and so if a one of the host’s ‘featured’ clients has their site hacked. That does not reflect well on the host. And if I were looking for hosting, I would look elsewhere, because as I said, hosts are a dime a dozen.
The same is true for EE. If I suspected there was a major security vulnerability in EE, why would I not just use a different CMS which is more secure, and probably costs less?
The point is that MT and EE got nothing out of this. Only bad press, which you cannot deny, causes a loss of customers. So thanks to your little prank, two companies have lost money (in the business world, a loss of potential income is the same as a loss of actual income).
Stop trying to trivialize what you did, and just accept the fact that it was a stupid idea, and you should have thought of the consequences for the people who provide you with the means to get your content published.
Also, when people started to suspect it was a PR stunt, there were essentially ridiculed by you, your staff, and Glenn Wolsey. That should have been addressed in your apology. If you would have just kept your mouth shut and stayed out the discussion, people wouldn’t have cared so much.
“Conspiracy! C’mon guys – get over it.”
- Miles Evans
“PRman, that is absolutely ridiculous. You believe I received a MacBook Pro in payment for the site hack? Yes, great speculation right there. Nothing at all to back it up.”
- Glenn Wolsey
“We wanted to further study the attack, but since some people are now crying fake, and others claiming MacHeist is behind this, we’ve removed it.”
- Marvin Sum
“Oh come on Warbrain…
So you’re asserting we’d hack our own and a friend’s site as a PR stunt…take a step back. Do you honestly think we’re so desperate for publicity that we’d ever do that?”
- Jamie Diamond
You guys are fucking stupid.
It’s not like Miles “cried wolf” about being hacked just because he felt like it. This was a clever and elaborate scheme to launch the first heist. There’s a difference between “crying wolf” simply because you want to fuck around with everyone, and “crying wolf” because it’s part of a plot.
I don’t understand why you retards can’t see the fun in this. I’m a bit saddened by the fact that such an elaborate heist was cancelled simply because some babies were crying about it. Credibility? None lost. Miles was simply part of this kickass scheme which apparently terrified everyone (which was kind of the point, realism is key, dumbasses).
What part of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” do I not understand? Basically the part where all of those douchebags get upset at the fucker for crying wolf too much. People need to calm the fuck down and see the fun in things. Apparently no one saw that in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” either.
If you think this was in bad taste, go shove some soap in your mouth, and then talk about bad taste. If anything, this was overly clever. Did I fall for it at first? Sure. Did I cry about it at night? No. This isn’t a big issue and you all need to get those sticks out of your asses.
No one gives a fuck if you’re upset.
Oh, and @Asskiss, go shove some “karma” up your ass.
Miles, Thanks for owning up and clearing the air. Everyone else, at one point or another, have said something that they didn’t think through, I know have I, and didn’t realize the consequences until well after the fact. So again, thanks for owning up and explaining it.
Hope you aren’t in the asbestos too long.
To the rest of you that are so “upset” and “offended”… Get a job, holy hell. If this is enough to get your all riled up, would you please go meditate or have a kid or something and just chill out? I mean come on… it’s not like he ran over your dog or shot your mother.
@Miles – You won’t find references directly implicating ExpressionEngine or EngineHosting weaknesses because when the authors of blog posts saying that EE had been compromised were contacted, they wisely removed them. And Apple Matters is a large site; it’s no secret that they are powered by ExpressionEngine, and hosted at EngineHosting. Both companies fielded questions all day from users and clients wondering
a) Was EE/EH really compromised?
b) Was their site in danger?
c) Were we accomplices in this ridiculous stunt?
It’s funny to me that bloggers want all the protections provided by law to journalists, but want none of the responsibility. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is not protected speech. Even if it’s blatantly obvious that there is no fire, and no danger, and even if when they get outside everyone is surprised with a year’s worth of free passes to the theater as part of a “fun PR stunt”, the theater and the person who shouted fire are not released of liability because it was all in the name of fun. I wonder if you’d consider it worth it if all of the sites involved had to pay restitution to the site owners and businesses for the time they spent investigating or responding to claims as a result of your fun.
If instead of journalists you are entertainers, than this could have easily taken place legally and in a proper mode the way the entertainment industry does. Propped sites and clues; everyone knows they’re playing a game (e.g. all of the fake sites in connection with the tv series “Lost”).
Your hollow retorts here show that your apology is as false as the plot of the stunt. You have no remorse for your actions, only remorse that things didn’t go as planned and that everyone isn’t patting you on the back for how clever it was.
Personally, I don’t care either way about the hoax, it didn’t affect me in the least.
However, knowing that Phill Ryu was involved angers me to no end. That guy has a habit of hyping something that sounds great, then finally delivering a half-effort.
For example, take a look at ResExcellence.com – a site he purchased with friends from Unsanity. A promise to bring ResEx back from obscurity over a year ago… yet ResEx still sits there blank, save for a few random “update” posts – the last of which was nearly a year ago now.
MyDreamApp – no updates to the site, and no apps have yet been released from the last one.
MacThemes – Though I don’t believe he runs it anymore, he hyped it up and NEVER delivered. The only thing worth visiting the site for is the forums. Of course, it isn’t really his fault that there are really no themers with any talent left anymore.
I have nothing against Phil personally. I think his intentions are good. But I wish he would put less effort into stunts like this and more effort into delivering on his promises and hype.
Hehe good joke, great advertisement for your website! And good news to know that Macheist II will start soon!
Great job for your website, I’ll continue to be a regular reader…
@Derek
Very intelligent commentary. I never looked at it in the journalistic manner. It is kind of a double standard.
“The Boy Who Cried Wolf!” is a perfectly apt fable for understanding this situation. “Cry Wolf!” is all about doing something for attention, and it bites the boy in the end.
People get the attention – and reputation – they deserve.
@Derek: Very well said! As I said before, the perpetrators of this hoax need to look at the big picture and realize that have done REAL financial damage to their service providers. And as someone else has said, an apology cannot be sincere if you are still trying to defend your actions.
God, this really has been a sad event to read!
@Miles – Thank you for your apology and explaining things for us. I’d stop attempting to defend any of your actions with those who do not know how to respond properly to someone apologizing to them. As for those who have said they will no longer be coming back to this site over this, I am reminded of an ex- of mine that said I would never hear from him again… 9 different times. Point is, those readers, much like my ex- just love to see their own words in print and feel better only when they can attack and make others look bad.
May they choke on their own venom.
@Derek
“It’s funny to me that bloggers want all the protections provided by law to journalists, but want none of the responsibility.”
This is not true for me, and in fact it’s the reason why I called out Miles and anyone else involved in our staff forums and asked for the truth. To some of you guys, it may not be a big deal, but as webmaster of a few other sites, it’s important to me to treat readers with respect and clearly lying to them and playing victim doesn’t cut it in my book. The Screw You MalcWhore post was also not necessary and to me was pretty much adding on to the disrespect of our readers.
I also run a small staff at one of these sites and honesty to me is a big issue there as well. I wouldn’t expect people to want to work for me if i lied to them and then followed it up with “he got us” etc.. posts in the forums. I understand the macheist guys wanting to keep it secret but it would violate my ethics and I would not agree to do this if it meant lying to not only my readers, but also staff.
I also went to journalism school and worked in the field for about 6 years and although this may not be a newspaper per se, ethics and journalistic standards are very important to me as a writer in general, and I feel those were both violated and I wouldn’t want my name as a writer affiliated with a stunt like this. So even though I only wrote about 4 posts for macapper and some may think I am overreacting, but those are likely the last you’ll see from me on MacApper. I will however continue reading and encourage all of you to do the same because there is a great group of writers that do awesome work for this site, and I can assure you that they were not aware that this was going on.
You know, it’s funny. I’d come here this morning with the intention of asking if anything more had come of this hacking business, and here this post is, front and center.
I really don’t know what else to say that hasn’t been said already. But from now on, I’ll take Miles’s posts with a grain of salt.
Yeah, as Michael and Miles both have said, none of us were aware of this before the fact or after the fact. Miles and possibly one other editor were the only ones who knew what this really was before now. So yes, I wrongly defended MacApper; that’s what one does when you hear a bizarre claim from an unknown mac site from Norway and your employer has already publicly stated that you were really hacked. Sorry to anyone I offended in the process; I was misinformed.
“So you’re asserting we’d hack our own and a friend’s site as a PR stunt…take a step back. Do you honestly think we’re so desperate for publicity that we’d ever do that?â€
- Jamie Diamond
I have to wonder if this itself is a carefully worded statement. It’s true that MacApper didn’t ‘hack’ itsellf or a friends site. It participated in fake attack, and by the tone of it all, had no intention of ever coming clean. Were you desperate for publicity? No. Did you act greedily for publicity and did you act disrespectfully towards your audience for publicity? Let’s let the audience decide.
The thing that ticks me off most about the aftermath of this hoax has been the unapologetic apologies. I’ve heard words like “stupid”, “joke”, “mistake” and “poor judgement” thrown around, as if this were all an accident. I once posted a rebuttal to one of ‘Malcor’s’ seven hundred and forty two word breathless rants about not being an attention [hog]. Someone put effort into that rant. The Malcor hoax took a lot of work, a lot of coordination, a lot of thought and could have yielded a lot of benefits for the MacHeist bottom line had it worked out the way it was supposed to. This wasn’t an accident or a lapse in judgement in the sense that leaving your keys in your car are a lapse in judgement. This was a setting-aside of ethics at best, and a revelation of ethics at worst. Stop calling it a misTAKE and start apologizing for a misDEED, and for goodness sake don’t try to change the topic in mid-paragraph and talk about how excited you are for a new season of deals at MacHeist.
I’m happy to forgive a misdeed, but I’m not keen on this whole “oops, we never expected it to go this far”—where ‘go this far’ is code for ‘get caught’—tone.
For everyone freaking out: Just chill out!
Nothing here really affects anyone else, and while Miles was wrong for saying that it was WordPress’ fault, it’s really not a big deal otherwise
Just think of it as a non-April Fools’ Day, April Fools Day joke
The credibility of the site shouldn’t be determined solely based on a dumb joke
Stop saying it “it’s really not a big deal.” It is a big deal. If nothing else, it tarnishes the MacHeist project. Already a package deal of questionable ethics and somewhat bogus packaging, now we have to add “supported by frauds” to the list.
In other words: I was already not planning on buying MacHeist 2. But at this point, I’m going to have to think twice about supporting any software publisher that participates in MacHeist.
The bottom line here is: lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas. I sincerely hope that developers that were considering participating in MacHeist will look around them and decide that they don’t want to make their bed in a kennel.
@Jacob: You apparently don’t understand how business works. Business relationships (such as someone buying a hosting account) are based on credibility and trust. If a web host’s featured client is hacked, the web host loses credibility, and thus their current and future customers lose trust in them. Any loss of credibility and trust results in a loss of income. If you think this incident is so trivial and would not affect the business of Media Temple and EE, then you need to go out in the real world and see how business works. Don’t be narrow minded, look at the big picture.
@Steve
If you had taken a moment and read the comment directly above your post, in addition to the article, you would have seen that no, my response wasn’t “carefully worded”. As far as any of us knew at that point, we really had been hacked.
[...] MacHeist team is sorry, as are the three blogs involved. But why are they sorry? They created something absolutely brilliant in my opinion. [...]
[...] MacApper.com [...]
[...] the community has been fairly negative, but the attitude of some of those participating in the hoax seems to be that they’re really, really sorry that they got caught. From a purely personal standpoint, I suppose I should be glad about this: there are simply too [...]
I for one was truly terrified when I first read about these “hacks”. I immediately began to hyperventilate and developed a terrible headache at the idea that my own life’s investment and income stream could be destroyed by hacking Wordpress.
I stopped convulsing when I found out it was a dastardly PR stunt but I am still enraged and my legs only just stopped shaking.
I’m amazed that these so-called bloggers haven’t already been rounded up. Quite clearly, such charlatans and ne’er-do-wells pose a “real and present” danger to national safety and to the business interests of American citizens.
Isn’t this kind of fakery just another form of terrorism?
[...] believable, they asked credible sites like AppleMatters.com, iPhoneMatters.com, Glenn Wolsey, and Macapper.com to be accomplices in this well conjured [...]
Whatever your intention or thinking was when you decided to do this, it was a very, very poor decision. The underpinning of ANY relationship is trust. To the extent you hope to have a lasting relationship with your readers, you violated that trust. The potential implications (loss of readership, loss of ad/sponsor revenue, etc.) FAR outweigh any benefits accrued through this shady form of PR.
Worst of all, you have cast a pall upon the good writers who work with you to maintain this site. I nearly took you off my bookmark list out of principle, but I delayed the decision. Today I read two EXCELLENT articles: “ies4osx: Run Internet Explorer 5/6/7 Natively in OS X” and “ies4osx: Run Internet Explorer 5/6/7 Natively in OS X.” The “halo effect” of action was that I paused before doing the downloads suggested in the first article… Could I trust this? Would this be another hoax that could adversely affect my system by downloading malware?
I’ll keep this site on my bookmarks list given the value that it’s writer’s bring to the table. I’ll also make sure I backup my system before downloading anything linked to from this site.
Do you see the impact you’ve had? I hope it will make you think twice before entering any sort of dialog that could lead to a repeat of such a foolish action. I also hope your colleagues will hold you to a higher standard so that their work will not be sullied by your lack of good judgment.
This is so depresing. You mean smebody can hack my Wordpress account and bring down my blog?!?
I’m SO worried about this. This is scary as heck for me no. My life has been so hard lately. My wife (may she rot in hell) is divorcing me and taking the kids. I don’t make a fortune from my blog but it pays the rent on my studio (I had to move out of “our” home – ha ha what a crock) and pays the bills.
If I lose that, I won’t know wear to turn. The bitch is taking everything else I own and her God-dam lawyers lied to the court ,so I have to pay any wage to her. Can you beleive that?
Anyway, my blog is the only source of income they cant find out about. Its kind of a pain having to get the funds paid out to a friend who passes me cash but holy crap; someone please tell me how I can secure WP? Do I need to change hosting or something.
This is too stressfull. I already lost the cars and the dry-cleaning business to that hag.
[...] woops i did it again MacApper – Toronto,Ontario,Canada … and i don’t think glenn did either. i was glad to help out because i know that when we do cross blog promotion (as we have in the past), … See all stories on this topic [...]
Has everyone reading this blog actually even read the apology above or followed this story at all? Honestly comparing this whole incident to terrorism and now malware? WTF? Some of the haters in this thread have completely lost their minds.
Apology accepted, now let’s move on already.
I just wanted to let you know that I have been an avid MacApper fan since getting my first MAC computer about 2 years ago.
This website was a great website to learn about new applications, tricks, etc. The emphasis is on WAS. It no longer has that same meaning to me and I am so utterly ashamed that a person would stoop down to the level that you have gone. I do understand that MacApper is a group of bloggers that may not necessarily speak with each other outside of e-mail, IM, etc., but I believe that every single contributing member of MacApper should be held accountable for ever action that they do and if that action should harm themselves or other that they should take a serious look at the consequences before engaging in that action.
I will not be visiting this website anymore other than to answer any questions.
Just so you are aware, I use MT as my host and it did give me quite a scare and I am seriously considering moving away from them if they were involved with this in any way.
Come on guys, it was funny and crazy. Now let it go, either way, and everyone get back to WORK!!
I can’t log in to my Word Press now. Have I been hacked?
Oh sorry, it’s ok. I have my capslock on. How do I know if somebody is hacking me?
@Malcom and @Fa bel: No, YOU HAVEN’T been hacked. Not sure if that’s a joke, but you haven’t. Everythings fine. Just keep updating Wordpress as new versions come out and everythings fine.
Oh THANK YOU so much! I haven’t slept for too days, I was so worried. How do I update? Do I need Windows update for that?
Now, I’m not saying I have very good judgement, especially considering some of my practical jokes gone wrong, but I think it was awesome.
Maybe blaming it on Wordpress wasn’t the best idea, but lets face it, if Wordpress had a history of security, people wouldn’t have believed it and worried about it.
And frankly credibility is over-rated. IMO its much better to have people picking your stuff to pieces and jumping on any mistake you make than to be blindly trusted.
Woah where was I… never read about it till now, I must have been pretty busy when it happened. But reading about it now, it seems like a funny prank, it is too bad that some people got really upset about it.
Adwords blog by Brian Carter…
My main point, about the lack of any barriers to entry with adwords, is that it is so quick and easy to get something up and running. If you have an idea, can source the supply, and so many are doing it in partnership– see later– it is only the tec…