Hacker Awareness Announcement

Hi Guest, this is me as a French Manager speaking. As a staff of Forumotion and a member of this place, it is a high priority of mine to divulge important information for forum awareness, especially if they are threatening your safety so please put aside all personal matters you have with me for now and read this.

Now, my main priority right now why I am posting this is because recently, an academy has been deleted due to 'corruption'. That. Is. Inexcusable.

For whatever reason, please take note that hacking an academy/or forums is by all means ILLEGAL and breaks Forumotion rules and regulations AS WELL as violating internet policies that will result to the person's possible arrest so please be informed as we will track down (To the best of our capabilities) the hacker(s)' email(s) or other data about them to provide you information since we would like to provide a safe place for all Forumotion users whether it is for Blogging or for Forums.

Note: Not all staff from Forumotion members do this as what I am doing is solely voluntary but I will ask help from them if ever I am unable to do this alone.

Now, for starters, let me quote a post from the French Support (Translated to English for convenience) on the importance of keeping the Founder password protected:

Tivia wrote:Hi,

We guarantee the perfect technical safety of our blogs, we cannot prevent you from making mistakes that can be used by malicious people. Note that in all cases, you can count on our help to retrieve your lost or damaged blog whether it was intentional or by a mistake...

► In the majority of cases, the hack (piracy or taking of control) is just a ruse whereby the thief succeeded in appropriating the password of a blog and takes control of it illegally. This control goes to 99% of the cases to recover the e-mail foundation blog, i.e. the e-mail with which you have created your support. Once this control on the e-mail is in place, there are two cases:

1. The thief will destroy your blog by deleting quite a few things to distort it and empty it, or even delete it totally. It is often the case in revenge, the settling of accounts... The thief disappears then and remains anonymous.

2. The thief completely distorts the blog by inserting its style, theme and signature... This is the case of the crafty that make it for pleasure to make a name in the middle. In this case, they are proud to let their signature be apparent on the blog.

► That this either in the first or in the second case, the process is the same. The thief arrives to get their hands on the email from Foundation of the blog by several methods:

→ The administrators use their e-mail personally, e-mail contact MSN, etc. as Foundation e-mail;
→ E-mail contact of the administrator of the blog is the same as the email used in its creation.

► Once the Foundation email is known by the thief, it can use software known to divert security and open these boxes mail (this is the case of Hotmail, MSN... Easily eluded etc.) and once they have the control acquired mail, it calls simply a new password to the blog via "I forgot my password" and the blog it reference in the mail box under his control, a new password.

As you can see, the hack is just a ruse that is based on the recovery of the Foundation email. Protect the guaranteed Foundation email security of your blog. Do not forget that our blogs, as they are delivered to you are perfectly secure! The fault often comes from the lack of vigilance of members.

Regards,
The SosBlog team

That post is applied for forums as well. Forumotion security is strict and keeps your forum 100% safe so whatever reason your forum gets hacked is entirely your Founder's lack of security (There will be some exceptions to the rule but mostly because of this).

Of course, there are some other cases when a person forgets his or her password, correct? And other cases such as making a mistake and destroying one's forum or by others but fear not, there are other ways to help you restore your forum.


So there are 3 ways in order to fix this problem and I will list and explain them all one by one: (Click on the title since they have been embedded with the URL)

#1 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - Now what does this do?

• Modify the founder account
  
• Use the backup system
  
• Direct connection to the forum administration
  

As stated above, you can backup your forum EVEN when it was deleted and return it back to its normal phase.

#2 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - This one is available for the current founder to use only if and only if they lose their passwords.

Note: You have to have at least 2 private messages to send a message to the ProAdmin.

#3 Saving your OWN backup - This has no link.

By definition of own backup, you will not be able to save your posts, correct? Now, this #'s purpose is for you to be able to save your codes, your important pictures, etc.

If you think the problem can be solved by number 3, then just use this method.

Also, take note that your CSS, Javascript, HTML, and other codes CANNOT be backed up so for any administrators, you have to save the codes you have in order not to let your works go to waste.


Of course, I did not want to resort to this since as much as possible, I would like to have confidentiality but please take note of the individual who hacked [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] <--- Click.

• Drewzer44
  
• Hyperion573
  
• Pacifica Casull
  

I have listed them according to the datus/data left behind by my peer and then confirmed it BEFORE the forum got deleted.

Now that you've read through this thread, I hope you'll be more alert in taking care of your forum!