[Palomine]

 Within the past week, it's become evident that at least four separate user accts. (UIDs) have been **68** (for lack of a better word) by a banned user so that he can make forum posts, gallery uploads and send private messages using other users' IDs. The first incident of this has been confirmed, and the 3 most recent (yesterday) are being investigated. Apparently, he's no longer satisfied with just making up new/extra UIDs to cause harm in the BEA Forums, so now he's decided to steal accts. belonging to other users entirely and use them as he sees fit.

The four UIDs affected thus far have all been contacted and advised to change their passwords. I'm making this issue known publicly in order to give everyone the 'heads up' ...if you have any reason to believe that your UID has been used by someone other than yourself (folks replying to PMs you didn't send for example) please by all means change your password AND let a mod know about what's going on asap.

We're doing what we can to fix what's happened and prevent if from happening again, but we'll need your help to do so.

Thanks.

 

[jayjay88]

Thanks, Palomine...your work is tireless..!

[Benji Dude]

It sure is, do you ever **82**?

[Palomine]

 As there's no additional info to share at present, I'm going to lock this thread. PLEASE remember to notify a mod if you think your UID has been used by someone else. Thanks.  

[Palomine]

 UPDATE: PLEASE READ

After further investigation, we've been able to confirm that in at least 3 of the 4 most recent user identity-theft incidents, it was the banned user BoobRepli who is the culprit. Specifically, he seems to have harvested the user IDs and passwords for BEA users who also registered with the same UID/PW at his site and he then decided to USE that information to log in here AS THOSE USERS. While here in 'disguise' he made instigative posts and sent inflammatory PMs while posing as those users, in an apparent effort to continue to cause harm to this community.

We've deleted the relevant posts and confirmed which PMs were sent fraudulently... of course, no one here is to blame for anything that happened as a result of the identity theft/misuse.

I would STONGLY CAUTION ALL USERS ***NOT*** TO USE THEIR EXACT BEA UID/PW AT ANY OTHER SITE in order to avoid this in the future... especially in BoobRepli's case: both before and since his banning he's demonstrated his willingness to do anything he wants to regardless of who it hurts individually or what degree of harm it causes to the BEA as a whole. If you even THINK you might have registered at BR's site sometime in the past using your BEA UID/PW, PLEASE CHANGE YOUR BEA PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY so that you don't have your identity **68** and misused too.

Thanks.

*UPDATE 1-5-05 by Trapjaw*
Boobrepli has admitted he is doing this, and everyone best jump over to the site issues forum and read the thread I locked about him, and keep tabs on the banned user thread.

This is a serious security issue, and we will treat it as just that.
 

[Imaginos]

I am astonished and disappointed that BoobRepli would act in such a disreputable and disgusting manner. What is this world coming to?

[Palomine]

Just a bump to suggest that users take the opportunity (and lessons learned from the BoobRepli incident and more recent hacks) to change their passwords as soon as possible. It only takes a minute and will help insure that some schmuck doesn't use your identity for mischief or malice in the forums. An especially good idea given that the recent hacker(s) seemingly obtained admin status and presumably, many users are still working with the same password they had in the UBB forum.

An ounce of prevention...

Update March 2011: as some users may already know, there's currently a bug in the system that keeps users from changing their passwords... however, if you need to do so, please be your own advocate and contact [email protected] with your request... and be patient, persistent and polite. Thanks. -Pal

[Palomine]

Bumping this again as a reminder to all users: PLEASE DON'T use the same password at multiple sites/for multiple accounts. As we learned the hard way, unscrupulous/unethical individuals CAN and WILL misuse the private info you've entered at one site to impersonate you at another to further their own agenda. Common sense dictates compartmentalization so that a security breach in one place will only do limited damage.

Though this is a good policy to follow all the time/everywhere, it's particularly vital when you're participating at a site/forum/blog that's run by a person who's KNOWN to have a HISTORY of such unforgivable behavior such as BoobRepli (or any of his aliases) or a few other folks who've purposely hacked/damaged this forum and the community that depends on it. So, use common sense and be cautious... we can't know ALL the bad operators out there, but we can at least be extra careful around those we do.