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A "popular Internet legend"?
A lot of people want to be famous - but a lot of famous people want to be anonymous. Do you think the two are mutually exclusive? FUGLY is famously anonymous, and has become anonymously famous - with a little help from the folks at MacWorld.
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usaf4821@home.com writes:
I read your commentary on poor ol' Hank. ... Turns out, your story is posted in a MacWorld protection article. ... Smile guys, you're considered a bunch of ruthless hackers!
The funny thing is, we get MacWorld at the office — and though a couple of us have read the July 2000 issue, we skimmed right past it.
It's probably because the article was about protecting your anonymity, which to anyone who's received dozens of death threats over the years, is about as interesting and novel as advice on how to tie your shoes.
While the credit's nice and all, we're a little cheesed about being painted as e-terrorists by the media (except Joe, who's proud as hell). I mean, it's not like we went out in search of innocent victims ...
... for a change.
Dealing out just desserts to a belligerent pervert is probably once of the few instances in which we've done something that's remotely noble — and we're not sure if we're more cheesed about MacWorld painting us as e-terrorists because of it, or about their implicit defense of "innocent" people like BigHank53.
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The Article
Here an excerpt from pages 68-69 of "Protect Yourself Online", by Elliot Zaret and Scholle Sawyer, which ran in the July, 2000 edition of MacWorld
Don't Let Others Connect the Dots
We've talked about several ways people can obtain information about you on the Web, but one of the biggest dangers is how easily they can put all this information together. Take, for example, the following popular Internet legend.
Though we're flattered to be referred to as a "popular Internet legend," the amount of detail in the article is remarkable. If it's something that they heard about from a friend of a friend, like some anonymous rumor floating around in USENET, how could they have so much specific detail in the summary that follows?
As the story goes, BigHank53 sends a random e-mail to a site, calling its creators stupid. These levelheaded chaps search the Web, probably using a search engine such as AltaVista, for his Hotmail address. He's put this e-mail address on his home page, along with his resume, information about his family, and his activities with a church youth group. The site's creators then do a search of discussion groups and discover BigHank53's e-mail address somewhere else—on postings to adult newsgroups.
Their oblique mention of "adult newsgroups" glosses over some pretty gritty, yet significant, detail: BigHank53 wasn't out there looking for advice to help him and the missus with some marital problems, or even mooning over the garden variety cheesecake. He was posting photos of some of the vilest putrefaction the Internet has to offer: fecaphelia and bestiality.
In any other article, he'd be the archvillain - the one you need to protect your children from. But I guess those kinds of details don't really lead readers to perceive him as a hapless victim.
After searching for the phone number of his church and employer, they have all the information they need to blackmail poor BigHank53. Their price? He must put a blinking banner that says "I am stoopit" on his home page. Is this a true story? Probably not. The scary thing is that it could be.
The scary thing, gentle reader, is that people like BigHank53 exist. The horror is that if do anything to make them ashamed of their own abominable behavior, MacWorld will come rushing to their defense.
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The "popular Internet legend"
If you need an abstract of the "alleged" tale of BigHank53, MacWorld did a pretty good job of it, albeit with a bit of spin to cast "poor BigHank53" a better light. But if you want to know the actual details, they're here.
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