An apology to PREN

I have been watching rather closely a particular forum thread at PREN which accuses me personally of hacking into their system or using a former REW members username and password who is currently a moderator at PREN with edit ability of forum threads of deleting certain posts by this member at that forum of a derogatory nature towards REW.

This forum has a long standing history of being comprised of “REW Haters” so when I saw the accusations instead of replying (Like I am sure they would have liked me to do) I decided to take the high road and document exactly what they were saying in case it got to far past their normal REW bashing and into the realm of slander / libel (I am not a lawyer so am not going to post which one it actually is)

At first it really did seem they were just up to their usual antics that we try to ignore (We hate Morgan, he is a bad guy, he charges to much etc) and they of course promised to provide “proof” that I had hacked their system and or committed the edits they claim I did. Normally when they do this, we just chalk it up to “well they are just up to their usual REW bashing” which really just comes with the territory – when you are at the top, there are always people gunning for you and it is something that tends to show up and go away just as quickly – the end result – the “hater” just makes themselves look bad, and shows that they have nothing better to do, than bash others as anonymous forum posters.

As this thread went on there was some information posted that I could not ignore: screenshots of the edit logs from the forum showing that someone had logged in as this member and deleted a few posts. Because these IP’s appeared to be from my local area, I was forced to investigate. Of course, these kinds of screenshots can be photoshop’d or faked and I was still not convinced that this was just not an attempt to post false statements about REW by their members, as this is their normal MO and certainly par for the course when it comes to this forum.

To be sure I covered my bases, I did an internal investigation interviewing staff members asking – hey do have that mods username and password – fully expecting everyone in the office to say “nope I never even look at that forum” – to my surprise, very early in I was confronted with (Paraphrasing) “Yeah that was me – I was sick and tired of that person always bashing us in forums and blogs, and because you have asked us to leave it alone, we just let them get away with it. So I get a PM the other day alerting me of a new thread posting a bunch of lies slamming us and I had enough, I had the username and pass of the user (Because that user gave it to him previously) and I logged in and deleted it along with a few other posts he made bashing us. I didn’t think it was a big deal – I just couldn’t let him keep doing that.“

This is where the apology comes in – PREN although I will never agree with your practices of allowing anonymous users to post defamatory statements regarding REW, I do think this staff member crossed the line. From the sounds of it, this member deleted ONLY a few threads which were posted by one particular member that were basically geared towards a smear campaign against REW, this is not the way to deal with things. (Update, these few threads seem to have been recovered) I certainly empathize with his feelings and understand his frustration, and that he had good intentions – but this should have been dealt with through the proper channels, we should have contacted our lawyers and had them send a C & D to your host, he should not have deleted the posts. I do apologize

Although I am sure you have a competent programmer in Jarred who should be able to recover the posts easily, if you require any technical assistance in retrieving these few posts our resources are at your disposal.

Anyone who knows me knows that I fight my own battles, and had I decided to deal with this post either legally, or with a public response I would have done so, that is just the way I am (And I have done so in the past where I felt necessary). I love that I have such loyal staff and members that are always coming to my defense, but in this case there is really nothing I can do but apologize (Anyone who knows me also knows how stubborn I am and how hard this is for me).

No excuses – I will deal with this internally in terms of reprimand for this staff member – however ultimately, he pressed the delete button on those threads from an REW computer, thus the responsibility as the CEO of REW is mine to bear.

For what it’s worth (And I am sure you will tear me apart for this – and feel free) I am sorry, I love to play the game, but not like this.

Clarification of misinformation posted on the forum in question:

Hacking – Nor myself nor any member of my staff successfully (Or even attempted) to hack the PREN forum. The staff member was able to delete the posts because the forum member had provided the password to him (In fact, those passwords are available to all of REW staff because they were posted in our private REW clients forum BY the member who lodged the complaint when he was an REW customer. )

Harvesting of passwords at REW Forums – We would never attempt this nor do we even have the ability. REW does NOT have your passwords, nor do we even have the ability to access them if we wanted to – vBulletin forums use encryption to protect your passwords upon registration or edit of your password, and we do not want to, nor can we see them at any time.