Hacker Pranks

G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:

Just to alert everyone. A programmer friend tells me there is a group of
people who get on mailing lists with the intention of destroying open
discussion. Often they use totally plausible language and sometimes
false names. This has happened on The Things messaging forum as well.
The only way to stop this activity is to go to a subscription program
that is password protected. This unfortunately tends to squelch free
speech and open discourse.

Jason McCabe Calacanis added:

Nothing short of an invite only listsrv would stop anyone from
mailbombing and shutting down any list. The WWWAC.ORG list in NYC has a
problem last year when someone subscribed a Cat LISTSRV to it and there
were 100's of cross posts for days.

With technology comes empowerment, as well as additional responsibility.

Tina LaPorta also wrote:

After reading GH's post, I did go check out The Thing message forum.
Although I did not find what GH mentioned I did notice something a bit
peculiar.

In July, I sent a message to the Blast forum after reading Donald
Kuspit's review of Documenta X asking the "members" what they thought of
the review. Jordon sent me a message suggesting that I should post it to
the other forum–Debate, I re-wrote it and posted it there as well.

I just saw my exact post on The Thing except whoever re-posted it
changed the title of the subject. Also, what is even more bizarre is
that whoever put it up there did so within an hour after I sent my
original post to Blast! They did not include my name, as a matter of
fact they used the name Artnet and the email [email protected].