Welcome former members of PF

Long live PF.

EDIT: we've moved to a more permanent home at http://thephilosophyforum.com

I second the motion.

Thank you Sir. Don't know what's happening over there but thought we should have somewhere else just in case. People are saying relax, it'll probably be fine, but I don't know. Vaygmedia cannot be trusted as far as I'm concerned, even if he leaves PF alone for a while.

Paul's shown fairly good judgment in the past, and ethical standards. I doubt he'd sell the place to anyone too evil, regardless of what they paid him, which probably wasn't all that much. As far as I can tell, the server was changed, and people found out about the new owner, and overreaction ensued.

This place could be fun too though.

Howdy.

I pray to the Lord our new owner turns out to be some notorious internet scammer so I can, at last, become famous!

Hey!

Hello.

Howdy Yaha and Sap and Cpt_Fantastic, and welcome. Talk amongst yourselves. Gossip about PF or its members. What about those moderators? Bunch of jumped up fascist geeks if you ask me. Bring back Ian Glen Gibalay Bingabong.

Anyway, it's possible some of us over-reacted, but the moment I saw that shitty Vayg media site and heard about the suspicions, I freaked. And even if the guy isn't the malicious hacker some suggest, I doubt he is reliable or that the future of PF is secure. Though I suppose if money is his only concern and ads on PF bring him plenty of it, there's no reason he'd dump it.

Liking it here though.

Hi all, sorry for late arrival. Was up in Shanghai and couldn't get much internet. Well done for setting this up, jamalrob. Anyhow, present task for me is to work on confirming if the alleged cyber criminal and new site owner are the same guy. They have the same name, come from the same city, look to be the same age (judging by pic) and do the same kind of thing.

Good work baden, keep us posted.

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Notice for PF members:

Those of you who aren't concerned about who the site owner is or who think all this should be kept a secret, feel free to ignore this message and good luck to you. I hope your confidence is justified. For those of you who are interested in a possible connection, here's what we know so far:

1. The alleged cyber-criminal and the new site owner have exactly the same name (only the latter specifies a middle name in some places, the former doesn't).

2. Both come from Brooklyn, New York,

3. Both seem to be the same age (we have the age of the cyber criminal and photos of the site owner).

4. Both are obviously in the same field.

5. The alleged cyber-criminal was investigated for hacking and identity theft by the FBI a few years ago. The owner has a dodgy looking website with obviously false information on it and now access to the details of our 50 or so thousand members..

Some info on the case here:

cybercrimelawyerblog.com/2010/07/defendants_invocation_of_fifth.html

Or just Google: Eric Porat FBI

I've been away for the past day but I'm going, over the next few, with help from others, to try to confirm if these two are the same person. If they are, I suggest we put our heads together and see what to do about it. If not, great.

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I'd appreciate help in directing the forum members to this info. I don't want to post directly on the site now. Cheers.

baden511 wrote:I'd appreciate help in directing the forum members to this info. I don't want to post directly on the site now. Cheers.

Shall I quote the post above in one of the PF threads?

jamalrob wrote:

baden511 wrote:I'd appreciate help in directing the forum members to this info. I don't want to post directly on the site now. Cheers.

Shall I quote the post above in one of the PF threads?

Sure.

I could find only one Eric Porat listed in the Brooklyn White pages and on Intelius person search for the same area.

Hi all. Thanks jamalrob. I've only had a look at the vagymedia website so far but that looks weird.

Hey bert. Welcome. I've got to pay attention to my real job now for a while. In the meantime, if anyone can get something definitive on this one way or another, it would be great.

Hi all. A little due diligence is always a good thing.

I think that we ought to basement invade this guy, and force him under coercive threats of physical violence to sign legally binding contracts -- which will surely be valid! It's a victimless crime... besides the victim.

That plan may seem too extreme, but hows about plan B? We could determine which one of us looks the most like him, and get them to assume his identity, and then equal out the equation... if you catch my murderous drift. They could then of course remain under their assumed identity, benevolently directing PF for the remainder of their days. It's fool proof.

Cpt_Fantastic wrote:That plan may seem too extreme, but hows about plan B? We could determine which one of us looks the most like him, and get them to assume his identity, and then equal out the equation... if you catch my murderous drift. They could then of course remain under their assumed identity, benevolently directing PF for the remainder of their days. It's fool proof.

Benevolently? That rules me out then.

I went to some sample websites in vaygmedia's portfolio and they all had the same strange look.  Articles about nothing much.  A Twitter feed designed to draw traffic that had exploded for a few days then gone quiet.  Are they just vehicles for pointless traffic?

HI all, by the way!

mcdoodle wrote:I went to some sample websites in vaygmedia's portfolio and they all had the same strange look.  Articles about nothing much.  A Twitter feed designed to draw traffic that had exploded for a few days then gone quiet.  Are they just vehicles for pointless traffic?

HI all, by the way!

Yeah I looked at a few as well. Kind of like the scenery they use for towns in westerns, just one wall designed to give the illusion of a building. Maybe they made a bunch of websites to sort of 'make a start' and then try to acquire more serious sites like PF. I don't know. I'm clueless about this kind of thing. Very odd though.

It's just some sort of money laundering set up that's all. You know the kind where they buy a business and seem to lose money on it all the time even when unknown quantities of non-tracable donations are pouring in from South America.

Only joking guys, at least I hope I am.

bert1 wrote:

mcdoodle wrote:I went to some sample websites in vaygmedia's portfolio and they all had the same strange look.  Articles about nothing much.  A Twitter feed designed to draw traffic that had exploded for a few days then gone quiet.  Are they just vehicles for pointless traffic?

HI all, by the way!

Yeah I looked at a few as well. Kind of like the scenery they use for towns in westerns, just one wall designed to give the illusion of a building. Maybe they made a bunch of websites to sort of 'make a start' and then try to acquire more serious sites like PF. I don't know. I'm clueless about this kind of thing. Very odd though.

Hi bert, and welcome. Your impressions are pretty much the same as mine, and I've been in the web business for many years. It has all the signs of hucksterism, spammery, click-bait, and unethical one-man web operations. It uses an off-the-shelf free Wordpress theme into which a few images have been plugged. The images that aren't cheesy clipart downloaded from Google Images are the logos of various trash web sites hosted alongside vaygmedia.com itself, many of which are built on the same Wordpress magazine template. Nothing criminal or terribly evil--just amateurish, squalid and dodgy.

Hello all.