Hacking of PMs on one Forumotion site being posted on another

Private pms on NewsFix of at least three posters have been hacked into and posted on InaFlap forum.   I went onto the page on Inaflap that allows you to register a complaint and wrote this:

I understand that private pms of mine have been posted on this site.   The excuse 'somebody told me' will not stand as only myself and one other person knew of them and I know that person did not pass them on.   Please understand that unless you get to the bottom of this and find out who did the hacking and let me know, the name of this site, instead of the person who did the hacking, will be passed to the police.    Hacking is illegal and since the latest court cases, is viewed very unfavourably by the legal system.

I'm sure someone will be able to let me know on Newsfix by pm as you have people posting on both sites.   Sassy


I would like to make sure that this is dealt with, as I am sure you know hacking is taken very seriously.

I have never heard of someone hacking private messages.  Could it be by accident some of the private messages were sent to other members?

SLGray wrote:I have never heard of someone hacking private messages.  Could it be by accident some of the private messages were sent to other members?

Absolutely not.   I would like this to be taken seriously please, there is no way those pms could have be seen except by hacking.   Please contact the Administrators of both forums.

Could someone else have used the accounts of these private messages?  I mean could a friend or relative use the accounts to read the private messages.

Hello sassy1261,

Private messages are just that, private. They are only visible between the users engaged in the conversation; Those are the sender and recipient(s). Administrators cannot view the PMs of the members on their board, only the sender and recipient can view the private messages they have sent and received. Either someone is not being completely honest with you, or one of you had left your accounts unsecured.

Please understand that we are only Volunteer and are not able to do certain things which you want us to. It would be better to wait, or send the information to our Pro-admin, if it is important.
https://help.forumotion.com/u6001contact

Please know that She will be absent until July 1, thanks for your patience until then.

Ange Tuteur wrote:Hello sassy1261,

Private messages are just that, private. They are only visible between the users engaged in the conversation; Those are the sender and recipient(s). Administrators cannot view the PMs of the members on their board, only the sender and recipient can view the private messages they have sent and received. Either someone is not being completely honest with you, or one of you had left your accounts unsecured.

Please understand that we are only Volunteer and are not able to do certain things which you want us to. It would be better to wait, or send the information to our Pro-admin, if it is important.
https://help.forumotion.com/u6001contact

Please know that She will be absent until July 1, thanks for your patience until then.

Thank you for that, I will do just that, because these pm's were secured, the Administrator of Newsfix doesn't know how that were hacked, the people who were hacked had not given any information to anyone else, but these pm's were posted on Inaflap and commented on by posters on Inaflap.

Are all forums involved hosted by Formotion?

SLGray wrote:Are all forums involved hosted by Formotion?

Yes, http://www.newsfixboard.com/ was and is a Forumotion site as is Inaflap.

Just for information, one of the people hacked, who is a member of both forums, has taken screen shots of the pms posted.

Ange Tuteur wrote:Hello sassy1261,

Private messages are just that, private. They are only visible between the users engaged in the conversation; Those are the sender and recipient(s). Administrators cannot view the PMs of the members on their board, only the sender and recipient can view the private messages they have sent and received. Either someone is not being completely honest with you, or one of you had left your accounts unsecured.

Please understand that we are only Volunteer and are not able to do certain things which you want us to. It would be better to wait, or send the information to our Pro-admin, if it is important.
https://help.forumotion.com/u6001contact

Please know that She will be absent until July 1, thanks for your patience until then.

sassy1261 wrote:Just for information, one of the people hacked, who is a member of both forums, has taken screen shots of the pms posted.

as said by Ange Tuteur you will have to ask our Pro-Admin "Buttercup" to look in to this for you. The only way this PM could have been leaked out is if some one hacked the members account what you can do is get the Admin / Founder to go in to the Ip address info and see if that member has more then one Ip address and the one that was posted the info out will not be the same as there one. this will then tell you if it was a member that hacked there account and not some one hacking the PM system.

How this can be done is easy
(founder and admin's only thou.)
Log in to your Admin account go to any post that this member has made and click on the ip address button in your tools.

A page will come up with all the ip's that that member has used to post in the forum.
If im right this will also give a list of posts made by that member on that Ip address
Now look down for the post that had this PM sent out  and see if the Ip address is the same if it is then the member them self sent that info
If its not the same then it was someone else on your site or some one loged in on there account.

Other then that there is No way to see who made this post and not really sure our pro admin can do much

Ape

APE wrote:

Ange Tuteur wrote:Hello sassy1261,

Private messages are just that, private. They are only visible between the users engaged in the conversation; Those are the sender and recipient(s). Administrators cannot view the PMs of the members on their board, only the sender and recipient can view the private messages they have sent and received. Either someone is not being completely honest with you, or one of you had left your accounts unsecured.

Please understand that we are only Volunteer and are not able to do certain things which you want us to. It would be better to wait, or send the information to our Pro-admin, if it is important.
https://help.forumotion.com/u6001contact

Please know that She will be absent until July 1, thanks for your patience until then.

sassy1261 wrote:Just for information, one of the people hacked, who is a member of both forums, has taken screen shots of the pms posted.

as said by Ange Tuteur you will have to ask our Pro-Admin "Buttercup" to look in to this for you. The only way this PM could have been leaked out is if some one hacked the members account what you can do is get the Admin / Founder to go in to the Ip address info and see if that member has more then one Ip address and the one that was posted the info out will not be the same as there one. this will then tell you if it was a member that hacked there account and not some one hacking the PM system.

How this can be done is easy
(founder and admin's only thou.)
Log in to your Admin account go to any post that this member has made and click on the ip address button in your tools.

A page will come up with all the ip's that that member has used to post in the forum.
If im right this will also give a list of posts made by that member on that Ip address
Now look down for the post that had this PM sent out  and see if the Ip address is the same if it is then the member them self sent that info
If its not the same then it was someone else on your site or some one loged in on there account.

Other then that there is No way to see who made this post and not really sure our pro admin can do much

Ape

Thanks, I have passed the information on to your pro admin as requested and will copy your post to our admin.   However, I beg to differ that there is nothing else that can be done.    You must have computer experts on staff (well I hope you do) who would be able to go into it in much more detail.   Failing that, I will have to go to the police.   It is not the content of the pms that is the problem, it is the fact they were most definitely hacked, which means any pm on any forumotion site can be hacked by someone who knows how to do it.   And that, regardless of the content of the pms, is illegal.   Hacking is right up there in the news at the moment, so I expect Forumotion to take this very seriously and contact the Administrators of BOTH sites, especially as of this morning, the pms were still visible to members on the Inaflap site, which is why one of the people who was hacked and is a member of both sites, was able to take screens shots.   I realise that you are all volunteers, but if I do not get a reply from your administrator quickly, and you do not contact the admins of both sites, I will take further action, and so will the other people who were hacked.

To get in to A pm system to read there PM's would be really hard to do without server side access  The only way this could have been done as far as we know is to hack into the members account It's self.

You can be rest assured That our Pro-Admin will take this matter in hand and will look in to it as much as she can.

But we do not have any staff members that work in the French office on weekends but i know that when she comes back on monday French time she will be happy to help if she can or send this info on to some one that can.

You may have to send her the url of Both sites and a link to the post with the copied PM post.

I really do Hope that you get this problem sorted out.

Ape

APE wrote:To get in to A pm system to read there PM's would be really hard to do without server side access  The only way this could have been done as far as we know is to hack into the members account It's self.

You can be rest assured That our Pro-Admin will take this matter in hand and will look in to it as much as she can.

But we do not have any staff members that work in the French office on weekends but i know that when she comes back on monday French time she will be happy to help if she can or send this info on to some one that can.

You may have to send her the url of Both sites and a link to the post with the copied PM post.

I really do Hope that you get this problem sorted out.

Ape

Thank you very much, have given her as much info as possible, if she requires anymore I'll be most happy to provide it.

Buttercup will not be back until Tuesday.

SLGray wrote:Buttercup will not be back until Tuesday.

OK, now we have the screen shots, I will wait until then.

Whilst not wishing to appear vindictive, it has been pointed out to me that as hacking is illegal, and Inaflap has published and is still publishing illegally obtained pms, you could have the site shut while you investigate how it happened.

If you want to report a forum, please read this - https://help.forumotion.com/t12330-complaint-against-a-forum-how-to .

Thank you, will do.

to just add context to this issue, this person and others have been trying to get my site closed down for the last 2 years or so ever since she was banned for disrupting the forum. It seems that they do not agree with the concept of free speech unless it is there speach that is free. A whole group of them have been trying concertedly to have us closed down. there have been numerous derogatory comments made on the newsfix site about my muslim wife who apparently is fair game to those people. Perhaps they just don't like muslims or maybe it is British people being married to muslims. Who can tell but they have been making these comments for several years now since they found out she was a muslim. Will this mean you will be deleting sections from newsfix as well???

I am rather concerned that you have taken what is said by this person without any contact with me or the site. Also you or someone has removed over 60000 posts from our chit chat section which seems rather draconian.

As far as I know handy andy denied they were pm's at the time.
Perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't. I have been away for the last 6 weeks so have not been online so much and using FM on a phone is not that easy.

This is not the place to start a flame war.  This type of issue needs to be done through private messages. Also the support forum is not the place to report a forum or send a litigation report.  Report a Forum -  https://help.forumotion.com/t12330-complaint-against-a-forum-how-to .

Everyone in this topic is warn to not continue a flame war.

Flappypaddles wrote:to just add context to this issue, this person and others  have been trying to get my site closed down for the last 2 years or so ever since she was banned for disrupting the forum. It seems that they do not agree with the concept of free speech unless it is there speach that is free. A whole group of them have been trying concertedly to have us closed down. there have been numerous derogatory comments made on the newsfix site about my muslim wife who apparently is fair game to those people. Perhaps they just don't like muslims or maybe it is British people being married to muslims. Who can tell but they have been making these comments for several years now since they found out she was a muslim. Will this mean you will be deleting sections from newsfix as well???

I am rather concerned that you have taken what is said by this person without any contact with me or the site. Also you or someone has removed over 60000 posts from our chit chat section which seems rather draconian.

As far as I know handy andy denied they were pm's at the time.
Perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't. I have been away for the last 6 weeks so have not been online so much and using FM on a phone is not that easy.

Nobody has tried to get you shut down Dean, we simply resented illegally obtained pm's being posted and left up.   If you were away so long, you should have left someone in charge, and litigation have screenshots of the pms.  Perhaps next time you will think about whether illegal things should be allowed or not.   Andy Coulson is probably thinking the same.   In fact, I hear you are calling it Room 102 and saying it was done on purpose as a set up.

I have warn you all about causing a flame war.  Stay on topic.

I am getting a feeling that this is not about hacking pm's, but someone posting the pm's content.

SLGray wrote:I have warn you all about causing a flame war.  Stay on topic.

I am getting a feeling that this is not about hacking pm's, but someone posting the pm's content.

It was both, the fact they were hacked, which was illegal, and the fact they were posted and left up, which is also illegal.   The News of the World was shut down because of not only hacking information, but publishing it.

As your litigation department seems to be handling it very well, I'll leave it to them, I'm quite content with what has been done, although I do hope they find out who did the hacking, because as I said, just because only pms where published does not mean that was the only information taken.

Since this is being handled by the litigation team, do you want to consider this solved?

SLGray wrote:Since this is being handled by the litigation team, do you want to consider this solved?

Yes, that would be absolutely fine thank you.

Thanks.

Topic Solved & Archived

This thread was archived as being solved, however since then you have gone back on the action you took, I have pm'd Buttercup and am waiting a reply, so I do not now consider this an archived subject.

If you'd like I can reopen the topic and merge this topic with the previous one? So all the information is together?

Yes please, that is very kind of you.