I want to know if other fansubbers have experienced this

One of my subbing groups is Downtown Fansubs, and we sub Gaki no Tsukai. We've recently had some problems with a spammer/hacker who won't leave us alone. He leaves us very insulting messages and makes new accounts to spam the same message 10-20 times in the forum.

We've taken several steps to try to ban him or limit his access, but he has a dynamic ip address (or uses a proxy - I don't really care which), and keeps coming back. My team stopped being so patient and "yelled" back after being insulted so rudely. This guy claims he's a fan, and still wants to watch our subs, but he's threatened waaaaay more than once to report us for piracy, hack into our forum, and give us all viruses. He already gained access to things that he isn't supposed to be able to see, and claims to have stolen our IP addresses.

I'm very quickly running out of patience with this, and I was wondering if any other fansubbers have run into this, or if we're just special like that.

(I wanted people to read this, and it's not about recruitment, so I made a new thread rather than post in our group's thread. Forgive me if I was wrong.)

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:37 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Yup. That's pretty normal. Every so often everyone gets one of the crazies who somehow think harassment will get them subs. Sounds like you got one of the really nasty ones this time, though.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:38 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Sounds like typical 12yr old script kiddie behaviour to me.

They like to show off their (quote) Uber uber leet haxx skillzors(endquote) when all they do is exploit ancient unfixed holes in forums. I'd suggest you to leave him alone but if he - as you say can gain access to the forums anyway then it can get complicated.

You could lock the forums for a while and refer people to D-addict threads or change forum posting / registration to member approve basis only (etc...)

PS: As far as the whole "Oh noes! I stoled your IPs and is going to call the feds!" line, I wouldn't hold my breath. He'd probably lack the skills needed to dial the number Laugh

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:45 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

We did change the registration to admin approve, but he still got in. I can't bank on him bluffing with this. I've never heard of fansubbers (Japanese -> English, not English -> Japanese) getting busted before, and don't think we'd even be worth anyone's effort to bust.

I mean, I know some "fans" can get pretty bad, but I've just never heard of anyone with someone this horrible.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:09 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I see you're using one of those free hosting sites. They're NEVER secure, so more likely he already hacked his way in through some backdoor in the messageboard software. And because it is a free site, there is absolutely nothing the admins of the server will do about your problem. It just isn't economically feasible for them to do so. I'd use this opportunity for your group to dump your public presence and have your team work in a more non-public matter, such as a private messageboard or a private IRC channel. And so what if he has your IPs? Because this kid is pretty much a loser, he doesn't have any friends that can gang up on your members, such as a DoS attack like they did to FSS. As for reporting you to the authorities, he'll just report something they already know, and nothing will come of it.

--- groink

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:50 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Thanks, groink. The admins would do something, if I asked them, which I won't, because we're fansubbers, which probably violates their terms of agreement. I don't see why the authorities would come after us, except that they do occasionally like to make examples of people to pretend they're actually doing something about piracy.

BTW, what's FSS and what happened?

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:11 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

FSS is an Asian movie torrent site. And a DoS attack is basically flooding a server so it becomes unusable.

DoS

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:19 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

He didn't threaten to overload our board as far as I can tell - it can be hard to understand him/her/it. He's mostly been talking big about how he's being nice because he hasn't done such and such that he could do. Roll Eyes

Most of it was reporting us for piracy and sending us viruses, though I personally am not too afraid of that happening. I also live a block away from the computer science building at my college if anything did end up happening.

We'll probably move to a smaller, private board for just the team members. I'm not sure how much more secure a paid site would be than a free one if we don't have anyone with the skills to fortify it anyway. It's not something I know much about. Our group is also a pretty small venture, so I'm not sure who would want to foot the bill. Unsure

In any case, not allowing anyone to join that we're not sure is a team member rather than just a fan should probably help us out. I'd just hate to encourage his behavior by letting him think he's won, but it's probably not worth it.

Thanks for your input, everyone. I'm feeling better. Smile

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:30 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:41 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Ah, thank you. I'll keep that in mind, then. The other admin has gotten back online (we live in very different timezones Laugh

), and we've talked about it. We just need some input from our mod, and we should be ready to go in the next day or so.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:58 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:14 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Not experienced in these matters, but I imagine your own private forum is the way forward as well. Especially if you use the more robust forum systems, then they're far less likely to be bugged and are generally patched quite quickly. Plus I believe they'll generally have extra add-ons (or at least plenty of forum threads) to help with restricting access to the more disruptive visitors. Good luck!

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:52 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Well just give him/her/it the subs. Jeez. They're free, right?

Okay, seriously. This person can only be one of two things:

1. Someone, who's so uncreative that they can't think of a better use for their time than to harass people online. In which case I would hike on over to the computer science department to see if you could find someone sympathetic enough to engage him in his own game.

2. Someone who lacks the mental capacity to follow the thread of logic in the proposed threat: If you don't do what I want, then I'm going to try to make sure you can't give me what I want at all. What's more the whole time you are dealing with me it's slowing down you giving me what I want, so hurry up and give me what I want already.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:05 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

It's more of #2, I must say. The pure illogic of his "arguments" is just astounding. He's the type of person that latches on to what he wants to hear, then ignores the rest of what you said. He keeps changing what he says is his reason for his behavior (none of which are actually sound reasons for harassment, of course).

I know there are other people that are thankful for what we do, and that (plus my team members) is what's keeping me from just walking away from this.

OK, well, we're closing down our forum for now. If things work out, maybe we can open up again someday.