EDIT:
Crystal Ball contest is over. People who correctly answered #3 or LOL have been badged. I sure did get a lot of you to say LOL, Lol.
We get a lot of blackmail attempts here at Voat, perhaps one every two weeks. Nearly all are security related threats. This one though, well this one is a first. It is Voat's first DDoS threat and the first time we've seen lmgtfy.com used in the email body, so we have decided to share it for historical preservation.
If this "group" is serious (serious groups use lmgtfy.com) expect to see downtime. If they are mid-grade expect to get reacquainted with the having your bits checked by the one and only Voat Goat and/or some features turned off. If they really suck expect to see nothing.
I'm kind of excited. Let's take bets to make this interesting.
Anyone that correctly predicts tomorrow will get badged with a brand new shiny "I'm a Blackmail Wizard" badge.
ENTRY RULES: To make it easier on me, use the following text for your prediction and use only one of the phrases:
-
Downtime (Voat burns)
-
Voat Goat (Voat turns on DDoS protections and/or reduces functionality to deal with a DDoS, but stays alive for the most part)
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LOL (Nothing happens because their moms took away their iPads)
What happens tomorrow Voat?
Edit: And no editing your entries cheaters. I know what you are thinking!
DDoS Email Threat:
FROM: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 12:12 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Ransom request: DDOS ATTACK!
FORWARD THIS MAIL TO WHOEVER IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR COMPANY AND CAN MAKE DECISION!
We are xmr-squad. https://lmgtfy.com/q=xmr_squad
All your servers will be DDoS-ed starting tuesday (may 2) if you don’t pay protection – 3 Bitcoins @ 16qkhjMBqXCtZHF7wwLmBA4ShmKECHqpHB
If you don’t pay by tuesday, attack will start, price to stop will
increase to 20 BTC and will go up 5 BTC for every day of attack.
One bitcoin costs about 1.3k USD at the moment.
You can buy bitcoins easily here: https://www.coinify.com/
This is not a joke.
Our attacks are extremely powerful – sometimes over 600 Gigabits per second.
So, no cheap protection will help.
Prevent it all with just 3 BTC @ 16qkhjMBqXCtZHF7wwLmBA4ShmKECHqpHB
Do not reply, we will not read.
Pay and we will know its you. AND YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN HEAR FROM US!
Bitcoin is anonymous, nobody will ever know you cooperated.
Canary:
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
view the rest of the comments →
TremorAcePV ago
The guy should be standing in front of the light. So you know it's his penis.
Puttitout_Is_Fat ago
-the amount you can post in a sub is limited per hour, besides in subs you mod.
-the amount you can post in a sub is limited per 24 hours, besides in subs you mod.
-you can only post once every 60(30) seconds, site wide.
-you can only downvoat comments up to the amount you've upvoated comments
-in a 24 hour period, you can only voat 1/2 as much as you have ccp total
-you cannot downvoat anyone's comments nor posts that are older than 7 days.
-you can only comment (and edit) every 30(15) seconds
-new accounts and accounts with low ccp are more limited than this, and for an unknown period of time, are forced to use google to use voat - a major privacy breach.
-all accounts must allow google to sign up for voat - a major privacy breach.
-you are not allowed to access voat past page 19 through voat, besides your own comment history to page 99.
-past 3 months, voat pages are now archived and you are not allowed to comment nor voat on them.
-you are not allowed to participate meaningfully in consensus building the direction of voat, like you used to before the admin switch 7 months ago.
-you will be harassed, attacked, and defamed, and downvoat brigaded before posts even show up in v/all/new if you attempt to bring any of this up. any of it. on this whole page.
-accounts with -ccp are serverely restricted,
which means users can effectively partially silence other users. this weaponized censorship has been utilized consistently by the cabal that has taken over voat, and has left a chilling effect on voat, allowing hugboxes to thrive and meaningful disagreement and discussion to be snuffed out. TLDR: downvoating has become a form of censorship, instead of what it was intended to be: curation.
https://github.com/voat/voat/tree/Dev/Voat/Voat.Business/Rules/Voting - go ahead, and poke around.
-if you are caught in a mystical trap of unknown measure, defined by a secret cabal of secret devs,
-and even upvote ONE post in a way they secretly construe as being party to a brigade, you will be banned without warning, without ability to appeal. This is not coded into voat, it's done manually by secret tribunal of shills named failure, disappointed, fuzzywords, and puttitout (to name a few.)
not even kidding. there is no rule written, there is no code in voat specifically for "vote manipulation" bans. hundreds were just banned with less than 10 votes ever given on those accounts each.
https://voat.co/api/bannedusers
worse, the two groups of accounts with votes given were goatku's - defending brigades with reverse brigades, and the cygnus army - a false army that didn't even account for 10% of just the brigade on my account.
meaning, puttitout banned some users for upvoating, and didn't ban any of the actual voat abusers harassing, assaulting, defaming users, and manipulating the front page by upvoat brigading themselves and their shillack nor any of the abusers silencing users with downvoat brigades. megapost link
-if you are caught protecting others' ability to speak on the same account, you will be banned for it, while those abusers silencing users are protected by the administration of voat.
furthermore, they have strict code already in place, just turned off that limits you to just 10 downvoats on another account per rolling 30 minute window. not turned on yet
TLDR: there is MASSIVE censorship on voat, but it's been a slower slippery slope than on reddit, in the hopes that YOU wouldn't notice.