Real Estate Webmasters Accused of Hacking Competitor’s Forum
I just received an email from the Administrator of Pro Real Estate Network informing me that their security had been compromised and that I should log in and change my passwords. According to their post, employees of REW logged in to the Pro Real Estate Network forum by using the password of a Moderator who is also a member at REW. (note to self: Don’t use the same password on multiple forums)
Once inside, they proceeded to delete any threads that talked poorly of REW or it’s owner, Morgan Carey. Now I have no idea how accurate this accusation is, but if it’s true, I think it’s safe to say that the concept of “Reputation Management” has been taken to a whole new level.
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30 Responses to “ Real Estate Webmasters Accused of Hacking Competitor’s Forum ”
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Looks like Morgan could use your services.
I am the individual whose password is stolen. The sad part is I had no control of my account in REW as he has banned me a while ago for talking against their linking program. The admin of the prorealestatenetwork.com has the administration screen shots that points to the moderator action pages of the vbulletin screen shots where my name is being used to delete the pages through IP numbers (REW has a dynamic IP connection) that points back to the ISP REW uses in Nanaimo, Canada. The admin of the forum should have those screen shots available to public probably by tomorrow. I asked him to black out the IPs of other mods in the shots before he posted them to preserve their privacy and prevent any backlash from REW. P.S. my IP starts with a 24. Morgan’s is 70.
[...] Boser’s post about this subject has the perfect summarizing quote”I think it’s safe to say that the [...]
Yep this came as a surprise because he has never been so brazen in the past. Its usually subtle and stealthy. I’m blown away that a guy with the perceived reputation that Morgan has would be so bold to toss out a potential end to his career.
WOW, oh well.
~ Jared Ritchey Design
Wow. I guess some bridges have been burned and the ashes scattered to the wind. Not the first time Morgan has been involved in a fued. Whether or not there is any truth to the matter remains to be seen (no offense to all involved).
The evidence is compelling Charles (no offence taken).
I just found a public apology from REW here:
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/3240/show/
As someone involved in the real estate industry, I’ll tell you reputation is everything. If you are a slimey limey bastard, you can be guaranteed that you’ll have a hell of a time getting city hall to approve your DP, or even getting financing.
Now that it is official that this was done by REW staff, the person responsible should be fired. An apology just isn’t enough is it?
I’ve tried to stay out of the name calling part of all this because unlike many people I know, I don’t have any personal history with Morgan. But at this point, i have to say that the Cult/Kool-Aid argument is making a lot of sense to me.
A real apology for what may indeed be a criminal act would include both the naming and firing of the employee involved. If you don’t do that, there isn’t any way for anyone to verify that you were not personally involved.
In the corporate world, employees get paid to be the public scapegoat. But Morgan’s too cheap to do that. And the members of his Cult are completely fine with his lack of details.
I would like to give a benefit of a doubt to this episode… but reading thought the apology I found this quote as an absolute lie :
“REW does NOT have your passwords, nor do we even have the ability to access them if we wanted to – vBulletin forums use encryption to protect your passwords upon registration or edit of your password, and we do not want to, nor can we see them at any time.”
Any service where you have to register with a custom password stores it in their database… in most cases passwords are encoded, so human can not read it, but it’s encoded by a human written code (which is not custom)… there are different encoding standards, and vBulletin uses MD5 (I know it since I a own a vBulletin forum myself). Just google MD5 decoder and you will find many online decoding tools that decode all the standards widely used by majority of the forums, social networks, blogs etc. etc. etc…. All you need to do is to copy the encoded password from the database (which REW server administrative staff certainly has access to) and paste it into one of those online decoding tools to receive a human readable original password. Since Morgan is very literate in all these things, I refuse to believe in what he wrote (quoted above). Looks like lie piles on top of each other.
People need to remember to use completely separate password to all their social stuff on the Internet from their private emails, web accounts and banking services… otherwise it is very easy for an unethical person to take advantage of anyone.
The Real Estate Webmasters Forum Hacking amounts to sabotage. In Morgan Carey’s Apology to PREN he attempts to belittle and bash PREN and its Members in an attempt to downplay criminal activities. If PREN were as insignificant as SEO Guy would have everyone believe why then take the chance of exposure and possible imprisonment?
According to Morgan Carey a yet unnamed employee “deleted ONLY a few threads which were posted by one particular member that were basically geared towards a smear campaign against REW”. This is a lie. Threads were deleted in PREN that were created by multiple Members.
Carey also stated that his employee was given the password to break-in to PREN by a former REW Client. This is not true according to the former REW client. Is this the first time that passwords of clients have been re-used to delete inflammatory statements about Morgan Carey and REW? No it is not. I remember an incident at DP as well. Only posts were deleted (edited) at DP.
The PREN Forum break-in was NOT ONE isolated event as Morgan Carey would have us all believe. It happened several times over a period of several months and several threads (not posts) were deleted.
Let’s call this what it is “Sabotage” and “Forum Hacking”.
Hey, don’t knock being a limey bastard! Not fair on us in the UK!
Slimey is a different matter.
Surprised to read about this - wouldn’t have thought this was SEO Guy territory, and that reputation would be more important to him. Interesting to see how this develops.
The internet is so full of FUD, and politics that its sickening…. I just rather get my job done and impress my clients then to get petty
Wow, looks like hard times for the competition. I’ll expect he’ll pull a DR Peck move and blame it on the contractors.
The lengths some people will go to, amazing.
Greg - with all the passwords an individual uses, do you have any suggestions or recommendations of how might keep a record of various passwords that would be accessible when one is traveling or away from their usual workplace?
Glenn,
If you are working on Windows you can use Roboform and then use the portable version when on the road. Another suggestion might be to email your userIDs/passwords to yourself to a gmailm account that you can access from anywhere.
Hi Greg, good post because most people don’t realize to use diff pw’s when signing up to multiple forums. I have 3 passwords I use. Try to use them in such a way that if you get one you can’t get the others
This is a cuthroat business but that’s a pretty crappy thing to do - hack someone elses forum account
Wow. First time I heard of this. Unbelievable!
I’ve had unpleasant dealings with REW peviously. I was a regular member on the REW forum until Morgan tampered with my account. I’ve got the PM’s on file so it’s beyond dispute.
Greg - Amazing what happens when a market get ruthless! Just did a post on how we sold our house with organic seo! Check it out. Hopefully it will help a few others that are sucking wind right now??
Morgan is a joke. He has a cult following and he could publically kill the queen and they wouldn’t believe it. Lets look at Morgans accomplishments, he designed a link directory that got all his members +50 penalties, hacked a forum, and continues to run a reciprical linking scheme he calls, “content linking” that will get his clients in trouble with Google once again.
[...] is some extreme reputation management going on in this post by Greg Boser called Real Estate Webmasters Accused of Hacking Competitor’s Forum. Check out the lengths people will go to repair their reputation. Posted by James on December [...]
Hey Greg,
I just found your site via Dax.
Yep, different passwords on different sites is a good idea.
dk
If it were me, the employee would have been terminated without exception. Anything less looks like you condone the activity that took place, not to mention the legal ramifications it puts you in.
Easier said than done…Especially i you got to a lot of forums and/or blogs and other sites that require username/passwords.
G-Man
As easy to do as it is to say…Firefox will remember them all for you, and when you do forget, or use another machine, every site has some form of “forgot password” feature that will email it to you. Easy breezy.
Lively forum. Real Estate hacks. Anything goes sometimes. I’ve heard of brokers running over ‘for sale’ signs in the middle of the night. Ugly.
[...] Morgan is highly criticised in the Real Estate Internet Marketing and SEO world for his aggressive SEO tactics in which he claims are white hat. I first learned of the issue from Google, when I tried a search for their company and instead found 2 posts by Greg Boser; 1 on Real Estate Webmasters Banned and 2 on REW Hacking. [...]