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Online Revenge
Many people have submitted this story of a broken laptop purchased on e-bay. The buyer gives a little lesson on why you should always clean your hard drive before you sell a computer.
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Everyone is having a nice laugh right now, but it won't seem so funny if this guy commits suicide. Then we'll be reading about how the 'buyer' is on trial.
I always use sector encryption on my hard drives and wipe using PGP wipe when selling. Why not use the new Seagate drives with built in crypto now? Vista has sector crypto now? Why not use NTFS encrypted folders for your stuff but that doesnt cover caches and various temp files used by applications. This is something applications need to do, allow us to manage any possible cache and storage instaed of the currently splattered and hidden about files today. How about a standard on how Applications manage this kind of like a personal privacy standard?
karma, that's all there is to say
I honestly love when ppl's stupidity overrules their lack of honesty and it bites them.
Fantastic. I thought the register considered itself a somewhat legitimate news entity, but now they've posted a link to a defamatory website of unverified accuracy in an article. Many, many points down the toilet in my book.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of posting this guy's personal information, I did learn from one of his photos about a fetish I'd never come across: CFNM (Clothed Female, Naked Male).
Thanks Amir!
John.
The buyer gives a little lesson on why you should always clean your hard drive before you sell a computer.
And if you read the full story, you'll see that the seller gives a little lesson on how the law views vigilantism on the internets. Hint: Police are involved.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
here begins the discussion on the best way to 0 fill your harddrive..... 0000 no 101010 no 11111 no 000111000111
However, the link about the car seller at the bottom was much more entertaining.
I agree about the cleaning of the harddrive, but this really seems like useless drama to me. Is this really news, or internet angst taken a bit too far?
If you are selling/sending for repair, either your laptop or storage media, do not forget to take the backup and wipe out the entire content. Simply formatting/deleting the content may not help. The data will be still there, only the index (Allocation table) will be changed.
You can use something like Darik's Boot and Nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ for deleting the content permanently.
This isn't news. Anyone who reads Slashdot would hopefully know to delete the contents of their HDD before shipping it out to a stranger...then again, anyone who reads slashdot isn't likely to be selling a "broken" laptop - not when there's spare parts around and Linux to be installed.
Extortion is basically what it boils down to; "Amir, if you want to refund my money you know where to contact me, and this page will disappear forever."
The rest of the crap in the story is unverifiable from the information provided. It is just here-say.
This kind of "revenge" is a bit sick. Is it really worth the money to ruin this guy's life?
After seeing this, I no longer feel so anal about running old floppies through the shredder, old CD-ROMs in the microwave, and dissassembling old hard drives and smashing the platters.
This wouldn't have happened as easily if the device in question had run Linux!
Then again, the seller then would maybe have some common sense...
The Eraser program is an excellent and free way to securely wipe your hardrives prior to sale of your computer in addition to providing everyday secure wiping services including secure file deletion, free space, and swap file wiping w/multiple overwrite pattern options. I have no financial interest in this company whatsoever, but I have found this program to be a useful addition to my toolbox so you may want to check it out.
Heh, I think I know where that place is... looks like it's on that road heading into the toppling phone booths in Kingston... I've eaten at that place a couple of times but the shops in the background don't look right, but I haven't been there for a couple of years so who knows? It's possibly a chain, but the interior furnishings are exactly the same. Mod me down, this comment is useless.
Lotts of bachelorette parties, etc. Pretty hot.
When it comes to repaying unscrupulous ebayers, nothing beats...the P-P-P-Powerbook!
http://www.p-p-p-powerbook.com/
Ludwig Wittgenstein
This kind of revenge is way out of proportion. If the story is at all true I hope the police do become involved. You rip me off so I destroy your life? Childish buyer. If he did get ripped off he totally deserved it and more.
I mean think about it. Think about how much the laptop is worth and how much trouble this would have caused.
Assuming the story is true, the seller deserved a slap on the wrist. The buyer deserves jail time.
Here's a link to the finished auction.
The Israeli Army uses the only fool proof method I know for erasing data off magentic hardrives and is made up of 2 steps:
A. run the Harddrive through a Powerfull Degauser (a rapidly changing electro-Magnet)
B. Shred the Hard drive into pieces less then one square milimeter in size.
However this system may be hard to come by for most of us, and tends to harm the hard drive.
Writing a set of zeros on a sensative file is much better than deleting it but not necessarly
enough, because:
a. your OS may decide to move your file to another location on the disk.
b. Even after writing once or twice over the data, It still may be recoverable, especially
if you use constant zeros(or ones).
Writing random data several times is a better method, but is most be done over the entire
hard drive and in sevral passes over the entire hard drive,
since modern harddrives have a cache mecahnism(as well as one in the OS), so If
some one writes over the first sector of a hard drive 20 times, chances are the hard drive
actually got something physiclly written to it only once.
several tools for securly deleting data available on the net, I would not trust
my good reputation on any tool which securly deletes specific files but only on
those which wipe your disk clean,
these too may not protect you 100% becasue modern hard drive have a feature to correct(re-Map) bad-sectors automaticly, With this feature if the hard drive fails
to access a certain sector sevral times it will stop using it and send and use
a diffrent secotr instead(reserved in advance for this purpose and not normally accessable).
The damaged secotr may still contain private data after hard drive is wiped clean.
In short if you want to be truely safe use the Degause and shred Method.
Don't be paranoid
Me.
What a dumb ass.
One: This Amir is a slimy crook and is getting everything he deserves. Two: The buyer is an unreasonable dick and should be brought up on some sort of charges. Too bad laws don't take this into account. At least not in the US, not sure about the UK. Seems like in the US it wouldn't matter if Amir was a slimeball or not he could still sue the guy who bought the laptop and make his life miseralble if not deprive him of lots of money.. There should be a slimy crook/unreasonable dick law... Im going to write my congressman right now.
All the comments above mentions stuf like using pgp/drivecrypt or other utils to write random data to a disk before selling a piece of hardware. Whatever happened to dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda? Doesn't that do pretty much the same thing, or is "encrypted random" data better than "plain old random data" for some reason?
BBH
Except for the fact that some of the pictures are of people other than the owner. While the owner might be in for some karma, how about other people who are having their pictures posted on the 'revenge' site?
the blog contains the phrase "full access to MSN and hotmail (it just signed in automatically, whoops!)."
to me this implies that the buyer was able to boot from the hard drive. I guess he could have just copied the cookies & favorites over but that one phrase seems kind of fishy to me.
Not only did he buy a broken laptop, he's made himself vulnerable to a libel suit. Being in Britain, even if everything he says is true, that's not a defense. He held the seller up to public ridicule, and that's all that matters there. He may well end up paying thousands of pounds in damages, and if so, it serves him right. Not only is what he did wrong and irresponsible, he didn't even try to get his money back, he just published the photos to humiliate the man he bought it from. With any luck, his stupidity will be its own punishment.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/ This is where the actual good stuff comes in. It's written (purposefully) from the person of the seller, if anyone is confused.
I got ripped off last year for $200 on ebay. I sent the money order registered, they claimed never have to received it. Yet the money order came back with their signature on it, cashed at an exclusive credit union. The police were supposedly looking into it. There was a backlog, but there were similar complaints found from at least 2 other individuals (they posted negative feedback right before Ebay suspended their account, so I contacted them and these people did the same thing to them).
But all totalled it was only like $350 (at least from our 3 cases). I recommended they try and get a transaction list from around that time to try and contact buyers to see if anyone else got ripped off. I haven't heard back from the cop since November, maybe I'll e-mail him again and see if he got around to it.
Unfortunately not one of us were from the same state. Me from Canada, they were from the southern states (this person was in Ohio).
I don't have any embarrassing photos of them, but since I have their address I suppose I could hop a bus and go take some, maybe pick up my money while I'm there.
I did get a refund from Ebay, but it didn't include shipping, minues their "fee" for processing.
So I was still out quite a chunk on the other side.
Interesting point of note- The seller's ebay site lists 4 feedback items, three of these being negative. Even assuming that the three negative feedbacks were posted after the sale in question, who buys a laptop from someone with a feedback count of 1? The buyer should have definitely done some basic research on the seller when buying something expensive, like a laptop. Especially with all the ebay fraud around lately (P-p-p-powerbook anyone?) Come on, it is one click to check feedback.
here is a direct link to the site... http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/
This guy sold the computer and recieved payment? Wouldn't that mean the hard drive & its contents are now owned by the guy who bought it, and its up to him what he wants to do to it?
Its like someone selling a house then going back 6 months later trying to reclaim property they left behind.
That is funny on a certain level, but I think nothing gives you an excuse to do that to a person at least not without threatening them first *evil grin*
Link to Amir's profile Amir has done this before.. and how typical that the only positive feedback comes from someone called Nick Tofang.....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Having sold a lot of old laptops, I can tell you that the process of wiping an old disk (especially if it is less than 10GB) is sometimes just not worth it. I just buy a whole bunch of new or refurbished hard drives, say of 20GB at a very good price, and just ship the laptops with these.
Make that "or". Outing a gay who is not yet comfortable with being out can be considered libel, even if true: Outing may be found to be libel by a court of law. And there were a couple of gay photos in the lot, even though most were straight.
Oh man, this is THE best story I have *EVER* read on slashdot :)
Such a perfect way to get revenge! I love how the article talks about how police are investigating, and the site may get taken down, and the the last sentence gives a link to the site!
Wow, the page counter is going crazy, I love it!
This really looks like the guy, and what would be more fun if it is than to see how many people post comments if it is?
Anywho, this looks like the guy pictured http://www.myspace.com/fightit/ but I will say I can't say for sure.
Those are some fine looking legs. This kid had a great idea!
For your viewing pleasure:
Personally, I think it's quite a leap to claim extortion. I'll let you guys make your own judgements, but if you ask me, it seems like nothing more than a legitimate ebayer pissed after getting tooled over by a run-of-the-mill ebay scammer. And hey, who wouldn't be? Call me crazy, but I think the blog is great. Not only does spikytom get his own creative revenge, we all get a laugh out of it.I only mod funny =D
http://amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/
Note the allegedly scammed buyer has enabled Google ads on the web page he supposedly set up solely to extract revenge. Decide for yourself whether this impugns his credibility as a purported victim.
While I'm not defending the seller, the buyer **OBVIOUSLY** did not do his homework or use good judgement. Buying a laptop from someone you don't know for several hundred pounds/dollars and all they have for feedback (at the time of the auction) was one positive comment (the negatives did not get posted until *after* the auction in question) is not using good judgement.
:-)
I always check a seller's feedback, and always look at his previous auctions. I've bought items on eBay ranging from $2 computer components to $10,000 cars. What I expect to see in the way of lots of gleaming feedback goes up exponentially as the price tag goes up
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Also, amir6626's only positive feedback is from 'nicktofang'.
Amir's last name is Tofangsazan.
That's the sort of behavior that I'd expect from a twelve-year-old, not an adult.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I claimed it off what I read and saw, I didn't have all those fancy links, nor did I try to discover them so thank you for that. The article it self leaves much to be uncovered.
I still would like to know more about what was "broke" with the laptop.
I say, about time! I tried buying something on eBay twice, both sellers had 99% approval and hundreds of sells, both times, the product was broken although the description said it was 'like new'. And of course, after telling the owner, he just gave me negetive points. After emailing eBay, they said there was nothing they could do about it. What a load of crap.
http://chickencamels.poemofquotes.com/
And that nicktofang guy has a pretty poor history too. One positive feedback from amir6626 (suspicious enough - looks like he's giving himself positive feedback to look good and scam people...), then only one supposedly legitimate sale that went right, then bad feedback (item not as described, no response to email). Sounds like it's not quite the first time he does this (plus the ipod story). 3rd time perhaps?
And it's not like authorities do anything about these small cases. I've been thru this a couple of times before too. Your credit card won't chargeback paypal, and paypal usually won't do anything either. In most cases, it's your word against theirs, and you can't really prove anything. Sucks.
This is the most hilarious thing I've seen since the Rodona Garst debacle!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Frankly I don't know how the law will take this. The police are not really about solving every petty dispute they are about keeping the peace and if they can't get it they tend to come down like a ton of bricks on both parties in a fight.
Oh, well it is a good giggle for the rest of us.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
it seems to me that Amir probably has more friends and social skills than the disgruntled buyer.
I can forsee this thing getting more press, and then finally CNN or FoxNews (oxymoron) interviews Amir, and then Amir reveals the identity of the buyer, then the camera crew tracks down the greasy haired, pasty skinned nerd whose social skills in dispute resolution is to post a revenge site. Camera crews show up, world in shock at the horror of too much computer use and living in one's parent's basement.
Never ever hire a basement dweller.
Just sayin.
The buyer seems to be in the right in this case and it seems the seller is getting what he deserves. But I would be hesitant to applaud the buyer too much and encourage copycats... For example, quite a few stolen laptops show up on eBay. I'd hate to see someone doubly victimized, both by getting their laptop stolen and by a pissed off buyer plastering their personal information and photos all over the internet.
I haven't read through all of the comments as of right now but the website that is mentioned in TFA appears to be http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...which is made for this purpose.
You could use MHDD to do this. Just password protect your drive using an ATA-command, then hack into it 3 times (MHDD does this automatically) to activate the security erase of the harddrive.
Wait a little while (2-6 hours, depending on the harddrive), and you're done.
I can also recommend this article, which details info on the very subject of erase protocols for harddrive, including DOD-protocols.
For those who dont read the articles, link to the page containing pics and excerpts from the hdd is here:
http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
While Amir might be deserving of some kind of punishment, the buyer who posted the pictures is a complete asshole.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Every time you misuse the word "angst," God kills an emo-kid. Please, think of the emo-kids.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
HAH, you can communicate better than amir!
I doubt I'd go for Vlad's solution to the homeless problem though. He invited them all to a feast, locked them in and burned the building down. Me, I got nothing against homeless people. If you want to be homeless that's your business. So, "yes" impaling, "no" burning homeless people to death. Any successful regime must have compasison after all. Maybe "yes" burning spammers alive too. On the days we're not impaling them. I'm all about choices.
My regime would also replace all organized relgion with a state sponsored one involving smurfs. Non-smurfy activities would be punishable by impaling. Non-smurfy activities like scamming or spamming.
I figure I'm a shoo-in on the next Republican ticket...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Also, the one piece of positive feedback showing on Amir6626's eBay profile is from nicktofang, who seems to share a name quite similar to Amir Tofangsazan. nicktofang also has mediocre feedback, is no longer a member, and started with one piece of good feedback from amir6626.
Certainly looks fishy to me.
> Yes, it would suck if the buyer had to go on trial.
He will. The personal data protection laws in the European union (of which Britain is a member state) are extremely serious. The guy used the data without authorization and by making it public, he has become a criminal. He is very lucky if he aviods spending actual time in prison. I am sure the civil penalties will make him bankrupt anyhow.
Just yesterday, the EU supreme court crushed the EU-USA airline passanger data exchange agreement because it does not adequately protect EU citizens' privacy rights. If Sheik Osama is not enough excuse for rights treampling, that 375UKP certainly cannot be enough as well.
Also, the british mentality values privacy of the individual over anything else. The guy who posted someone else's details in public made himself anathema from the community of gentlemen and may have difficulty finding a job or gaining university admission by showing such moral definiencies in handling details of others' personal lifes. Also, the guy who posted the photos on the web is obviously homophobic based on his comments, which is a big no-no in liberal Europe and gayness is well established in britain since Oscar Wilde.
Not to mention the gross violation against the other people seen in those images. That is not "collateral damage", that is pure wickedness. I hope some of those people will also sue the avenger guy and make him feel the pain of having to pay half of his wage for penalties for a hundred months to come.
Finaly the guy who posted the photos online violated the most basic rule of civilization as we know it: presumption of innocence. Where is the proof the laptop was indeed sent in already faulty condition? What proof is there the damage did not happen while being rudely transported by the postal service, etc.?
From this article: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_ article_id=409510&in_page_id=2
"Thomas Sawyer, 23, was incensed at wasting £375 on the computer and, after repairing it, plotted his revenge.
He designed a site showing embarrassing images of the vendor, Amir Tofangsazan, pornographic images and '90 pictures of women's legs' which he said he had found on the machine.
In a mocking first person account, Mr Sawyer told the story of the sale in detail. His victim, an 18-year-old A-level student from Barnet, North London, said his life had been made 'a living hell' and threatened to sue for libel.
Mr Sawyer, a student from Exeter, said he would take the site down in return for a refund and an apology. "
Right, under USAPATRIOT, all accountability has been removed from the Government.
Silly of me...
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
My thoughts exactly :)
If you're gonna be a muppet & rip somebody off, don't sell them all your personal data... lol
Since we're on the subject of it, how does it work, anyway? zdrrdx
for everyone that says it is "wrong" ..illegal ..etc for the buyer to have posted the pics?
the Seller sold the buyer the equipment... the harddrive thusly becoming the property of the "buyer"....Didn't the contents of the harddrive also became the property of the buyer????
Assuming that is correct... would it really be "wrong" for the buyer to utilize the contents of the drive to his choosing????
i certainly hope no action is taken agaist the "buyer" (assuming of course the lappy was as described broken and otherwise not as advertised).
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
My daughter "bought" an ipod on Ebay, and it never arrived. A couple of weeks later she was contacted by another "buyer" who had noticed that the "seller" had a business email address. So, he looked up the business on the internet and contacted the owner. Lo and behold, the business was a security firm, and the"seller" had been using company time, and the company system to market the ipods that she didnt have. So, Mim contacted the owner, and he told her that she would have her money in her bank account by the end of the week, which it was. I wonder if the seller is still a trusted employee at the security firm. ....... I certainly hope not. We subsequently heard that she had ripped off at least another 4 people with the same scam.
what the fuck are you talking about?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Are you posting that from the Victorian era?
We now have Big Brother as one of our most popular TV shows (attention seeking nobodies stuck in a house and monitored live 24/7), the most CCTV in Europe etc...
According to The Register, the Metropolitan Police have received a complaint about "improper use of communications networks" and are investigating. Whether the complaint was made by the eBay seller, we don't know. There's also an amusing-in-a-schadenfreude-way article in the (right wing scandal rag) Daily Mail today, where someone else claims to have been shafted by the seller on eBay.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
...you're not the sort of muppet who, when his laptop "breaks", thinks "I know, I'll sell it to someone on Ebay and pretend it was still working".
Not everyone is clued up enough to take the HDD out and wipe it in another PC, either and I think we've had demonstrated that the person in question isn't the brightest tool in the box...
I like the blog, but I am not sure why he didn't follow the usual channels, getting money from paypal - which is not actually that hard.
And I or any sensible person would not buy anything from someone with 1 positive feedback, especially not a £350 laptop. And this bidder, unlike my gf who I would expect to do something like this, is obviously reasonable technically literate.
Shortest *and* most accurate. 2 for 2!
For the sake of argument, suppose the laptop was not broken and the seller was honest. Further suppose that the seller had made some weak attempt to delete the information, which he mistakenly thought was good enough to prevent it from being recovered. In that case, do you think it would be ethical for the buyer to recover the data, and to make any embarrassing information public?
From my point of view, the moral status of the buyer's actions really hinge on whether or not the seller intentionally shipped a broken laptop. It looks like he did, and that's why the buyer's actions are justified, not because he has some kind of overriding moral right to do whatever he pleases with the information that was on the drive. Let's just all hope we're right about this - otherwise we're all a bunch of assholes for enjoying this so much :)
One thing is sure though - people hate to get screwed, and they love to hear about crooked fuckers getting their due.
When he sold the laptop, did the rights to content of the HDD and rights to use them also transfered? Who owns the copyright on pictures the buyer has posted? Can Amir get them pulled off by saying that he has not given explict permission for them to be used?
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
If its true then its NEVER LIBEL. Calling Jeffery Archer a liar and a criminal may damage his reputation but that is okay because its true and has been proven in a court of law.
So if this bloke did sell a broken laptop and did have all this content on there, then the only question would be invasion of privacy, which is a civil not a criminal matter.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
n/m
Actually, I think the buyer was very modest and balanced about it, and chose to use humour and wit as lethal weapons and not blind rage. I think I would have been less prudent and wise. In a fit of uncontrollable anger, I would have used brute force and published EVERYTHING on that hard drive: credit card numbers, personal details, pr0n... the whole lot. But that may have been a criminal offence. As Mr. Spock would have put it, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Then again, who in their right mind buys a well-worn laptop on Ebay, and without inspecting it first?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
I think there is some kind of distortion in the very fabric of the interwebs that makes Fark posts dupes all the time like slashdot and slashdot posts fark headline sized summaries these days.
A disgruntled buyer takes his issues to the Internet publishing personal information on the seller. Shame on the buyer for resolving his problems this way. Shame on Slashdot for thinking that this is "stuff that matters". Business disputes should of course be resolved between the two parties or in the courts.
You can look up the name of the fast food place hes in (Hollywood Fried Chicken on the menu in the background) and cross reference it with the phone number of the hire shop across the street to figure out that hes in the Hollywood Fried Chicken in Lillie Road (SW6) near West Brompton station. The floor of the tube was also a clue but lets pretend I didn't know that... Ahh google.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
in many jurisdicitions (mine included) there is no "computer break-in" crimes/misdemeanors. using another person's password can be a part of other crimes (like fraud, mail invasion, or embezzlement) but it's not a crime on itself.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
What law has he broken?
...don't interupt me...I can read them myself...All I see here are some ebay comments saying the seller can't be trusted. So what?....(shot of buyer standing in puzzled silence)...Cat got your tounge?...Answer me!
Don't know about a full blown criminal trial but wasn't there some sort of "restrain the village idiots" law introduced into the UK a few years back?
Cut to Judge Judy ruffling through buyers papers:
Did you contact the seller for his money back or did you skip straight to revenge?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's hard to know where the truth is... they usually say the truth lies between the two versions of the story.
I really have mixed feelings about this. I agree that when you are cheated on, the punishment has to be harsher than the cheating itself to discourage future cheatings. We can't know if the laptop wasn't really working and if the memory and CD/DVD driver specifications where incorrect, but most of us agree this laptopguy is ruining the boy's life.
Anyway, just to tell you an anedoct of my own life, I once honked to a guy who cut my way on the street. I just honked. It wasn't a long honk, I didn't yell or anything. I just thought "he didn't see me, I will honk and make my presence known". But the guy started to slow down in front of me and then waved a gun. I turned in the corner between us and sped away from there. The lesson I learnt that day:
Don't mess with who you don't know, you have no idea what the reaction will be!
And about leaving sensible information in a computer you are selling, sorry, but it's all your fault. Like an old chinese saying goes (I swear it's a real old chinese saying, I'm not making it up), "he who sleeps with his ass dirty wakes up with the fingers stinking".
So say we all
I think the fashion police should be questioning the crazy bastard who would spend £375 on any laptop with that horrible Teal color..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
You can find a desktop PC capable of running Windows XP and with a DVD rom and usb ports for about $50 if you really look but laptops capable of running modern applications (not games of course, or linux) seem to level off around $300-400 (And most of those have garbage batteries).
So people inevitably look on E-Bay...
Ebay could intervene at this point, instead we get to see that E-bay, paypal and indeed this guy's credit card company's policy of buyer protection doesn't work at all.
You can't buy this kind of publicity.
And this guy has opened himself to criminal charges for taking pictures of people without their consent.
Even the Canadian (I don't know about the U.S.) standard postal service has tracking numbers, if you're shipping something provide the tracking # it takes a load off the buyers mind.
Hi Amir.
more wisdom for you:
it's GBP, not UKP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBP
Looks like a good story for a blatant plug :)
Anonymous email you can reply to http://www.anonomail.net./
sounds like the seller was ripping people off. The buyer put this guys personal life out for the world to see, and is now making google-ching off it. That's fucked up. Yeah the seller should have known better, but most people just don't. The buyer is also fucking up the lives of this guys family who didn't have anything to do with the sale, just to get his idea across. Sounds like a form of terrorism to me.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The Romanian state was founded in the XIX Century and Vlad the Impaler lived centuries before that. He was the ruler of some other small country which belonged to the Ottoman Empire and hundreds of years later became part of Romania.
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFe edback&userid=amir6626&items=-1&item=6825578528&de =off
/agree
We all understand the $ symbol, what's wrong with a £?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
A threat of bad feedback got my purcases shipped.
I don't have that key on my keyboard.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
And this guy has opened himself to criminal charges for taking pictures of people without their consent.
This is probably not true. In the US at least it is legal to take pictures of anything that can easily be seen from a public place (the tube definitely counts). I can't imagine that it is much different in the UK. There is no need to ask people for their permission.
It should also be noted that the seller did not send out the laptop for 2 months ... that'd piss me off too. Although, probably not to this extent.
In other words: dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda
According to the screencap of the Ebay auction the seller had a feedback of 0 - with 50% positive. How dumb do you have to be to cough up 375 pounds to what effectively is some stranger on the street offering to sell you a laptop? It sucks the buyer got screwed, but he really kind of opened himself up to the problem.
I wonder what the ebay seller's feedback rating was/is?
Buyer should have emailed the seller prior to the purchase with any questions about the laptop, especially "does it really work or has it had any problems in the past?" This way you have a record so that you can go after him through ebay. From the here-say article, the buyer never asked for a refund, just went out and shamed the seller, so if that's true there is obviously an alteror motive.
Ok, so the seller just gave the buyer the property of a laptop in exchange for money. So now the laptop is owned by the buyer. Does not the buyer now own all uncopyrighted material on the laptop's harddrive and is free to use it how he/shee sees fit within the bounds of the law?
I question who the "threats" are coming from.
The buyer didn't post Amir's phone number. While it's certainly easy enough to find out someone's home phone number, I have a feeling that it's not strangers making these threats. My guess is that the threats are coming from the folks who are actually in the photos that Amir so idiotically left on his hard drive.
I don't base that on any reality, of course. I just know that if I'd posed for pron and near-pron photos, and those photos wound up featured on a web site because my friend was stooooopid, I'd threaten him, too.
There is the possibility (remote, yes, I know) that the seller did ship a working laptop which just broke on transit... OR the buyer has a grudge against the seller and the laptop works fine, he's just getting revenge for something else (but it's highly unlikely). See, this is why we have laws in place to deal with things instead of vigilante justice, because when people take matters into their own hands, they can never truly know the whole story or if they are acting properly instead of just out of emotion.
Meh.
Maybe I need to do some soul searching but I think what the buyer did was outstanding. Yet, at least at my moderation setting, comments are running 5 to 1 against the buyer.
Maybe it's because my home has been broken into 5 times by neighborhood kids. Or, that a box of checks was stolen and someone wrote $2000+ against my checking account. Or, that I've had my CC number stolen and everything from kitchen appliances and plane tickets were charged to my account. Maybe it's just because I'm sick and tired of the scum inhabiting this planet. But I think what the buyer did is great and we need more of it.
The light has been shown on this Amir guy for what he is. Public humiliation is a sensible, non-violent form of deterrent and socially acceptable. The police publish the names of "Johns" arrested for solicitation for all to see. Even the Bible supports public humiliation as a deterrent. The Bible says on judgment day all will be known and nothing hidden and exposed for all to see. Our (USA) and (English) early judicial systems used public square stocks and humiliation as a formal sentence.
The buyer has done his due diligence. All the documentation is there. The seller took 2 months to ship and only after repeated requests. The seller also agreed to refund the money once called on the fact the laptop was junk but then reneged. The seller was given multiple opportunities to correct the problem. He just wasn't interested because he knew he was scamming the guy.
I saw one post "If the guy kills himself, what a loss". A loss of what? The world would loose a scamming criminal who doesn't think twice about stealing other people's money? That's a loss I can bear.
Maybe, just maybe, this Amir guy will learn a valuable lesson from his fellow brothers that so far his religion has failed to teach him. Maybe Amir will pull his life together, get some morals and become a valuable member of our society. Maybe, just maybe he's been given a second chance to come clean and make it right.
JMHO
-[d]-
Wikipedia article
"The guy used the data without authorization "
Incorrect. The seller *sold* the data to him. Did you forget that part?
The seller sold the information to the guy, the guy did him a favor and didn't use any of the financial data, he just pointed out that the guy is likely gay and has a serious mental issue that he only finds the feet of women attractive.
Haha! Stay tuned for more from When Karma Whores Turn Pro!
I mean, as morals go, that's a basic one.
Blar.
That, my friend, is coming from a slashdotter. Ever heard of ASCII?
Its been replaced by the "€"
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Hahaha... awesome troll. Watch the cries of 'racism' fly from all the humourless PCs...
Amusing, but not so much as Orgazmo's popularizing of DVDA (and the band is funny, too)
Seller sold laptop to buyer. Buyer now OWNZ the laptop...AND EVERYTHING ON THE DRIVE! Think about it. If you say that the seller can ask for the data back because it belongs to him, then that is like saying he can ask for the [ENTER] key back because he misses it. No no no. The seller is an ass and deserves what he got. Personally, I would have given the guy a chance before I posted the data online, but I'm a nice guy.
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
Correct me if im wrong, but since that data was on the laptop that he BOUGHT, that means he now owns the data. And there is no law against posting *your* data on *your* website on the internet.
The seller really shouldnt have any legal recourse. Of course posting the passport, bank information, etc would be kinda shady, but the buyer didnt do this he just posted the (embarassing) pictures.
How about reporting it to ebay. Forward those emails along, they do somewhat pay attention.
Yes, bad sellers could create new accounts, but that does involve a credit card (for selling), which amateurs might run out after creating a few crap accounts.
Amir did, of course, completely misrepresent his IDENTITY to the buyer, thus it was probably a pretty safe assumption that those data the buyer recovered from the laptops HD were not Amir's anyway.
If you are attempting to defraud, then uncovering your true identity is probably fair game in the course of defending oneself against you.
It's the usual "Blame the Victim/The Criminal must be innocent!" mentality that goes on here. It's pretty sad actually. It's also nice to see someone get some 'real' justice without having to involve the government/authorities.
While I have to admit this whole thing is quite hilarious -- I has to ask, was the buyer a total idiot? I mean, look at the seller's ebay profile:
d back&userid=amir6626&iid=6825578528
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFee
He had a NEGATIVE 2 rating, all based on auctions that took place BEFORE the auction that caused all the fury. Seriously, I think twice about buying from anyone who's had more than a couple negative feedbacks EVER. This guy did 4 auctions, 3 of which he screwed the buyers on. Caveat emptor dude....
- jonathan.
When he sold the hard drive, he sold the contents of the hard drive.
I'm just grateful to Amir for providing us with those snapshots of the shirtless mystery man. Dude: e-mail me!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Step 1. Guy walks around offering "massages" to artists at convention.
Step 2. Guy buys commission from an artist.
Step 3. Guy yanks on a different artist's hand hard enough that it'll be weeks healing.
Step 4. Guy comes back later, offers to "fix" whatever has required artist to put on wrist brace.
Step 5. Guy doesn't even apologize, just walks away.
Step 6. Artists, who are in same studio together, compare notes on guy.
Step 7. Artist puts up pictures with full name.
Step 8. ???
Step 9. Profit!
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
So where's the buyer's proof of his claims? He could have gotten those photos from just about anywhere. We shouldn't be cheering either of them, because they're both equally wrong. Seller: sounds like a scam artist. Kill with fire. Buyer: meeting a wrong with a wrong. Extortionist, and that stuff doesn't actually have to be of the seller in order to make his life hell, not to mention he was stupid enough to fall for the damn scam in the first place. Kill with fire too.
Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks!
umm, no it wasn't...
is it me or does there appear to be more to this
story than is being published?
there was mention of an i-pod that was not delivered, but
nothing further (no comment).
questions is:is this a scam or is he really the target of
an online revenge?
I guess that all the facts need to come out first before
one can make a "value judgement" as to who is right and who was wronged.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
Maybe he never heard of the "wayback machine".
Once something is published on the web, anyone can store a copy of it. You can never be sure that someone, somewhere hasn't still got it. There is no way to "take it back".
The moral of the story here: always ALWAYS check the seller's stats before bidding on an item. I see what look like great deals all the time on eBay, but upon closer inspection, the seller rating is awful and when this is the case, there's a good chance that the seller is out to scam. My personal policy is to never buy from anyone with a seller rating below 15 and with a positive feedback percentage lower than 95%.
How's a fella to start out on eBay then? Well, buying stuff is probably the easiest way. Also, many people don't have a problem bidding on low-rating sellers, so that's another avenue. Selling a bunch of low-cost items at first may help, although that could also raise a lot of red flags (it certainly would for me).
I raised my seller rating by selling and buying textbooks for my classes on half.com. (Owned by ebay, so the account is shared between the two sites.) Here I'm less concerned with low-rating buyers since I realize a lot of them are college students. Dozens of purchases and I've only gotten almost scammed once: I recently bought a DVD and right after, the seller marked the item as shipped and went on "vacation." Tried to contact him, filed a claim, and ebay returned by money just yesterday.
I've heard many horror stories of eBay refusing to refund money even for very obvious (and expensive) scams, though, so the best option is to just avoid them altogether if you can.
Which is not to say that eBay isn't a risky place to buy stuff. I'm sure I'll get stung eventually. But I've managed to put that day off long enough to make eBay shopping a valuable resource. The trick is to be careful what you buy from who. I would certainly not bid $650 for an item being sold by somebody with no sales history!
I agree though, they should have shot the cunt.
ARG, a fine point I entirely glossed over, good show.
> gayness is well established in britain since Oscar Wilde.
Not much up on your history, are you? Oscar Wilde was dragged through the courts and his career was destroyed due to his sexual orientation.
"A modern day warrior Mean, mean stride Today's Tom Sawyer Mean, mean pride"
-- TT
TT
And maybe this will just drive him to see the evils that greed and the free-market system create and be our next contestant on "Catch that Terrorist!"
I would reserve judgement until we know one way or the other, first of all. Secondly, I would think that someone referencing the bible as an authoritative document would be Christian, and thusly be a bit more willing to forgive...but what do I know, I'm not Christian.
You don't have to be a Christian to refert to the Bible as an authoriative document. If your audience belive in the Bible it is effective. (Even if you are all out wrong, you still can get some goodwill for at least trying, but you risk great anger if they suspect you twist The Scripture on purpose) Even if your audience don't belive in the Bible, but they have some respect for it, you can get some of that respect by refering to it.
He said "even the Bible". To me, that sounds like the last case. Not saying he is or is'nt a Christian, just saying there are other possibilityes.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
Let me at it! Here goes: I, for one, would be very sad if anything bad happened to any of these people. They need love and caring and not smug joking from heartless anonymous bastards! Let's all be friends! *hug*
I only checked the first page of this story, but I didn't see anybody mention the obvious possibility that the seller was not the *owner* of the laptop, ie he had stolen it.
Thus the person whose private life was exposed could have been doubly victimized.
Okay, let's change this a little:
Let's say you buy a musician's laptop and it has an UNRELEASED song on it.
Who ownes it?
Who guy who made the song? or you?
Released songs.. sure. Whomever claims the copyright first. You just have a copy. Unreleased works.. not sure, I am not a lawyer.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I'd like a little euro law lesson here. By my lights, the person bought the laptop as-is, including its hard disk and the data it carried. Doesn't he get the rights to whatever's written thereon? For instance, if buy Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks their worth is significantly greater than blank sheets of paper. That's factored into the price. The seller is not bound to erase them before vending. The buyer did not receive anything he didn't pay for in the purchase price of the laptop.
Lacking any agreement in place to the contrary, I believe the seller of a hard disk loses any claim its contents--even if the laptop arrived in pristine condition. Just because embarassing data wasn't an explicitly stated part of the bargain does not exclude it from the transaction. The buyer who now owns that data, by my lights, can do whatever he jolly well pleases therewith.
IANAL, but I'd sure like an opinion on this.
I don't have that (£) key on my keyboard.
it's probably there somewhere.
try [alt]+a number key of some sort, if it isn't a [shift]+number combination...
My lamehumor tag was opened at birth, and has yet to be closed by the great HTML author in the sky, I guess.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
WTF are you talking about? The full name of the country is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To claim the national currency should be called UKP because Ireland was occupied is completely non-sensical. Please tell me you're not some American who has Northern Irish roots and supported their terrorist policies before the peace process?