Spam from competing site

[Interfreak]

I was made the (only) mod over on the other forum, I didn't realise that all this spamming has gone one...

I don't know the owner of the site at all and he's never communicated with me other than to become a mod.

I do prefer this forum, seems much more lively..what should I do? I sort of feel guilty being a mod on both forums after reading all this!

[zander93]

I was made the (only) mod over on the other forum, I didn't realise that all this spamming has gone one...

I don't know the owner of the site at all and he's never communicated with me other than to become a mod.

I do prefer this forum, seems much more lively..what should I do? I sort of feel guilty being a mod on both forums after reading all this!

Well, don't provoke the guy to attack the site anymore at any rate lol. Might as well just disappear and if he bothers you tell him you are spending some time with your family or something

[Stark]

I don't think this thread is fair. Threatening to post this poor guy's address and more is far more illegal than spam.

I'm on the ropes here because I'm a member of both forums now (I hope this isn't a problem). And I thought I'd post ITT because (from what I've seen) he spammed here only once but, while I've been a member over there I have seen members register and spam all over the forums with links to this site on at least 5 seperate occasions on 5 different acconts. he was definitely DDOS'd at some point too (I know a DDOS when I see one) (but I wont do finger pointing, it couldve been one of the other sites he spammed.) I was following your argument on twitter too, one of the admins/moderators here (not sure which, twitter name morton) claimed that you had not spammed at any point, so what's to say that it wasn't Oscar who pmed members or spammed here? I don't know, I'm just trying to see both sides of the coin from his behalf (he is actually very nice and did apologise to you all and admit mistake)

So, I think you're both in the wrong. I'm just gonna sit back and see how it turns out before I decide which forum I like more, because at the moment they're exactly the same quality in my opinion.

edit: the other curious thing I forgot to mention is you seem to be running a very similar competition to the one over there, but I just checked and his was posted first. and your matching favicons. I've seen a few matching avatars too. I feel a little uncomfortable with everything going on between these two forums if I'm quite honest.

[AdyCarter]

I've tried to avoid saying anything on this so far.

I'm on the ropes here because I'm a member of both forums now (I hope this isn't a problem). And I thought I'd post ITT because (from what I've seen) he spammed here only once but, while I've been a member over there I have seen members register and spam all over the forums with links to this site on at least 5 seperate occasions on 5 different acconts. he was definitely DDOS'd at some point too (I know a DDOS when I see one) (but I wont do finger pointing, it couldve been one of the other sites he spammed.) I was following your argument on twitter too, one of the admins/moderators here (not sure which, twitter name morton) claimed that you had not spammed at any point, so what's to say that it wasn't Oscar who pmed members or spammed here? I don't know, I'm just trying to see both sides of the coin from his behalf (he is actually very nice and did apologise to you all and admit mistake)

I know who m0rton is, he is nothing to do with this site. AT ALL. I can assure you were were DDOS'd it happened around the time the Kickstarter funded, I've also spoken to another OUYA forum who magically had exactly the same problem at exactly the same time. (Following a massive traffic spike from the PM system of a forum specialising in this kind of thing, where Oscar is a member) We received information that pointed the finger at the WS site and our own investigations backed this up, along with the fact the lovely Oscar decided to start spamming twitter at that moment declaring himself as "the only OUYA forum", purely because all the others had been taken offline. (Which you now cannot see as he nicely protected his twitter)

Someone clearly retaliatory spammed his site on our "behalf", but I believe it was just the once, as opposed to the spam he has done here (along with the PM spam). If he is "very nice and did apologise to you all and admit mistake" then I'd love to see it, as so far I haven't, all I've seen is our site get DDOS'd and require us to pay for hardened hosting, him spam this place, him proclaim himself as the "only" Ouya site and him accuse us of copying all manner of things.

With regards to the copying, I made the favicon we have, I made it via http://favicon.htmlkit.com/favicon/ and a standard picture of the OUYA, really unsurprising it looks like other peoples, I don't see the logo issues he has been going on about and the contest issue is just a joke, how many different OUYA prizes could there be at the moment? Oh thats right, not many. The contest style itself is identical to many Ed has run at onlivefans.com over the years. The avatars are all parts of standard packs, you'll find most forums use them.

To add further weight to the "Oscar is the bad guy" claim rather than us take a look at his Wikipedia history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special...ions/Oscarbell he was merrily adding the WS relentlessly to the wikipedia article, even claiming it was the "official" site (much as he did in the spam here, saying he was working with Boxer8) and he ultimately got a temp ban for Wikipedia, not something they do lightly.

TBH I personally find the entire situation rather tedious, I've got no idea why Oscar wants to take out the competition in odd ways, nor do I have any idea why he needs to use dirty tricks and a smear campaign to do it. I believe Ed has tried most every sane avenue and it leads nowhere and as such the personal details gambit is very much a last resort (its not illegal but it would seriously screw up Oscars future career) but this is costing us money (hardened hosting is not cheap).

[Interfreak]

I agree. It appears he has consistently spammed this site. Mysterious members have signed up sending PM's to other members asking them to go to his site. It appears he has spammed multiple sites and twitter accounts, and it appears he has repeatedly tried to change the official OUYA wikipedia entry to show his site is their website.

Logically, who is the guilty party here?

[Eddie K]

I don't think this thread is fair. Threatening to post this poor guy's address and more is far more illegal than spam.

So far it's just a threat. It won't actually happen unless he spams us again, continues the ddos attacks, or makes up lies about us and posts them publicly. I've given him the option. Trust me I don't want to post it, but if he doesn't stop ddos'ing us and spamming our site I don't really have any other option to try and stop this kid.

I'm on the ropes here because I'm a member of both forums now (I hope this isn't a problem).

Not a problem at all

And I thought I'd post ITT because (from what I've seen) he spammed here only once but, while I've been a member over there I have seen members register and spam all over the forums with links to this site on at least 5 seperate occasions on 5 different acconts.

Umm, I've been visiting both sites since this site was up, and I only saw one spam message that mentioned anything about this site in it. It was a spam by someone claiming to be a moderator here, saying that his site, OUYA.xx was spamming OUYAForum.com. I'm not even sure I would have considered it spam other than the fact that whoever posted it posted it in multiple folders. As far as I know, it was not a moderator here, but honestly I can't say with certainty that it was not.

As far as what he has done, he has posted at least 20 separate posts on this site advertising his site. He has worked around the censor filters we have on his domain name, and has PM spammed dozens of people. He also tried to become a moderator here (luckily he didn't pass the tests, because I can't imagine what he would have done if he had moderator priviledges). This isn't the only place he has spammed. Check out the following links:
http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?p=11325947
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1824548
http://ouyadevs.com/forums/viewtopic...682e97572aa0cb
http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=us
http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?...s-(Win-an-Ouya!)
http://www.ouyaforum.org/

he was definitely DDOS'd at some point too (I know a DDOS when I see one) (but I wont do finger pointing, it couldve been one of the other sites he spammed.)

Please explain to me how you know it was a DDOS attack. From his claim, he was being DDOS'ed, but his site never switched hosts from what I can tell. The current host he is on does NOT provide any sort of DDOS hosting/filtering, so that would mean that the DDOS attack lasted one hour. I run many websites and have never had an attack on a site last any less than 12 hours. Not that it is not possible, but usually the host will not even put the site back up for 12 hours (let along a cheap shared host like he's on).

edit: the other curious thing I forgot to mention is you seem to be running a very similar competition to the one over there, but I just checked and his was posted first. and your matching favicons. I've seen a few matching avatars too. I feel a little uncomfortable with everything going on between these two forums if I'm quite honest.

If you check the history on things. We were the first of the two sites to run a competition. We had one that asked members to guess the final pledge amount of the OUYA kickstarter (see contest at http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?...hlight=contest). We were giving away $100 (and encouraging people to purchase an OUYA or OUYA games with the winnings). That contest ended without any winners and specifically said we will use the prize money to hold another contest shortly. About the same time (perhaps 1 day before the end, Oscar created a contest giving away an OUYA. Upon the end of our first contest with no winners, we launched our second one where we are also giving away $100 (or an OUYA), plus 3 Amazon gift cards. The rules of our contest are completely different the his, and the prizes are different as well for the most part. Both these sites are OUYA fan sites, so to say we copied his competition because we are also giving away an OUYA would be rather crazy. Fact is, we had a contest first, and his came second.

As for the favicons, I was personally talking to Ady Carter as he was making the favicon. You have to understand that every favicon creator is almost identical, and you have only 256 pixels to work with. I don't know if Oscar copied our favicon or if they just happen to look a like, but I am sure that ours was created by Ady Carter. Honestly, I could care less if Oscar copied it.

Now for the Avatars, I downloaded and installed each one of them myself. 95% of them are from a pack that I download from vbulletin.org. I can dig up the URL if you'd like. The other 5% are the OUYA related avatars, that I admit I copied from other sites via google images. I simple searched google images for "OUYA" and typed in 90x90 as my default dimensions. The ones that looked cool, I save and uploaded. If anyone has any copyright claims to them, I will gladly remove them, but from what I see, they are simple from images taken from the photos posted directly by OUYA on their kickstarter page, facebook page, twitter, etc.

Honestly if I had things my way, Oscar will simply continue to run his website, without the spam, and illegal strategies to take out other OUYA related websites. I have not desire to post his private information. It was a threat so that he would stop his childish attacks on our site. For all of our benefit, I hope that he discontinues what he has been doing, and his site can join the other OUYA related fan sites, as one that is respected.

Thanks
Ed