NO MORE. Johnny Abush lost faith in his business partners.(Image by Stephen Epstein)     Hacker snags Pride site   Expanding the dating pool News / Homo service is shut down when straight ads intrude story by Abbe Edelson / Xtra  Nov 04 1999 An international dating service for gay and lesbian Jews based in Toronto has been shut down amid some nasty allegations. At the end of August, webmaster Johnny Abush sent out an e-mail to all members of the service: “NuYenta has been forced to shut down permanently by the actions of ASI (Advance Standards Inc), its web host. “Last week, ASI secretly accessed NuYenta’s database and took personal information about you and other members. ASI’s unauthorized access and use of NuYenta’s database was a clear breach of their agreement with NuYenta. ASI used NuYenta’s database to launch an e-mail campaign designed to trick NuYenta’s members into using one of the dozens of hetero-centric matchmaking services that are hosted by ASI. Their messages were formatted to look like a typical message from Nuyenta, although ASI’s messages were signed ‘Deborah Moss, Technical Support Manager.’” Members of the site were also warned to check their credit card charges for July and August from ASI of New York, NY because any charges during that time were not authorized by NuYenta. In his e-mail to NuYenta members, Abush further wrote: “Today I was shocked to hear from a NuYenta member that ASI processed an unauthorized charge against his credit card in mid-August.” But Deborah Moss, who is also ASI’s office manager, says that’s not true at all. “We haven’t billed NuYenta members since the beginning of June.” Abush has refused comment on the demise of NuYenta. He is well known in Toronto as the founder and caretaker of the Jewish Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual And Transexual Archives. NuYenta got its start during the summer of 1997 when ASI of New York, NY approached Abush to partner on the unique service. The company was already running other Web dating services, but needed someone like Abush (both gay and Jewish, with contacts in both communities) to launch NuYenta. Abush had already developed an international reputation for his website, “Twice Blessed for everything Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender and Jewish” (http://www.usc.edu/isd/archies/oneigla/tb) as well the website associated with the Nice Jewish Girls list serve (an international e-mail mailing list for Jewish lesbians. Moss says she doesn’t know why Abush shut down NuYenta. “Abush was NuYenta’s webmaster and received 40 percent of any profits from the service.” Moss says, “ASI owns the database. We host it and pay for the service. Abush in no way, shape or fashion owns it.” When asked about the the advertising for non-gay dating services, Moss replies: “We send messages letting all our members know about all of our services… it is like a newsletter we send out, letting them know if a new website is coming out.” According to Moss, one of the services that ASI promotes is called Webfriends and offers alternative lifestyle options, and members can search “men seeking men” or “women seeking women.” ASI plans to relaunch NuYenta in the future but probably under a new name. But first, “to start NuYenta again we would have to terminate our agreement with Abush,” says Moss.

Hacker snags Pride site

Jesse Clarke Unsuspecting ’net users looking for the website of Toronto’s Pride committee are getting a nasty surprise. Due to a simple mistake by the committee and the work of a skillful hacker, visitors to www.torontopride.com are bounced instead to the home of a company that promises get-rich-quick schemes on-line. “We provide easy ways for people to make money,” says Boris Panteleev, of www.spedia.net. He’s Spedia’s administrative and technical contact in Castro Valley, California. One way members can make money, says Panteleev, is by referring others to the site. “If someone registers with Spedia and enters a referral ID number, the person who referred them gets 25 percent of their funds. “Apparently the owner of this domain name decided to redirect it to spedia.net in order to increase points,” says Panteleev. “We can’t really control that.” Pride accidentally allowed its hold on torontopride.com to expire. According to Network Solutions, the US company that controls all domain names, the name is currently owned by Xolmotuico Ueguor of Omsk, Russia. His phone and fax number as given as the same nine-digit, non-existent figure. Ueguor seems to be the creation of a hacker who has decided to bounce homos right into the waiting arms of Spedia.net. The Pride committee must wait for Ueguor’s hold on the site to expire. Cheryl Regan, the media representative for Network Solutions, says this sort of thing happens all the time. “This does happen frequently. We actually do more modifications and changes than new registrations.” Regan says cybersquatters and hackers dig through the company’s database to determine when accounts are going to expire, and then snap up the domain names. Such squatters can then use the names for free while invoices pile up. This can go on for months — until service is suspended, or the original owner pays hard cash to get the site back. The Pride site was registered two years ago, says spokesperson Martin Zibauer. When that volunteer moved on, so did the e-mail address that Network Solutions had — and invoices were lost in cyberspace. Zibauer says that the same problem will not happen with the committee’s other site name, www.pridetoronto.com. “Pridetoronto.com is registered by [the generic] webmaster@pridetoronto.com now,” Zibauer says, “so there will always be someone receiving the e-mails. We’ve fixed the problem.” In the meantime, Panteleev and Spedia seem confused about whether they should stop clients from re-directing ’net traffic to their site. “Automated redirection to yourname.spedia.net URLs utilizing URL redirection technology is strongly prohibited,” the site warns clearly. Panteleev is much less clear. “No, we don’t discourage anyone from redirecting,” he says. “In fact we have a referral program, and some people re-direct from their own websites to us.”

« Queen of Queen’s Park | Issue Index | No apology for ‘fag boy’ ad »

Copyright © 2013 Pink Triangle Press. All rights reserved.