On Friday afternoon TobyJoe got a phone call from our ISP (internet service provider). The caller works in the “sensitive material” department and called to inform TobyJoe that they had received a phone call from an international crime agency stating that one of the photos on mihow.com was being used on a Web site for pedophiles operating out of the Netherlands. In typical Michele fashion, I completely freaked out. I told Toby to take the site down immediately. And in typical TobyJoe fashion he calmed me down telling me not to do anything too irrational and let him take care of it. I then suggested he remove every single photograph from mihow.com, even the ones of trees, empty bar stools, scones and cats. But he reminded me that if we were to do that, my Web site would look like crap. I’ve been taking pictures for 6 years. Letting it be overrun by a bunch of red Xes is not the most appealing option.
Late Friday I put up a graphic on Flickr letting people know that something was wrong. I didn’t really give any details and I’m regretting that now. Because the email I received in response have been filled with some pretty creative assumptions. No, we are not being stalked by an actual person. No, I am not in any physical danger. It’s creepy stuff, but we’re not in any harm. It’s just very disturbing, receiving a phone call like that. I’m sorry I wasn’t more specific. I didn’t want to cook up any Internet drama so I tried to keep it simple. In doing so, I think I created more. And I am sorry about that.
TobyJoe and I have discussed this. For now, we’ve turned off hotlinking, which means people can no longer link directly to my images making it harder for people to feature them on messageboards (which happens all the time but never for something this disturbing) and on personal Web sites. That fix works for now. It doesn’t stop people from taking screen caps of each image and hosting it themselves, but it works for the time being.
We also discussed password protecting this Web site. I’m not sure I want to do that. I have my reasons for keeping it public but I won’t go into it here. (Perhaps I will in the comments section.)
TobyJoe spent Friday night digging through our logs to find out when the picture had been linked. The photo went up on that board on September 20th, 2007. (As an aside, the crime agency really is doing its job. It didn’t take them long to let our ISP know about it. One must wonder what they’re cooking up. Either way, I feel a little better knowing they’re out there.) It took us a while because the image was a bit older but we found it and promptly removed it. It has been replaced with a great big “F*CK YOU, PERVERTS. YOU’RE SO PATHETIC.” (Not that the messageboard will see it since hotlinking is disabled, but if they visit google again and search for a specific string that’s what they’ll see now. And let me tell you, that image turned up for all sorts of sick search variations. I am disgusted with Google. For example, say you have a picture of your dinner with the caption “Nice Roast Beef”. A person may find your image by searching “Naked Rape Beef” not that I know what that means. Basically, you don’t even have to have the word “rape” on that page and Google will find it because, hell, it’s close enough!)
So we ordered a pizza pie and ran a couple of Ruby scripts and we extracted every single IP address (all 585 of them) that hit that particular messageboard thread. And for about 30 seconds today, I posted each and every one of them here. And then we realized that in doing so we were potentially putting ourselves at an even greater risk especially since said pedo board is important enough to be watched by an international crime organization. And the last thing I want to do is piss off a bunch of pedophiles. So, I took all the IPs down. (I have half a mind to send the unedited version of this post to NBC. They seem to enjoy outing pedophiles. We have no idea what to do with all these IPs if anything at all. And some of them are from the U.S. Remember, this is a private messageboard run by pedophiles for pedophiles. If someone’s a member, that someone is the real deal. They’re not just there for the “articles”.)
From now on many of my Flickr pictures are going to be marked as “For Friends and Family.” If you want to see the photos, please let me know. If I know you personally or trust you because I’ve seen you around these parts enough, then I’d be happy to add you to my contact list. It sucks that it has to be this way but I’m not willing to take the risk especially since I/we can’t control hotlinking over there.
And in regard to mihow.com? I’m still not sure about its future. I feel a little less insane about the whole thing today but I’m still not sure the blog is worth it and posting pictures of anyone scares me. I’m responsible for another life, a life I would give my own for. Do I kill the blog? Do I only write? Do I turn it into something else entirely? Do I sell the domain to the highest bidder? (heh) Do I take a break and figure it out? Or do I just realize that this is the way the world works and hope the US government (and NBC) is taking care of us at least with regard to online predators.
I guess this is an explanation as to why I acted the way I did on Friday. It’s also an obvious reminder to those who post photographs of children and believe they are being viewed innocently online. In the wrong hands, the pictures of your children may be used as fodder for something dark and disgusting. And at the rate things are going, the only people who’re going to feel safe online in a few years are going to be the pedophiles, a couple of MySpace users, and the Kool-Aid drinking, tinfoil hat wearing religious zealots.
Update: Tuesdays with Murray will be back next week!
Mihow 
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