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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / PSA: Gawker Account

PSA: Gawker Account

by $8 blue check mistermix|  December 13, 20108:41 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Media

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Gawker, which hosts Gawker, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Deadspin, Kotaku, Fleshbot, I09 and Jalopnik, has been hacked and all the user account passwords may be compromised. Here’s a FAQ on the situation. If you have a Gawker commenting account and you use the same password for other accounts, it may be smart to change that password elsewhere.

I’ve never understood why sites expect users to go through a username/password signup just to make a comment. I much prefer the way we do it here.

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Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 13, 2010 at 8:44 am

    What the hell is fleshbot or don’t I want to know?

  2. 2.

    Rooker

    December 13, 2010 at 8:47 am

    “I’ve never understood why…”

    Because of the mistaken belief that all anonymous commenters are trolls and that making them to use a fake name and throwaway email address somehow makes them all vanish. Playing out that fantasy is easier than doing any moderating.

  3. 3.

    stuckinred

    December 13, 2010 at 8:49 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: It is what you think it is!

  4. 4.

    mk3872

    December 13, 2010 at 8:50 am

    However, having more control over user accounts would allow you to disable Firebaggers from commenting

  5. 5.

    El Tiburon

    December 13, 2010 at 8:50 am

    I much prefer the way we do it here

    And how.

    Fleshbot? Yeah, I’ve never heard of it either. Be back in 45 seconds, though.

  6. 6.

    tBoy

    December 13, 2010 at 8:51 am

    I keep a small database of user names and passwords over the years – business websites, places I’ve bought stuff, blog sites, … Up to 295 separate rows.

  7. 7.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 13, 2010 at 8:53 am

    I like the no-sign-up comment system.

    I understand newspapers wanting to harvest a bit of information from you for their advertisers, but the other sites? Not so much.

    Besides, going through all of that sign-up nonsense kills the mood and puts a damper on the whole interaction.

    [And I’m not going to look into fleshbot, either.]

  8. 8.

    Rob

    December 13, 2010 at 8:53 am

    My guess is that there was some paper by some consultant somewhere that said Username/password accounts leads to stickiness.

  9. 9.

    debit

    December 13, 2010 at 8:55 am

    I had a user ID on Kotaku and just reset my twitter and e-mail password. I don’t appear to have spammed anyone on twitter.

  10. 10.

    mistermix

    December 13, 2010 at 8:56 am

    WRT Fleshbot: Gawker doesn’t like to own up to the fact that they run a porn site, so it isn’t on their list of affiliates and they don’t mention it much.

  11. 11.

    Ash Can

    December 13, 2010 at 9:00 am

    @mk3872: I disagree with this. They can be very therapeutic when you’re in a grouchy mood and feel like pushing some shmucks around.

  12. 12.

    stuckinred

    December 13, 2010 at 9:00 am

    @mistermix: You got’s to gives the peoples what they wants.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 13, 2010 at 9:05 am

    @stuckinred: Robot pr0n? Instapundit’s fav site?

  14. 14.

    Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill

    December 13, 2010 at 9:05 am

    If you don’t recall if you have an account with them or not, and want a simpler (but still not easy) way to check, go to this Google Doc, and follow the instructions. Remember you have to convert your email to what’s called an MD5 hash, and use that hash to search that online spreadsheet.

    (h/t this comment on Metafilter).

  15. 15.

    Punchy

    December 13, 2010 at 9:10 am

    Some site named “Lifehacker” got hacked? Oh, the irony.

  16. 16.

    scarshapedstar

    December 13, 2010 at 9:19 am

    I’ve never understood why sites expect users to go through a username/password signup just to make a comment. I much prefer the way we do it here.

    It’s worse than you think, because you have to go through a “trial phase” where every comment you make has to be approved, meaning that none of them will show up until a week later and nobody ever reads them. There’s not like a quota, rather one of the writers has to deem you worthy of the awe-inspiring privilege of being an Official Gawker Commenter.

    Basically, it works like your typical Stalinist wingnut cheerleading section; you have to agree with whatever the authors say. So it’s just another slap in the face that they let someone steal all of their precious accounts.

    Hopefully 4chan takes credit for it.

  17. 17.

    J.W. Hamner

    December 13, 2010 at 9:22 am

    I can see the argument for usernames and passwords… that it makes pseudonymity a little stronger and the people who can’t be bothered to make them up probably won’t contribute much… but in practice it doesn’t seem to make much difference in my experience.

  18. 18.

    stuckinred

    December 13, 2010 at 9:25 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: virtual chinese nookie factory, I just googled it to see what was up

  19. 19.

    Ross Hershberger

    December 13, 2010 at 9:33 am

    @tBoy:

    I keep a small database of user names and passwords over the years – business websites, places I’ve bought stuff, blog sites, … Up to 295 separate rows.

    On paper, I hope. If someone gets into your computer they’ll immediately look for that and basically be you. Bank accounts and all.

  20. 20.

    Poopyman

    December 13, 2010 at 9:35 am

    @stuckinred: Chinese? You mean we’re down to offshoring this too?

    The end of an empire, indeed.

  21. 21.

    D. Aristophanes

    December 13, 2010 at 9:36 am

    They do it because they want user information that they can package for advertisers.

  22. 22.

    Keith G

    December 13, 2010 at 9:41 am

    @stuckinred:

    virtual chinese nookie factory

    The Peoples’ Repubic?

  23. 23.

    amorphous

    December 13, 2010 at 9:54 am

    @scarshapedstar: This is no longer required, though it was previously.

  24. 24.

    Rosalita

    December 13, 2010 at 9:59 am

    They want you to sign up and then if your comments are witty enough they might let you comment. Not worth the hassle.

  25. 25.

    Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill

    December 13, 2010 at 10:04 am

    @Ross Hershberger: There are excellent tools out there for tracking passwords and logins, such as Keeppass and Lastpass. Using those makes it a damned sight easier to track down these accounts, and ensure you’re using the right passwords for them. They also come with better encryption than most spreadsheet-based lists.

  26. 26.

    teresa_m

    December 13, 2010 at 10:05 am

    I find this interesting, and learned of it yesterday morning so I changed my GawkerMedia account info immediately. But what is interesting is watching a full blown hacker cyber war unfold. /b members are working their behinds off to find out who jester is to expose him, he and others are warring with /b, who usually just pick on people who throw puppies and kittens away or their biggest efforts that used to be to attack Scientology, but this wikileaks thing has lead to an all out hacker war. It seems like the wild west survives, it has just been reincarnated in the form of hackers. And they do see themselves as the ones who ultimately own and direct the internet. jester has a blog of his own, and he is fun to read.
    Oh and I think Gawker does this so users don’t have to have killfiles and yet trolls are everywhere, but the system does seem to limit the number of trolls participating at Gawker Media sites.

  27. 27.

    Ross Hershberger

    December 13, 2010 at 10:23 am

    I was a mainframer from about 1980 – 2001. The biggest mistake people made was to use the same PW for a bunch of different things. The system with the weakest security is then the gateway through all of them. Cheeseburger Network gets hacked and all of a sudden your BOA account is mysteriously empty.

  28. 28.

    Catsy

    December 13, 2010 at 10:25 am

    I’ve never understood why sites expect users to go through a username/password signup just to make a comment

    And I generally don’t. I’m one of those people the site statistics never really account for when webmasters are trying to figure out whether or not their latest attack of the clevers is helping traffic or not, because as soon as I hit a registration requirement I just back out and go somewhere else to do something else–permanently.

    There are rare exceptions.

  29. 29.

    Will

    December 13, 2010 at 11:01 am

    @scarshapedstar:

    It’s worse than you think, because you have to go through a “trial phase” where every comment you make has to be approved, meaning that none of them will show up until a week later and nobody ever reads them. There’s not like a quota, rather one of the writers has to deem you worthy of the awe-inspiring privilege of being an Official Gawker Commenter.

    Which means that a large amount of their “accounts” are people who signed up thinking they could add a quick comment to one of the posts, and then found out it would take forever to get through their “trial phase”, so they never went back. And now their information has been stolen.

  30. 30.

    TrishB

    December 13, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    PSA addendum: If you have a Gawker account, change your email password even if it is not the same as your Gawker account password. I comment at I09 infrequently, but it seemed a little to close for coincidence that I was locked out of my Google accounts this morning due to “suspicious activity.”

  31. 31.

    Pongo

    December 13, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    I got banned from commenting on Gawker a while back and have zero idea why. I thought about challenging it, but since I post to lots of forums and this is the only one where I’ve ever had an issue, I decided the problem was most likely theirs and not mine and just quit going to the site. Lots of other options for good interaction that don’t take themselves quite so seriously.

  32. 32.

    Tonal Crow

    December 13, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    Storing passwords as plaintext is security malpractice.

    That is all.

  33. 33.

    Jonathan Dough

    December 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    They must have left the password list in a beer garden.

  34. 34.

    Jay in Oregon

    December 13, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    @Ross Hershberger:
    I use an application called 1Password for that; it keeps them encrypted until I put in the master password (which I don’t use ANYWHERE else), then it can auto-fill the username-password dialog for me.

    Unfortunately, I have a habit of using one or two passwords for one-shot accounts on various blogs/comment forums, and I don’t remember which one I used on Lifehacker. So if I don’t want to be spamming other peoples’ blogs, I’d better go through and change all of them… *grumble*

  35. 35.

    ACS

    December 13, 2010 at 1:32 pm

    I actually like the Gawker commenting system, although it might be influenced by the fact that I’m just a reader and not a commenter. It would never work for sites with a serious focus like politics, but for places where comments are mainly for the lulz, it’s great. Ever read a post where 99% of the comments are smart and/or hilarious and you don’t have to wade through 400 of them?

    As I mentioned though, I only read and don’t comment, and I mostly read Deadspin and occasionally Gawker. I don’t go to any of the more serious sites on their network, so maybe it doesn’t work as well for places where your opinion on things actually matters.

  36. 36.

    PeakVT

    December 13, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    On the plus side, registration prevents nickjacks, and reduces drivebys and sockpuppets. A big site’s comments are totally useless if it doesn’t have registration. Look at Clusterfuckstock, for instance.

  37. 37.

    Cris

    December 13, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    User credentials really do have merit; for one thing, they cross the bridge between anonymity and pseudonymity. But there’s a huge difference between a site that collects genuinely personal and confidential information (banks) and one that simply tries to establish a consistent user identity.

    Jeff Atwood has blogged about this a lot. He’s right: there are no perfect solutions yet, but the OpenID model is a very promising start. Let users establish their identity once, in a well-known and trusted location (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, etc) and have ancillary sites communicate with that central point.

  38. 38.

    Tonal Crow

    December 13, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    @Cris:

    Let users establish their identity once, in a well-known and trusted location (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, etc) and have ancillary sites communicate with that central point.

    I’m not happy with the idea that Google et al could then use the single identity to determine that I am commenting as x on site X, y on site Y, and z on site Z. Or to force me to use a single identity on X, Y and Z. Or to use my IP address/email address to infer that multiple “Open IDs” all represent me.

    Which, of course, also implies that Facebook, Google, and Yahoo don’t appear on my list of “trusted” sites.

  39. 39.

    Andy K

    December 13, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    I’ve never understood why sites expect users to go through a username/password signup just to make a comment.

    Because spambots can’t sign up to a site if the process is set up correctly . It takes a real person to type in a captcha word.

    My bet is that you’ve never cleaned the spam filter here.

  40. 40.

    Tonal Crow

    December 13, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    @Andy K: CAPTCHAs and username/password signups are orthogonal. You can still eschew accounts while using a per-comment CAPTCHA to filter spambots.

  41. 41.

    Cris

    December 13, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    @Tonal Crow: And part of the glory of OpenID* is that it doesn’t originate exclusively from any of those players. You can host your own OpenID provider if you’re inclined. And sites that implement OpenID correctly will accept your provider as authoritatively as they accept Google.

    [*] and please note, I’m not shilling for OpenID proper. It’s their model that is on the right track, and if another protocol comes to the fore, great.

  42. 42.

    Dave Trowbridge

    December 13, 2010 at 5:50 pm

    You can check to see if your username or email address have been compromised on any of the sites involved here.

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