Sir Richard Branson wins his dot-XXX name, YouPorn Chat’s password debacle, porn’s own Kickstarter and China’s first online sex toy boutique.
YouPorn’s third-party chat exposed user credentials
A week after the actual event, headlines described that porn tube megasite YouPorn had been hacked and that thousands of users had their login credentials and passwords exposed.
YouPorn released a statement saying that its data had not been exposed, but that it was data belonging to a third-party whitelabel affiliate YouPorn used for chat - though branded as a YouPorn product.
However, the self-titled “Social Media Mastermind” representing YouPorn handled the post’s comments so abysmally I was inclined to believe that the post was PR spin.
Yet when the CTO jumped into comments on the Hacker News post and answered every question, it was quickly revealed that YouPorn (4+ million users) was not hacked. YP Chat (6K users) is a separate company.
In fact, he revealed that the third party chat site was a white-label affiliate Manwin inherited with the YouPorn purchase (a white-label site is operated by an outside company with a skin rebranded by marketers to match YouPorn).
The CTO responsible for YouPorn said,
It was operated by a completely separate entity, which we’ve obviously closed as soon as we discovered it.
The accounts on chat.youporn.com are different than the accounts on YouPorn.
Aside from the CTO’s instructive comments about the situation, on closer look one could see there was no “hacking” involved.
Someone simply found what amounted to careless debugging logs - it was a programmer error left in the open.
The information had been circulating messageboards for over a week until hitting Thursday’s headlines.
YouPorn reacted by taking down the server and notifying users of the chat site of the exposure - and stated they were reconsidering their obligations to the third party.
- YouPorn passwords available for download, thousands of users exposed (Hacker News)
- YouPorn Data NOT Exposed (YP Blog, NSFW)
Richard Branson wins his dot-XXX namesquatting battle
We all knew that the only use for the dot-XXX domain was defensive registration profiteering and name-squatters thinking they held dot-XXX lottery tickets.
In the biggest name squatting example to come to light yet, we found out that Sir Richard Branson was the victim of malfeasant domain registration - and had not been caught up in the defensive registration racket hyperbole.
Predictably, as with any celebrity or wealthy persona, someone registered his name.
Australian man Sean Truman claimed he registered it as a “souvenir” - but quickly made it a porn site - and the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) ruled the domain name had been registered “in bad faith.”
The ruling said,
Registering and holding a .xxx domain name identical to (Sir Richard’s) mark without having any rights or interests therein is evidence of bad faith registration and use.
A Kickstarter for porn - of course
Last week we got not one but two porn versions of Pinterest - but this new naughty knockoff startup might turn out to be more than a cutesy porn name combined with the internet’s flavor of the moment.
Modeling itself on croudsource fundraising wunderkind website Kickstarter, just-launched Offbeatr (work-safe visuals and text) also uses the power of crowdsourcing to raise funds for projects that would never be allowed on Kickstarter.
Offbeatr is invite-only at this time. The idea sprung from the makers of ExtraLunchMoney, an adult site where performers of all kinds connect with viewers and fans for one-to-one contracting of specific kinds of adult performance art, if you will.
Offbeatr has got to be good news for artists in general that constantly have to worry about running afoul of most mainstream websites’ inflexibly prudish content policies. And of course, for people of all genders and orientations (and financial backgrounds) that want to make porn.
Maybe mainstream porn can also find out when people vote with their dollars just what viewers would really like to see - and that porn’s viewers are not all male. Though I’m doubtful their goal to subvert torrent porn will succeed…
- ‘Offbeatr’ Crowd Funding System For Adult Industry Announced (XBIZ Newswire)
China’s first big upscale sex toy store: online
China is the majority source of the world’s sex toys. They’re manufactured quickly and cheaply, in large quantities, allowing adult retailers to buy in bulk and make a killing on costs.
But in China the average Chinese sex toy store has been a dirty destination, cloaked in shame.
One Chinese entrepreneur founded a sex toy retail site with the typical attitude, and left in dislike, with his sister in charge of the company - only to return to the business after seeing the possibilities in high-end sex toy boutiques such as England’s fashionable Ann Summers stores.
Now the company is at the forefront of selling sex toy’s to China’s yuppies and upper classes, and that’s where the story begins.
- Chinese customers say Oyeah to online sex toy store (SmartPlanet, one photo slightly NSFW)
