Echoing Michael Arrington

42-18151628About two weeks into TechMiso’s launch early this year, I received an email from a prankster who goes by the name of Mr. Sukme Kim. A poor chap from Korea — with a bad name — who just lost his high paying “WYSIWIG” job — so he says.

This guy’s email reads:

(unedited) Dear Sirs,

I got your data from whois seerching. As my currently company in Korea is in the cutting back, I am righting to see if you have any good job open at tech miso . com? I am also pro for WYSIWYG. and can do good imaggry. Finally, I will work for five finger discount. Please hire me soon as you are ready.

Sincerly,

Mr. Sukme Kim

Initially, the email made me laugh — Mr. Sukme Kim? Classic cheap joke! And — this guy made a good attempt mangling the English language in his weird form of Korean. Funny, right?

Well I laughed until the magnitude of one subtle detail hit me like a freight train

Got your data from whois seerching[sic].

It’s one thing if you look up information in the Whois database [out of curiosity]. But setting up a false email account and using Whois data to make a prank call, well, that’s a totally different ballgame. It’s flat out disgusting. A coward’s joke at best.

This individual’s email made it to me because he took the time (1) to perform a Whois lookup; (2) create a false email account; and (3) type up and send his prank. Stinks of intent.

TechMiso is still far from the level of success achieved at TechCrunch, TechDirt and other major blogs. And this prank by Mr. Sukme is in no way on the scale of Arrington’s being spat at. And for all I care, this is still just a prank.

But if TechMiso keeps trending upward with our readership and page views, I can only imagine that our critics will trend up as well. I just hope that our efforts here don’t lead us into a threatening situation like what happened over at TechCrunch — where Arrington and his staff were forced into hiding -and- stuck paying thousands for personal security.

Something very few people know: last year over the summer an off balance individual threatened to kill me and my family. He wasn’t very stealthy about it – he called our office number, sent me emails and even posted threats on his blog, so it wasn’t hard to determine who he was. The threats were, in the opinion of security experts we consulted, serious. The individual has a felony record and owns a gun. Police in three states became involved and we hired a personal security team to protect me, my family and TechCrunch employees.

Thinking the ‘glass is half full’ in all of this — we do have some very cool and really nice people following TechMiso. And for them, we’ll keep writing.

  • Not Mr. Sukme Kim

    Since when was every prank malicious? Why does somebody sending you an email that took a few minutes to write, from a new account that took less than a minute to create via a whois that takes around five seconds immediately scream "OMG SOMEBODY IS TRYING TO SET US UP THE BOMB!!"?

    And how on earth did you manage to compare this "incident" to real cases of serious abuse? Getting ahead of yourself much? Putting aside the fact you're dozens of magnitudes of traffic behind them, TechMiso and TechCrunch are aimed completely differently.

    TC has the power to make and break start-ups, the power to make VCs a lot of money and close the final vestibules of interest in a failing company. Money makes people evil. They either want it or want to keep it and that makes them all a bit crazy…

    TM, on the other hand, is generic tech commentary. You add your thoughts to news but you don't make or break any. What you post in a month, takes them less than two days. I'm not saying you're worse for that (I can't stand TC articles) but TM is a lot less likely to induce the same flurried fervour of money-obsessed lunatics that TC does…

    If you really want to know what would happen to your lives if you hit the big time, look at comparable sites. Digg for example. Fairly laid back. Tech orientated but not strictly. And they all appear to live a fairly happy existence.

    I'd stop worrying about what might be and focus on where you are right now.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/YorickPeterse YorickPeterse

    Anyway, I believe most hosting companies allow you to hide WHOIS information if you ask them to, shouldn't be that much of a problem.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/chuckrey Rich Chuckrey

    Yep, that's exactly what we did — only it was after the fact. We used Directnic's "directPRIVACY":

    "For US$5.00 per year, directPRIVACY conceals your domain's public WHOIS record from spammers, telemarketers, identity thieves, harassers, stalkers, and others who may use your contact records without your permission."

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/chuckrey Rich Chuckrey

    First off, nowhere does the article say that every prank is malicious. And I get the feeling that Mr. Sukme's prank is just that, a prank.

    But I'll say it again, [no matter how little effort it took], this individual pulled contact information off WHOIS and used it in what amounts to a prank call.

    This is the type of attention seeker that rings your phone late at night and breathes heavy through your earpiece.

    Granted, it's easy for us to trivialize something when we're not on the receiving end. But regardless of whether it took 2 minutes or 2 hours – this prank was crude – unwarranted.

    As for a comparison of TechCrunch and TechMiso, well, there is none. And I believe there was no comparison made in the article. Like you said though, TC and TM have two completely different visions – like apples and oranges.

    Time will tell whether we stay small in the blogospheric scheme of things or we blow it up big, but that's far from the point – I'll say it again what I already said once in the article – I hope the folks here at TechMiso never experience anything on the level of threats TC went through. It's just downright scary.