Member Watch: Rik De Kort

As a heads up, Rik is under an orange flag right now. I don't feel I need to take action yet, but I do want to make sure everyone is aware to keep an eye on what he's doing.

Reasons for my concern:

-Upon the new forum software release, Rik attempted on a couple occasions to access the admin control panel. He claimed he didn't know what it was, but considering he could only find the panel link by digging in a robots.txt file, I'm skeptical. He was also really digging around on the website and posting garbage in hopes of fooling the system to trigger the easter egg. It's either a legitimate search for the easter egg by someone tech savvy or malicious. 

-Rik purchased Foundation One and asked for a refund several hours later. His reason was that he didn't get his money's worth. He did at least point out when his F1 access wasn't rescinded right away. Hard to tell, but concerning when taken with the other items.

-He made a post in the screenshots thread that seemed to encourage members to unzip the epub. I get the sense that he's been taking it apart and messing with it himself.

I'm not fully convinced that his intents are malicious, but I am tracking his activity just in case. He received an official warning over the admin panel when it happened. What are your thoughts on this situation?

Rik is one of those guys that sent up flags for me a long while back. 

This is disturbing to hear. I also think I remember some posts from earlier where he implied Coach's material should be free.

Unfortunately I can't help on the hacking and pirating front other than to agree that I think he's worth watching. 

I will keep an eye out for the Course leaking, I think we need to get the personalisation on the Mastery charts for the update too. Those rep/set charts are gold.

With his tinkering and all it is worrisome. Almost wonder if his refund request was he just wanted it for free. Hate to speculate that but we've all seen bad people before. I would say it is worth watching.

Hey Cory how do you know he was messing with the AdminCP? How did he find it at all?

Maybe he was really hunting for the egg, but I think he knows too much about computers to have done that 'accidentally'.

Based on what he would need to do to find the admin panel information there is no way it would be accidental in my mind.

Cole Dano said:

Hey Cory how do you know he was messing with the AdminCP? How did he find it at all?

 

Maybe he was really hunting for the egg, but I think he knows too much about computers to have done that 'accidentally'.

Cole, I have logs of just about everything one could imagine. 

And yes, Nic, one could only come upon the url by searching the robots.txt file

- Cole, good eye on the personalization for all of the mastery charts.  Cory and I had already discussed this, but then it got overlooked in all of the last minute craziness.

- It occurs to me that while we keep an eye on Rik we should turn off his ability to PM on the forum.

- I had forgotten the attempted admin panel hack.  And then this is followed by brazen attempts to encourage others to break the epub.  

- Rather than continue to give him chances, perhaps it is in our best interest to simply remove him from the forum. 

Thoughts?

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Personally I have little tolerance for stunts like "cracking" the epub. Shows a blatant lack of appreciation for the work that went into it.

For reference, the epub dismantling quote is below:

Also, you seem to have misunderstand what 'epub3' means. This does not refer to the version of epubreader (the epubreader extension you install will always be the latest), but is a name for "all the things the reader is supposed to have". The epubreader extension is epub3-compliant, ie. it has all the things you need to view the book optimally.

 

The epubreader extension should be FF 3.6 compliant, because all it really does is unzip the package and turn it into readable HTML for any browser.

 

Even if that does not work, the .epub format is basically a glorified zip-archive, so you can access the basic html files and videos. The html files will be displayed properly by almost any browser and you can probably view the videos with VLC media player.

On the side of temperance (for the moment).

- Though I see why Rik's post isn't in our best interests, what he could have been legitimately meant to be helpful, and not to encourage people to crack anything. He's a computer guy, so this might seem like common knowledge to him.

- If we boot Rik, we have to be prepared to accept whatever collateral damage comes along with it. It could in the worst case mark the beginning of an open war with the Low camp. Most likely this will happen at some point anyway.

- Cory is investigating Rik, and we could potentially find some real evidence against him. If that happens, then anyone will understand why we had to give him a swift kick.

- However, I totally agree, keep an eye on him.

https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/user/5119-elozorone/

Name is an awful lot like the guy you booted

Yeah I do agree for now Cole. See what happens, giving him the benefit for now and one more chance then gone. I don't want to assume the worst from him just seems more that way in these cases.

Cory,

Is elozorone the same ip as was banned?  Also I am not sure, but it appears to be the same email.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Yes, it appears so. I'll email you the associated paypal transaction to check.

https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/index.php?&app=core&module=reports&do=show_report&rid=41

Rik's account has not been banned, but he has read-only privileges on the forums and no PM access. This seemed the better route than giving him bait to try and make waves. We will have to keep an eye out for him on an alternate account: if anything seems fishy, send me the username and I will do an IP address match.