Mumsnet founder 'swatted by misogynist griefers' Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and another user were both targeted in swatting attacks at the apex of a series of hack attacks that may have led to the compromise of user logins at the high-profile, UK-based parenting site. Swatting involves making an emergency call to the police claiming that a crime is taking place at the …
> "Given that there are only half-a-dozen real women on AM, I'd guess very, very small :-)"
Given that the number of women committing adultery is exactly equal to the number of men, this seems unlikely.
I'm happy to believe that there are a lot more men who might like to commit adultery than women, but the actual numbers match.
As to numbers of women who want to? Don't make the mistake of thinking that women don't do that sort of thing. Years ago I used to work as barman and if the graffiti in the bogs is anything to go by then there is no shortage of women to harbour the desire too.
>Given that the number of women committing adultery is exactly equal to the number of men, this seems unlikely.
That's not very, er, "Modern" of you.
There's also the possibility that there are lots of men trying (and mostly failing) to have an affair, with just a few very promiscuous women.
I have a sneaky suspicion that linking "misogynist" with "griefers" is a mistake. That implies that they have some philosophical basis for their actions - probably not griefers in that case. Either Mumsnet has misunderstood griefers or they rae falling into the trap of saying "if you aren't for us, you're against us" which irritates people.
Haters gonna hate. I think it was a mistake to turn this into "thing."
> That's not very, er, "Modern" of you.
Since adultery is legally defined in many places as full on penis in vagina intercourse between two people where at least 1 of them is married, just not to each other. The "Modern" I assume you are referring to has naught to do with adultery.
So I'll stick with my argument that the numbers of male and female acts of adultery balances out.
Someone else suggested that a lot of men were being adulterous with a few promiscuous women. This might well be the case, but there are also a number of promiscuous men who engage in adultery with a large number of women. So even if you want to argue in terms of the numbers of people rather than the number of sexual acts then I'd be highly surprised if there was that much of an imbalance.
As to soft or hard science, genetic studies have shown up real hard numbers for the number of female adulterers. They even have a term for the effect, they call it the "Milkman effect". Correlating similar numbers for males is much more difficult and so I've never seen any published numbers. Instead all we have to go on usually are the boasts of men of how many people they've sh**ged.
In terms of citing adultery in divorce petitions the figures in the UK for 2011->2013 show a dead heat at 13% for both sexes.
What your local night club doesn't have a "grab a granny night?"
Maybe things have changed since I was in my 20s but it was a regular occurrence everywhere I lived, nights when what I think Yanks now call Cougars or Mumsnet calls Yummy Mummies would go looking for their sport. Plenty of chances for hard research.
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Sorry, not sure why attacking Mumsnet would help Dadsecurity. So far as I'm aware there's nothing sinister, evil or even anti-men about Mumsnet.
I feel #misogynistsnet would be a better tag for this bunch of clowns. One hopes that if Mrs. Dadsecurity (Be it his Mum or Significant Other) has her rolling pin handy.
"So far as I'm aware there's nothing sinister, evil or even anti-men about Mumsnet."
Perhaps you just need to spend a bit more time finding out then - I've seen some horrendous attitudes presented in comments on that site which seem to be accepted by the majority (stuff that would get shot and buried on here pretty quickly).
Poor attitudes are not limited to a specific gender, but only one gender seems to get it in the neck from what I can see.
Watch 'Loose Women' some time and you will see the same undercurrents of prejudice.
I've upvoted both the OP and the response. I can't see the point in attacking the site even if there is anti-male sexism on there, however, having worked in predominantly female environments in the past I have to say that I've heard ladies happily express offensive attitudes about men that would have got me a trip to HR for a little chat if I'd expressed similar attitudes to women. Obviously it didn't bother me overly but it did strike me as double standards. I've also worked in some terrible male-only environments that wouldn't be pleasant for female workers, a break area with a draw full of porn springs to mind...
I grew up in a household where aligning with the feminist movement required simply chanting "all men are bastards" three times, once the entry was complete all social problems could be blamed on blatant sexism and associated penis ownership, without any hint of irony.
Some brave soul might venture that having a working uterus does not instantly make the owner a sage, but not me, and certainly not on mumsnet.
Anybody who thinks that feminism is a coherent pro-woman movement need only type "white feminism" into google to have their illusions shattered.
Rather, it is a disorganised mess of people looking to justify the opinions they already hold, whatever those opinions may actually be.
I've worked in offices where it's acceptable to have calendars of naked male firefighters posing holding their hoses or male rugby players using their odd shaped balls to cover their modesty yet any attempt to pin a calendar of a scantily but clad woman resulted in howls of 'sexism' and complaints to HR.
I have no issue with the calendars but it does seem a little unfair.
Worse yet, I've worked in environments that were almost exclusively staffed by women where men dare not tread. One such place saw a man parcel taped to a pillar after the women had stripped. That one resulted in a police visit when his wife reported him missing five hours after his shift ended.
Pretty much, but look at how much criticism is leveled at Top Gear.
Try doing that with Mumsnet or Loose Women and you will hear the cry of SEXIST.
I dunno, being a white male seems to mean that we aren't allowed a voice simply because all the other voices are quite obviously victims of white males.
We aren't all the same!
mumsnet is like a bunch of yokels with torches and pitchforks. They are often meddling in matters that they are completely ignorant about, it isn't surprising that they have provoked a reaction. I don't support harrasment or a campaign against them but lets not pretend that they are innocent victims, harmlessly minding their own business.
You'd have the twatterati on to you in a flash. And remember her hubby is Ian Katz, once editor at the Guardian who has now somehow found a job at the BBC. Don't know HOW that happened, moving from the Guardian to the Beeb. Still, impartiality, it's in their genes.
Good point. Except that there is no evidence that misogynists ( of whom there seems to be a bafflingly huge number relative to a handful of actual misandrists ) need any help at all in making themselves look like repugnant imbeciles. They seem to actively enjoy it, in the same way that American conservatives do. Maybe it's just the new fashion with the young people and whathaveyou. Probably in a few years they'll look back and be as cringingly embarrassed by their antics as we are witnessing them.
As a MNetter, there have been some important questions surrounding this incident.
The perpetrators have been able to gain access to the site and use admin functions.
A file has been made available which seems to contain usernames, passwords (in plaintext) and IP addresses.
For the protection of it's uses, MN allows a feature called "namechanging". This means long term posters can disguise their identity when posting details. Bearing in mind a lot of abused and at-risk people regularly use the site for advice. Currently it seems MN are rather coy as to whether anyone could have gained a list of posters with previous namechanges. If such data has been accessed, then quite a few people could be a *serious* risk from violent partners, or their families.
It's questionable how well MN have handled this. They were a bit slow in warning users.
Personally I have no confidence in MN security. They were assuring us all passwords were encrypted. Yet here some are - in clear text. Which I know - I'm on the list.
"They were assuring us all passwords were encrypted."
According to the BBC, Ms Roberts said, "Mumsnet itself stored users' passwords in a "high strength" encrypted form, so doubted its own database had been cracked."
Assuming the quote is correct at a technical level, one question worth asking is, why were the passwords encrypted, as opposed to hashed?
Anyway, my comment here is really just an aside if XSS was used to pilfer passwords, as has been suggested elsewhere. Either way though, it still raises questions about data security policy on MumsNet*.
*Of course, it's possible (I would hope, probable) that passwords were in fact hashed and that Ms Roberts is simply confusing the two.
As such, apart from the run-of-the-mill stuff it provides self-help, support and advice to women suffering or escaping abusive relationships or trying to get the financial support from their ex's and so on. There is therefore a hard-core of men who object to this support and see helping women escape from them as a threat to themselves.
They have an axe to grind and punishment to administer.
Yes, but I'd wager that quite a lot of the men withholding legally mandated financial support are "thick fuckers" unlikely to be able to perform the alleged admin level entry into the site. In general, though not in all cases, if you have a judgement of some kind it's normally because you are owed something.
Nope, I'd be looking more towards the "just above script-kiddy" section of the hacking fraternity that may be pissed off by some mumsnet campaign or statement related to taking away their toys or restricting access to something or other. You know the sort of thing - net censorship, filters etc. That stuff tends to piss off people that just might have the skill-set. It doesn't even need to be anyone from the opposite sex if it were censorship related.
@mark 65
I know at least one highly technically competent, devious, abusive and violent person who is easily capable of hacking websites, social media, databases et al.
A lot may be the "thickos" you so patronisingly describe, but you should never underestimate "the enemy". It only takes one who knows what they are doing.
Its also a place full of women who actively support and engage in child abuse and share ideas on ignoring court orders, blocking contact with fathers and destroying relationships between children, parents and grandparents.
Painting a picture of it being a place full of "victims" when the reality is very different is nothing more than an endorsement of the child abuse that is supported on that site.
As for the risk to those members of that site from any breach they need look no further than the abject failure of the owners to do anything since the last time they got turned over in 2014. Security on that site has always been appalling and nothing has changed since the last time they said they would make it more secure. As long as the ad revenue keeps flowing they simply dont care and it wont change.
"full of women who actively support and engage in child abuse "
Oh really?
Citation needed.
The only person saying it is "painted as a place full of "victims" is you. Typical Internet trollery, dealing in oversimplified absolutes, when we all know the world is not like that. I smell a rat.
I have to agree about the "security" though. It is clearly very poor. They seem to treat the site like it's a cute hobby when the reality is that it's a multi-million pound commercial organisation.
I think some of their sponsors are going to be mightily pissed off with them over the release of emails etc.
You could start with the cps guidelines on domestic violence which include denying access to children as a solid legal example of why its child abuse.
Then spend sometime reading the threads on contact and the family courts, it won't take you long to find some good examples.
Denying a child access to a parent as a form of punishment is child abuse, it really is that simple.
The one good thing is that it does provide a great source of material for fathers fighting in the family courts, have seen several resounding victories where mumsnet posts have shown the true colours of the other side.
As for the security its shit
In that case I wonder if Mumsnet would help me with my abusive spouse (its sad when the local cops know you by name and your address by heart) and how I can get support from her for my kids. Probably not as I'm white and male and she is female.
Spousal abuse is not just men against women.
Of course there are good people on mumsnet. There are literally good people everywhere.
4chan example - now the question becomes what makes mumsnet better than 4chan?
Finding Ms Robert's address is not hard (in fact I just found it in less than 2 minutes) and perfectly legal with no hacking required. Simply search the "beta" version of the Companies House database which no longer charges for access to public record company filings. She's (not unexpectedly) a director of Mumsnet Ltd. and so has an address on record....
Which isn't of course to say that the act of swatting isn't downright dangerous for all concerned (victim, police attending, guy walking dog past house at wrong moment). But, if you are in the public eye, you really should look after your personal details like your home address very carefully. Or, frankly, even if you're not in the public eye. Companies House now permit Directors to list the registered address of the company as the service address for them to protect residential addresses for good reason.
.According to the BBC, Ms Roberts said, "Mumsnet itself stored users' passwords in a "high strength" encrypted form, so doubted its own database had been cracked."
My username and password are on the list. No way have I been phished, or my machine compromised in any way (and yes, I have rechecked).
So what other database - with my username, password (and presumably email address) exists. And assuming the other passwords on the list are as genuine as mine, I doubt it was a simple dictionary attack (even if the attacker has the encryption keys, which we must assume is the case).
As other posters have pointed out here (because Mumsnet seem a tad coy on the issue), this hack could result in a tragedy, if some unhinged psychopath discovers where his estranged family are living. Especially if they take the IP address, and just drive around the schools in the area.
"Especially if they take the IP address, and just drive around the schools in the area."
In many instances you may then be surprised to find out then that an IP address is usually (in terms of your 'average home internet user' at least) not a reliable indicator of location.
"if some unhinged psychopath discovers where his estranged family are living..."
I generally try to avoid engaging with emotive supposition, but assuming that the "unhinged psychopath" is simply not a father who has been denied contact on a whim (where all they need is usually a C4, order for disclosure), would not the police have previously advised (ex)partners of "unhinged psychopaths" of reasonable online precautions? Or are the words "unhinged psychopath" used for the purpose of dramatic illustration*?
*I don't mean to be offensive, but whilst estranged fathers can indeed feel very, very angry, by far the majority are certainly not unhinged, nor do the overwhelming majority demonstrate psychopathic tendencies.
Such generalisations coupled with 'ifs, ands and buts' are rarely helpful in conveying a balanced sentiment. Although, on balance, I would agree that this is a highly emotive subject, for both parents.
If this had been news of a pick-up-artist or an MRA getting swatted everyone in this thread would be in full pearl-clutching and couch-fainting mode. When it happens to some woman the bro-nasty populace of this site instead trips over itself looking for why swatting is justified or not really a crime or the victim doesn't really deserve the same rights as their ingroup. Pathetic.
Mumsnet is for mothers who want to shar einfo, have a moan, etc., just like they do in real life. A site called 'Mumsnet' is hardly the bastion of axe-wielding lesbian separatists, and yet the scorn, contempt and attacks made here suggest that their attackers are not some lunatic fringe bunch of guys (and I'll bet money theya re guys), but just next door to the regular bloke on the street.
It kinda suggests the feminists are onto something, eh?
The last time mumsnet got hacked they promised to increase security, implement end to end https etc. etc.
So it looks like all those pronouncements at the time where the usual fud.
I would be looking to the ICO to fine them the full £500,000 for this if it turns out they have been pwned again.
She's married to the editor of newsnight, Do you honestly believe she is going to get any flack whatsoever about the shite security of mumsnet?
I'm guessing people don't quite understand the media. This will be put down as a terrible tragedy and lets all feel sorry for MN...
Those bad bad men...
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