Dave thanks for the heads up. Heres a quick explanation to why your alerts were deleted. And by the way this is the same as trying to openly hurt a paddler in my opinion, imagine that a boater knowingly hurting another boater.

What a bummer. I hate to say this folks but I am pretty disappointed in some of you.

I am not going to mention names and I am not going to start pitching shit, but you know who you are and well ... I do too.

Late last night and one other time earlier in the month, the same computer loaded our website and as a guest (not logged in) this person went through and removed all of the alerts on every river, because that was an option I left open to encourage involvement. The same person attempted to delete our river details and many other areas of the website that is open to the public's control. These areas were open to guest usage because I was trying to get everyone involved even those that did not want to sign up. I of course tracked all the activity and back it all up, but still I had never though a person from inside our community would be the one to start abusing these tools.

First off, I knew that this would happen sooner or later, and unfortunately whether you like it or not there has to be a level of risk to get involvement from the community. There are of course always people in each community that are willing to not just lie and act like they are functioning for friends and the benefit of others, but they will even damage and hurt those they claim to protect knowingly if it will move them closer to their personal goals.

At some point our society is going to become so familiar with these internal tactics of selfishness that were going to start self regulating. It's going to take alot of people getting screwed, alot of people loosing what they have, and alot of people stealing in the name of honesty but sooner or later it will all catch up.

In closing, your attempt to damage the database was unsuccessful. Your removal of our alerts was also unsuccessful. All of these transactions are backed up, they are all held in storage and we can roll back, forward or side to side to prevent disruption from visitors/paddlers that don't like me, our community, or the idea that information should be openly shared and controlled by everyone together. Everything has been restored.

Some day communities and groups will see what you are trying to do and you will be sorry for the way you have conducted yourself. Your account will not be closed here, I do not believe that banning people is useful when they can sign right back up. Enjoy the same privelidges as before, knowing I am monitoring your account and watching you act like a shit head.

Wow.  I had noticed that an alert I had posted for the MM was gone and I had assumed that the log washed away in the higher water we had in December.  Thanks for posting this Dave and thanks, James, for restoring this information.

I wish that I wasn't as cynical about human nature as I sometimes am - and unfortunately, seeing someone maliciously remove safety information doesn't do anything to make me less cynical.  Ugghh.

James - I am PMing you with some anti-fraud information that you might find useful.

Kudo's James, for your maturity and your ability to manage a situation.

I'm going to put my thirds on that motion. 

I am truly suprised that someone would try to hack the alerts.  I guess you can't just assume that someone with a sprayskirt is trustworthy. 

At first I was wondering if I did something that deleted Dave's Alerts. So my first action was to do some queries with Daves MemberID against the river alert tool.

The response was all of his alerts being deactivated by the guest userid. The system has a seperate userid and each member has their own. After finding out it was a guest that removed the alerts I checked to see if the guest removed other alerts at the same time, and indeed there were Zero active alerts as the guest had de-activated everything at the same time. I then checked a few other public tables that are safe gaurded and found similar activity on the same date. Once I was certain that it was not a fluke I compared all of our Server Log IP's to the IP of the guest that made all of these actions. Unfortunately this IP address exactly matched one member that had logged in multiple times from the same IP. That pretty much makes it bomb proof in my opinon.

It was malicious, it was not a stranger, it was a member, it was a person we all know. Above all I am bummed because I had no idea that this person was upset or even aggitated towards me or others here. This person's involvement in the whitewater community leads me to believe it is partially personal and partially strategic in nature.

I have seen communities, boating and non become broken and separated because of personal agenda's, simple mistakes and harbored resentments. We all have stories, memories, or even instances where our friends, boaters or even community members have made mistakes, purposly or non, and our ability to forgive and leave the stink is what strengthens us as a whole.

My only hope is that through this currrent example, our personal pasts, and every future opportunity, we will place our communities, friends and families above ourselves in a real effort to become stronger and closer to everyone, even those that have acted against us in some way.

Obviously I am going to feel a bit deeper about this example because it costs me more time and I feel it is more directed at me, but none the less this person and this instance has every opportunity to bring division to our community. Nothing is worth that, and with a government that is already working to create divisions we must all let our personal issues go in an attempt to stand for each other.

Thats all I got. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the concern and thanks for the help in finding this problem. Boat safe, always remember that this site and others are a tool not some perfect system and nothing replaces experience, and good judgement on the river. Take care and lets get this 2008 off on a better note!

Thanks asshole!!!  Great idea to remove river alerts.