Be Careful What You Ask A Stranger to Do...
...especially on the Internet, as you never know who might see it.
In this case Todd Shriber, (former) aide to U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont), emailed the security Web site attrition.org asking if someone there could hack into his alma mater, Texas Christian University, to alter his college grades. Instead, they strung him along for a month - even getting him so send in a JPG of a squirrel, before posting the entire thread on their Going Postal section here.
More interesting is that the story made a brief appearance on Wikipedia before being deleted as "not notable." The debate over whether to delete the article runs several times longer than the article itself and illustrates the level of commitment of the Wikipedians to protecting us from being drowned in unimportant information.
Here's a link to the blog item (I wrote) where Shriber admits to the caper:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9999
Excellent point about the Wikipedia debate, too. I tend to agree with the Wikipedians who voted to delete the item; this isn't Watergate.
Posted by: Paul McNamara | 01 January 2007 at 11:25 AM