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Singletrack’s publisher, Mark Alker, has told BikeBiz that despite unhelpful police and insurance services, the hacker’s cloud has brought a silver lining.
As reported by BikeBiz.com in December, the Singletrack website was wiped out, thanks to the malicious actions of a hacker. But the site is now back up and the firm claims that it has been touched by the response from readers and subscribers.
Alker told BikeBiz: “Singletrack Worldversion two is now live. Contrary to popular belief, we did have adequate back-ups of everything that was destroyed. Not only is it a new site built on completely new software, but already our website traffic is back to around 90 per cent of pre-hack levels.
"The new forum is faster and easier to use, registration is quicker and more secure and, although we did lose our existing 31,000 registered users, we are currently rebuilding that user base at a rate of over 200 registrations per day.”
Pleas by the publisher for police to take notice fell on deaf ears, despite the hacker’s name and address being known and a breach of the Computer Misuse Act having been proven.
Alker added: “We reported him to the police and were told that, as our server was based in the US, there was nothing they could do and the hacker had not committed a crime that could be prosecuted under UK law. We pointed out that the Computer Misuse Act states that not to be the case. We were informed a week later that it was ‘not in the public interest’ to prosecute the hacker, who also hacked NHS and cancer charity websites.”
The magazine’s insurance service escaped having to payout too, noting a contract clause that stated ‘physical signs of violent entry must be found to claim against property destruction.’
Alker concluded: “Our subs services have also now been brought in house, having previously been handled by our distributor. This move means we will be able to integrate our magazine subscriber database with our website to allow magazine subscribers access to their subscriber information online as well as access exclusive subscriber-only website content.”
