THE TRUE FACE OF TSR: The dangers of visiting thesimsresource.com

June 22, 2012

EA mole gives IP of complainant to hackers.

 

EA Has committed a huge breach of confidentiality and security by not only passing on the complaint, but also the IP of the complainant to TSR. Furthermore a complaint that was meant to go to EA’s legal department was blocked from arriving there by EA’s community manager,  Sherrie Dandan.  Sherrie also alerted TSR on the number of complaints they have received and how they were submitted at the same time as thanking TSR for their bribe ‘gift’ sent to their offices.

This resulted in the WRONG person getting the blame for making the complaint, causing a 13 year old girl to have her online accounts hacked. The girls mother had not made the complaint she was accused of, instead she complained to TSR over what she deemed was inappropriate messages between Thomas and her child over MSN.

I checked the IP’s myself and it is pretty clear that the girl and her mother have completely different IP’s to the complainant. Steve would know this, which makes me think that the whole blame game was manipulated by Steve/TSR in order to ’show off’ a series of Emails between Steve and the EA community manager to prove Steve’s point that EA really do not give a shit who gets hacked. The girls mother had previously asked for advice on the shoutbox here, ( 27th May ) it was a pretty safe bet she would be back in contact when she was blamed for something she did not do, thus showcasing Steve’s validation of EA support.

 Below are screencaps of the entire communication, with the childs name/email removed and IP of the real complainant. Sorry about repeat lines, it was the only way I could screencap this in several shots while showing that there is nothing missing from the original.  As with all fowarded emails, it may be a good idea to read from the bottom upward to get the full gist and context of the email exchange between Steve and the mole. Also available in TEXT versions for translators.

TEXT VERSION HERE!

TEXT VERSION HERE

 TEXT VERSION HERE

It is fair to add the deletion of this young girls account is NOT the issue here, as this was the wish of her parents. The issue is TSR hacking into her EA account to make her believe EA had banned her for making a complaint and that they also hacked her Twitter/google/youtube and deleted her personal videos of something they knew meant a lot to her.

TEXT VERSION HERE

We have learned many things from the communications between Sherrie Dandan ( EA community Manager ) and Steve Bonham ( TSR joint admin and part time prison guard )

  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to block all complaints intended for EA legal.
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to share private communications intended for EA legal.
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to share a paying customers IP with the group they have just revealed as hackers.
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to give TSR the number of complaints received ( and blocked from reaching their destination. )
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to accept ‘gifts’ from TSR.
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing to believe that all complaints stem from my blog ( which this did not ) despite Steve/TSR not providing proof that anyone connected with this blog sent it.
  • Sherrie Dandan is willing believe, then go on to accuse this blog of being  a ‘pirating site’ despite no pirated content being on this site, furthermore – I personally, until now, have paid for every game and expansion pack I own and have done since The Sims 1. It is false accusations such as this that make me, and other falsely accused players pay more attention to sites such as MOONSIMS or  FREE SIMS STORE when looking for future content.
  • Sherrie Dandan believes that because this site is hosted by someone who hosts another site that has ‘pirated’ store content submitted on his forum… that makes ME a pirate. That is like saying that everyone who has a blogger account with google are pirates because somewhere there is a blogger account that hosts pirated content….  That is beyond stupid.
  • Sherrie Dandan believes Steve when he says that all my screencaps are edited and can be clearly seen with pixel zoom. Clearly Sherrie believes this on face value and has never once examined any of my screencaps  to see that this is a blatent lie. She also believes the vast amount of the community and sites that supply information here do not exist because I made them up. Who does she think are buying the games?. Most screencaps come with a link to the site they are on and yet Sherrie believes I own all these sites too.
  • Steve has supplied several ‘quotes’ from Coconut including “well I don’t care, I still think it was TSR so our accusation stands” and a ‘vow from me to bring down TSR because I was a failed FA’. Both quotes completely made up and with no truth to them whatsoever, but Sherrie has chosen to believe this with no links or proof  that any of these ‘quotes’ where ever made outside of Steves imagination.
  • Sherrie Dandan believes that followers of this blog were asking TSR members for their passwords despite NO ONE ever complaining this has EVER happened, nor any proof showing that any reader of this blog was involved. Why would they need a pass to TSR anyway? FA accounts are IP controlled meaning that unless you are using a computer in that FA’s house you can not access the account, and on the notion that all our readers are ‘pirates’ they wouldn’t need a subscriber account when the booty/ Sunset sims  offers free TSR subscriber downloads with no account needed. No brainer really.
  • Sherrie Dandan believes Steve when he says that a site that runs a business by manipulating EA made meshes and reselling the content against the EULA is a fansite. You can get full stolen games for free from the pirate bay… they must be superfans!
  • Sherrie Dandan does not believe screencaps, witness statements, emails, complaints or Steves own contracting statements ( see myths and lies) only the word of one man(?) compared to the word of countless paying customers.
  • Steve believes his job description …” I work for the Government in Criminal Justice” Sounds better than “I’m a prison guard”
  • In all this we have learned that Steve is a liar, he will use any means to boast about his relationship with EA, TSR have once again hacked a childs account and that Sherrie Dandan is profoundly stupid.
  • You have also learned to use other means of complaining to get your complaints heard in the right department and to state why you do not wish your complaints to go through a half wit who accepts bribes gifts from hackers.
  • EA have left themselves wide open to legal action from the real complainant. Congratulations.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/sadandan

Sherrie A. Dandan’s Experience

Community Manager – The Sims

Electronic Arts

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; ERTS; Computer Games industry

March 2008Present (4 years 4 months)

- Managing and growing The Sims community on TheSims3.com and TheSims2.com websites and social networks
- Synch with PR, Development team and Marketing to push game and content releases to community
- Distribute daily, weekly, and monthly reports on community outreach and growth
- Composing copy for news items and descriptions for virtual goods
- Organizing fan events
- Arranged accommodations, venues, services while staying within limited budgets

I can not find anywhere in her job description where it says she has the power to decide what is forwarded to EA legal and what is instead forwarded to hackers. Most companies have a policy that all communications mentioning legal action should be forwarded to the legal dept, I have not heard of any company who deem it ok to forward the complaint to friends/hackers and ridicule the complainant while hiding the complaint from the legal dept.

Sherrie Dandan - EA Mole

If anyone at EA believes these sceencaps are edited I will be happy to forward the original mails to anyone other than Sherrie Dandan, who already knows these are real.

 UPDATE:

The person who did write the complaint to EA, and had her info shared with TSR by EA Mole Sherrie Dandan has now decided to take legal action.

 http://tsr.mustbedestroyed.org/?p=1746

May 30, 2012

URGENT WARNING: NEWSEA HACKED – 3,322 usernames, emails and passwords leaked online.

NEWSEA, a rival site to TSR has been hacked and the data of 3,322 of its users has been posted online.

CHANGE ALL OF YOUR PASSWORDS NOW.

Unlike the last information leak, where 614 people had their names email address shared on the grapevine, this new leak is far more dangerous, the online list not only contains usernames and emails, but your PASSWORDS and your country of origin and and some full names.

I understand there are rumors already in the community, and in some cases these rumors are not being believed, I can confirm that I have seen the full list online and I can not stress how urgent it is that you take action to change your passwords. The information is listed in this format: id - username - email – password - firstname - lastname - country

On May the 10th, a few members of staff were approached, and on May 11th were given subscriber passes to Newsea. The idea was to download and share Newsea subscriber only files through torrent sites in an attempt to damage the Newsea business and limit their monetary income. I was under the impression that TSR had bought the subscriptions. Shortly after, I heard that Newsea was willing to sell the site to TSR and return as FA. Talks broke down apparently when Tom accused Newsea of being greedy and wanting far too much for the site, I have no idea what Newsea asked for or what he was offered, but whatever it was, Tom said it was too much but he was certain Newsea would be back with ‘his tail between his legs’. Yesterday I was told that every member of Newsea has had their username, email name and password leaked online. Shortly before this news went public, TSR posted a cryptic and confusing message on their front page.

“TSR members are being targeted in the community by people trying to cause trouble. Please remember that nobody from TSR will ever ask for your password for the site. If anyone approaches you on Facebook, Forums or Chat, claiming to be from TSR and asking you for your login details, do not give them out!”

You may wonder what is so cryptic and confusing about this message? For a start the first paragraph is the focus of events that have never happened, there have been no reports of anyone being approached on facebook, forums or chat by anyone asking for login details. This part of the statement is clearly just an opener and just an excuse to make an announcement so that they can get to the second paragraph..

Passwords stored at TSR are encrypted. ( No they are not. ) Staff, Admins and Mods do not have access to your passwords used, ( some staff and all admins do. )

“but not all sites work that way.”  Now we are getting to the point of this announcement .. Sites like Newsea?  How perceptive of TSR to know that a rival site was about to have it’s entire unencrypted data leaked online. How thoughtful of TSR to let us know how *cough* secure their site is and how unsecure rival sites may be.  We could have done without the demonstration.

This has not just been a hack, it has started with blackmail. With this being posted on or around April 27th

Followed by attempts from TSR to damage the business through sharing.

When Newsea refused to sell and rejoin TSR for what was probably a very low offer, the information gathered from the site was released to the public. ( ..after the careful removal of TSR FA accounts! ) You do not need me to explain what this means to the 3,322 people who have had their emails and passwords displayed for all to see, or the damage to the reputation of Newseas site.

 

Still not convinced that TSR are liars? TSR have even gone as far as writing words in Newsea’s TSR blog, that were not written by Newsea and replying to messages that were not replied to by Newsea -In fact Newsea have NO access to their own TSR blog. What kind of respectable site would impersonate an artist through blog posts and messages while locking them out of their own account. That in itself is illegal.

Newsea says: “Please do not give the newsea of TSR site message! because the account has been modified by the TSR, we do not have the permissions of that account, all speak of the newsea of TSR site not what we say!”

 

Hacking. Blackmail. Impersonation. This is how low TSR will go to destroy the competition. For those who have very little sympathy for a paysite like Newsea, remember that paysites are not the only rival to TSR.

 

 

February 5, 2009

A New Home – Thankyou Pescado

Filed under: The Sims Resource — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — coconut @ 23:20

   First of all, I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to Pescado, for hosting this blog, and for all the work he has done in setting  things up here,  I am truly grateful. Secondly I would like to thank Calalily for all her help in setting this arrangement up, and my final thankyou goes to TSR for freeing me from the restrictions  of binding journal hosting  services that has, before now, prevented me from publishing things that may have violated their TOU. I will be in the future enjoying a more relaxed, TOU, and will be able to publish more that I could previously.  I do hope you remembered to add ’stupid’ to your sims 3 self sim traits while at EA camp, because you are not very smart are you? 

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December 27, 2008

Phase 2 ( and this is getting old )

Filed under: The Sims Resource — Tags: , , , , , , , — coconut @ 16:00

  Phase 2 of Tom and Atwas pet project has began. Atwa has been given another new name ( Again ) and a new minisite to confuse Kath and the MODS, http://www.thesimsresource.com/artists/FaronDesign/ 

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November 20, 2008

Addressing concerns

I will address 2 concerns that has been brought to my attention.

The first one is dates on posts taken in june 2008. The first post was taken at a separate time to the remaining ones. Not all posts are screen shot on the same day, there are reasons for this, I have spoken about these reasons before in private to a prominant member of PMBD. The remaining posts are for some reason missing the year. That is exactly how those posts looked on the day that they were screen shot, oddly enough they do now show the year on the forum, But I do not see any point in reshooting them to say the year as I think it’s clear enough by their content that they could not have been taken in any other year.

Missing posts. Some of you are concerned that there are missing posts in the paypal sharing thread. TBH I got bored shitless with them, screenshooting, cropping, uploading and publishing 50 of the most tedious drivel I have ever read each day bored the crap out of me. I also thought it would have bored the crap out of you, which is why I skipped to the most relevant posts. But I do understand that I did in fact promise to post these and by not doing so, I went back on my word. I will publish the rest of them starting tomorrow.

For future reference, more of these threads do contain well over 300 posts and out of them a mere 2 or 3 posts may be relevant or amusing. I cannot in the future tie myself down to screenshooting, cropping, uploading the images and posting that amount of pictures. This would take up too much of my time, I will however post any that are relevant.

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