Positive influence

[C0NFUS3D]

I've read many negative articles and discussions about the generalization of hackers and their "malicious activities." I've also seen the hackers that take offense to this because not all hackers are black hat or "doing bad things." So I'm here to ask about the good things you've done.. Have you had any positive experiences because of who you are / what you do?

Do you remember Myspace.com? One of the big things were that people wanted to track who was visiting their profile. I had created a very simple hit counter called MyTrackerSpace.com that tracked IPs and cookies. It didn't show you the actual person that viewed your profile, but it gave you the time, date, and IP address of that person (the IP address was linked to ip2location.com so the end user also could see the location of the visitor). It also helped break down the stats by day, week, etc- Myspace only gave you an "overall" view count.

It was a side project, never really advertised, and all of that..but it had a few thousand registered members. While I did earn ad revenue from the website, it really only covered it's own expenses. But I got this email one day:

07/15/2009

"Hi, I wanted to thank you for your site. Last October (2008) My son ran away from home. After one month of not being able to find him, I came across your site and used it in Myspace profile. I then sent My son messages hoping that he would log into his. I was able to tempt him to click onto my profile to look at photos of the family wishing him well and miss u messages. He did, and I was able to trace him 4 hours away in another town. I called the authorities there and they located him within 12 hours. he is now safe and doing well."

- A MyTrackerSpace.com User

I'm not rich; I live in a small town and I'm still trying to get my feet in the door professionally... I've had some bad & crazy experiences over the years too, but I can honestly say that I have [apparently] made a difference.

Please feel free to share your own story if you have one! Just looking for some positive where most people see negative :)

[digip]

I do things that I don't go around speaking about. Mainly, because if I see something, I act on it, and don't need a pat on the back nor care for praise. I feel that if you find a flaw, something broken, something attacked and you know how/why, or if you witness something that you can help stop or prevent, you act on it. Thats just who I am, on and off the internet. Its gotten me in hot water a number of times, but I don't care. I speak up when I see wrong doing, even with family, and its come back at me, but so be it. if you have a good moral compass, stand by it, and if you can do something to better this world or help others, you do it because you can, not because you are asked, or because you expect something in return.

Its nice to see you helped someone above in your post, but that seems more luck than intended use. If anything, the mother in this case, was the hacker and I applaud her for her ingenuity :) Still, its nice that something you made, had a positive effect on others. The whole reason I started attack-scanner.com, was to help others and bring awareness to those who might not otherwise be aware of whats truly happening with their sites. Specifically, WordPress based sites, but with help from Bwall and Rel1k, there are other tools linked to from our site that offer others more things they can use to help protect their sites. My sites get attacked 24/7, so if I can help others based on what I see against my own, thats all I can hope for.

[newbi3]

What separateness the white hats from the black hats is really what we do with our hacking. Me personally if I find something wrong like a SQLi hole in a website for example, I'll go ahead and dig deep enough to find out if its a concern and then report it right away. I don't expect praise for it but it really does clear up a "hackers" name if someone sees you coming to them and telling them whats wrong and how to fix it.

[Pwnd2Pwnr]

Getting a pat on my back from myself is far better than a FED patting me on my back.