Ethics of Selling a Forum?

[xpl0iter]

Lets say you have a forum to sell. Do you care about the the members who has been active for a long time? What if the buyer just want to spam or interested in getting the email base of the forum?

Or you don't check for these stuffs or you don't care? If I were to sell a forum, I will definitely do a background check on the buyer. I mean I don't want the users to end up on a spamming list of some weirdo. Internet is full of weird people. More over, the forums sometimes contain lots of personal information about the members! Giving them to the wrong hands is seriously bad and it could actually mess up someones' life!

 

[Sam1]

Well I suppose it depends on how desperate you're to sell but from experience: you want to sell to someone who knows something about forum management and your forums niche. Otherwise your reputation online may fall quite a bit... Which is going to make it harder to do quite a bit...

 

[Kevin1]

I don't really want to ever sell a forum. Its something about me, that just loves owning forums. If I get one to be successful, I will probably continue that, and start another one.

 

[dojo]

Well, most buyers don't want to use the database to spam. it's not worth paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a small database, when you can get millions of addresses with few bucks. And most of the time, when a forum owner is selling, the community is not really doing that hot anyway. I have sold a forum since it was getting inactive and I didn't have the time to work on it anymore. Most of the time, if a forum is super active and getting a good revenue, no one is crazy to sell it. So there's not really a community to worry about anymore. members who haven't posted in months or years don't really have a say, if you ask me. Yes, those few members who are active and committed have a say in my opinion, the others are just some database entries.

 

[dexterlablab1]

First off, I would never intend on selling my forum. I built it from the heart. With a goal in mind. And a desire to built a warm yet fun community for all. The idea of selling it off to someone that would potentially abuse my work and the members would eat away at me.


But if we're talking about a situation where I HAD to and I had NO other options. I'd do whatever I can to look into how the buyer operates. And I'd hope and pray they keep in line with the ideals I originally had.

 

[xpl0iter]

Ok lets say spaming is not a big issue. But still almost 50% internet users use the same password for all their accounts. Then there is the advantage of sending out phishing emails to all the email addresses in the db. Even if its a 1000USD, its still worth for a hacker, as s/he will be gaining access to lots of emails and probably all their online accounts!!

IMO if you care about your members, please do a little background check on the person who buys the forum!

 

[s_sayan]

I see your point. You are right, admins should know a little bit about the intentions of the buyer.

However, that's why I always use different passwords. For example, one for emails, one for forums, one for my admin panel, etc. That way if one my forum accounts get busted, I am still safe and able to recover my password if they change it.

 

[dojo]

xpl0iter, a hacker doesn't need a lousy forum databse. These guys don't go around buying forums, they break into them if needed. And there are many email address databases to be purchased from lots of low lives, so I really don't think anyone is after your member base. Not to mention so many people submit their email addresses in all kinds of places and never think about what this means and that it can be an issue. So no, this is not something I'd worry about when selling a forum. If you're selling a decent forum, not something with few bucks, the new owner will want to get their investment so they're most likely to try develop the community further. Not all succeed, but that's another story.

 

[Soulwatcher1]

I have to agree here most people do not buy forums for email addresses. I have sold 3 forums in the past 2 died after they were sold and one was merged. I do not lose any sleep at night over it.

Greg

 

[xpl0iter]

I have to disagree on that. Because myself I had been active in the hacker community, because my job needed me to.
Anyway in those communities you can see people buying lists of email addresses for immense money! And most of these guys who wanted these stuffs were script kiddies, they never develop their own exploits and other stuffs. So they will depend on the existing exploits and vulnerabilities. These persons try the easiest stuffs with pre-made tools. So if they get access to forum db with lesser money, believe me, there are people who spend money on these!

The beauty of active forums' db is you get lots of personal email addresses.

People scrap email addresses from websites using bots, but lots of those email addresses will not simply work. There are lots of reasons for this as you can imagine.

Of course real hackers don't need to buy the db or anything as such, but these real hackers are very less in number. The number of script kiddies are larger and they do these kind of stuffs.