

2014: The Year Extortion Went Mainstream - panarky
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/2014-the-year-extortion-went-mainstream/

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nlh
A few thoughts that stand out:

1\. If this turns out to be widespread, this could generate a huge amount of
negative publicity for Bitcoin. As Krebs pointed out in the article, this type
of attack is specifically enabled because of Bitcoin -- you can't (easily)
send an extortionist untraceable money through other means. If a politician
hears about this, a reliable knee-jerk reaction could be: "Look at the evil
this Bitcoin is enabling! Targeting poor hardworking small-business owners.
Join me to ban this terrible thing and help protect our small-business
owners!" That's a pretty easy sell for a politician and hard for people to
object to ("Think of the children!")

2\. The notice is so blatantly outrageous that I wonder if this isn't a ploy
by some anti-Bitcoin party to acheive 1) above. Even the original protection
racketeers had some ever-so-slight veil -- "No, no, see, we're your new
partners. We're here to protect your business. You pay us, and we protect you.
Wouldn't it be a shame if you didn't..."

This is just as in-your-face as it can possibly be. Seems odd.

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dublinben
Whatever the reason, this will just raise the proportion of transactions on
the Bitcoin network that are related to criminal activity. It won't take much
more for governments to start treating any and all BTC exchanges as
facilitating money laundering and other crimes, and shut them down. Without
the exchanges, Bitcoin in its current state is dead.

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Scoundreller
And let 2014- become the time that baseless anonymous reports lose any and all
credibility, whether it be to Yelp or an authority figure.

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nlh
That would be wonderful - but we have a long way to go before Yelp loses
credibility (for better or for worse). For some reason, lots of people trust
them. They shouldn't, but they do.

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Centigonal
Well, I don't like how Yelp does business, and I've heard some horror stories
about how Yelp reviews have crippled smaller businesses, but I don't know of
any good alternatives, and the service has directed me to a passable
restaurant every time I've used it.

Until Yelp's sort-of-extortionist practices start affecting its users and
someone makes an alternative, it's going to be hard to affect their user base.

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4445522
Is someone able to mirror this post or paste it in the comments? The website
is blocked by my ISP (etisalat)

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verroq
This is actually good news for Bitcoin. It's showing strong signs of
mainstream adoption.

