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Just when you thought that maybe things were over concerning Paul Christoforo, you find out he just won't learn his lesson. Ocean Marketing was essentially kicked to the curb by N-Control, the makers of the Avenger Controller, following the very public meltdown of Paul Christoforo.
A new company was hired to handle all marketing and PR related business by N-Control and thanks to the power of a Reddit AMA, it was revealed that Christoforo was holding hostage the email and various social media accounts of N-Control. Here is what the new head of marketing had to say about the hostage situation as well as what Christoforo's reason for holding the accounts.
Christoforo, in the time between the above response and now, has since relinquished control over the emails and domains he was holding hostage.
On the flip side of this coin, it's nice to see that the new staff that N-Control picked up to handle their sales and marketing seem to be very level headed. We'd like to offer the best of luck to them in this venture and hope that they aren't dealing with too much additional crap because of what Christoforo does, did, or will do.
A new company was hired to handle all marketing and PR related business by N-Control and thanks to the power of a Reddit AMA, it was revealed that Christoforo was holding hostage the email and various social media accounts of N-Control. Here is what the new head of marketing had to say about the hostage situation as well as what Christoforo's reason for holding the accounts.
I've been trying to get him to give up the access to these things he's been holding hostage (email accounts, Twitter, etc) by asking nicely for a couple of days. The gloves are off now.
Paul told me on the phone two hours ago that "Eight months ago, I locked down all this stuff so they wouldn't be able to fuck with me. If they don't give me what I want, it's war." His demands include a contract written on his terms and substantial compensation, both immediate and for as long as the company continues to exist. He flaunted the PR debacle he created as proof that he "made the company a success", citing all the media and public attention as the "best thing that ever happened to Avenger".
He didn't count on the fact that I anticipated all of this and have been a computer hardware and web tech since I was 14.
The thing we did have is control over the AvengerController.com domain. It was transferred away from its original account, which Paul has complete control of. Because of how GoDaddy works, that old account retained all of the email addresses and their master control settings (forwarding and so on). He has continued to respond to customer emails from his personal GMail account and lied to me repeatedly about doing so.
I tried to play nice, and Paul played stupid, acting like he didn't have access to this master account, blaming his "Indian outsourced tech team" being on vacation. I gave him two days to give over N-Control's digital property.
He finally leveled with me tonight that he knew I wasn't that stupid and that he was lying about his access to all these accounts. That's when he issued the above-mentioned threat. He reiterated that he had the hosting, email, and everything on lockdown.
Unfortunately, since he doesn't control the domain, he couldn't be more wrong. "James", a GoDaddy support rep and avid redditor, who knew exactly who I was, confirmed that I could do exactly what I wanted to...
Around a hour ago, I parked the domain and killed all the CNAME settings. All that email and the website may be sitting on servers he has access to, but he can't log in to any of the mail or do anything to the website.
I'm getting on the phone with the hosting company to try to get help from them, now that we're past the point of diplomacy.
Paul told me on the phone two hours ago that "Eight months ago, I locked down all this stuff so they wouldn't be able to fuck with me. If they don't give me what I want, it's war." His demands include a contract written on his terms and substantial compensation, both immediate and for as long as the company continues to exist. He flaunted the PR debacle he created as proof that he "made the company a success", citing all the media and public attention as the "best thing that ever happened to Avenger".
He didn't count on the fact that I anticipated all of this and have been a computer hardware and web tech since I was 14.
The thing we did have is control over the AvengerController.com domain. It was transferred away from its original account, which Paul has complete control of. Because of how GoDaddy works, that old account retained all of the email addresses and their master control settings (forwarding and so on). He has continued to respond to customer emails from his personal GMail account and lied to me repeatedly about doing so.
I tried to play nice, and Paul played stupid, acting like he didn't have access to this master account, blaming his "Indian outsourced tech team" being on vacation. I gave him two days to give over N-Control's digital property.
He finally leveled with me tonight that he knew I wasn't that stupid and that he was lying about his access to all these accounts. That's when he issued the above-mentioned threat. He reiterated that he had the hosting, email, and everything on lockdown.
Unfortunately, since he doesn't control the domain, he couldn't be more wrong. "James", a GoDaddy support rep and avid redditor, who knew exactly who I was, confirmed that I could do exactly what I wanted to...
Around a hour ago, I parked the domain and killed all the CNAME settings. All that email and the website may be sitting on servers he has access to, but he can't log in to any of the mail or do anything to the website.
I'm getting on the phone with the hosting company to try to get help from them, now that we're past the point of diplomacy.
Christoforo, in the time between the above response and now, has since relinquished control over the emails and domains he was holding hostage.
On the flip side of this coin, it's nice to see that the new staff that N-Control picked up to handle their sales and marketing seem to be very level headed. We'd like to offer the best of luck to them in this venture and hope that they aren't dealing with too much additional crap because of what Christoforo does, did, or will do.