Deep South Star Gaze Yahoo Group Hijacked!

[bsimon615]

While I am the founder of the Deep South Star Gaze (formerly the Deep South Regional Star Gaze), I did not set up the Yahoo Group for our event. I am one of the co-moderators of the group.

To my surprise yesterday (Sunday, April 1st) when I went to the group to add a post and to update the attendance list for our upcoming Deep South Spring Scrimmage I found that the group has significantly changed. The group does not have me listed as a moderator (owner/moderators have a Blue Crown Icon and co-moderators have a Green Crown Icon), that icon is now gone and the only place I can get to on the site is the ABOUT heading. All the others - Conversations, Photos, Files, etc. are greyed out. In addition info about the group says it only has 107 members; the last time I noticed that it was over 600 members.

Our heading photo, a group photo is still there as is one other photo next to a Group Description paragraph. This morning I read that paragraph and it has been tampered with. In brief the bogus description makes us out to be a bohemian swingers group. I won't go into further details, but it is pretty bad. We intend to do what we can to regain control of the group and to fix it, but frankly I think the best we will be able to do is to somehow get Yahoo to delete it. We will take steps to recreate a group that will be more secure either on Yahoo Groups or somewhere else (any suggestions?).

My apologies to all that have been frustrated by not being able to use this group as a valid communication pathway and my apologies to all that have been offended by the Group Description wording. You have my assurances that this was not done by anyone who plays any active role in the running and organization of the Deep South Star Gaze.

Enough said!

Barry Simon
Director, Deep South Star Gaze

PS - our registration is now up to 30, a new record for the Spring Scrimmage! We are looking forward to a nice event. We will raffle off a few nice prizes. Tickets are $5 each or 6 for $25.00. The raffle will take place at 3 pm on Saturday the 14th.

[Christopher K.]

While you're at it, Barry, can you get Yahoo to explain itself?! I mean, unless you or another administrator did something incorrect, it's kind of lousy for a Yahoo group to just be "taken over" by someone else--and anyway, how? I guess that means it can happen to any Yahoo group...