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milliondollarhomepage.com

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wasistdas

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Heh. I hope my site will be one of the runners up :). I offer to CLEAR pixels from the site and to get links from liberated empty space :)
 

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Pixels are back again

%+|
:'(


..............................

down again:laugh:
 

Whois-Search

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$1 million pixel site crashes

p2p news / p2pnet: Speaking of UK student Alex Tew (right) and his Million Dollar Homepage site, it was hit by a DoS attack as Tew sold the final 1,000 pixels in an eBay auction for $38,100, says Netcraft.

"The attack left the milliondollarhomepage.com site unreachable for large portions of the day, as seen in a performance chart for the site," it says.

We surfed over for a look at 6:24 AM Pacific and got, "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.milliondollarhomepage.com."

The site received a major DDoS attack, and DDoS protection/prevention wasn't included in the customer plan, Russell Weiss of InfoRelay Online Systems told Netcraft, but, "That said, we voluntarily took a number of steps to alleviate this attack while working within the appropriate budget."

InfoRelay owns and operates Sitelutions, host to the Million Dollar Homepage.

Tew has promised to keep the site online for at least five years, says the story, adding:

"As the Internet's newest millionaire, Tew can afford to reinvest some of his earnings in additional site maintenance. The 21-year-old UK student launched the site in September to pay his college expenses, offering 1 million pixels of ad space at $1 a pixel. The eBay auction brought the site's total earnings to $1,037,100. The gimmick has also paid dividends to advertisers in the form of huge web traffic. Milliondollarhomepage.com has received up to 500,000 unique visitors per day."

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/7595
 

financialtraffic

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Quite amazing that they can't seem to get the site back online. I would imagine it has something to do with it not being a priority to stick money back into it :).
 

Dale Hubbard

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Prevention in this case would have been MUCH cheaper than the cure.
 

financialtraffic

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I would imagine Mr. Tew had very specific language on the purchase page that refunds won't be granted even if he's not able to keep the site live?
 

Domagon

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Umm, one would think so, but I don't recall seeing any such language ... his million may quickly whittle down to nothing between taxes, hosting, maybe refunds, and possibly even litigation ... faster something goes up, the faster it often crashes, pardon the pun LOL!

Ron
 

financialtraffic

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I can see it now:
MillionDollarHomePageClassActionLawsuit.com

or,

MillionDollarClassAction.com for short.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh since there probably isn't much that can be done to stop these attacks now. But at the same time Tew seemed almost overly self confident in his plans. This is certainly something he didn't bargain for!
 

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site's down!

Money to be Refunded to unsatisfied pixel buyers!!!

Acroplex, you start frst!

lets make a new millionaire mr Tew bankrupt, so he could happily go back to part time work, as we all do :-D
 

Dale Hubbard

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Zorba will have potentially little to add. Tew will be granted some leeway for an unanticipated DDoS.
 

Whois-Search

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$1m blackmail attempt

By PETE BELL
Sun Online

BLACKMAILERS have targeted the student who made a fortune with his website MillionDollarHomepage.

Alex Tew, 21, made $1million by selling advertising space for $1 a pixel - the small dots of colour that form part of a bigger picture.

He reached his target at the beginning of this year - just four months after he launched the site.

But hackers contacted him and threatened to bombard his site with data to shut it down unless he paid them £2,800.

Alex ignored the threat, but last week the cyber criminals launched an attack and temporarily crippled the site.

Further threats followed, upping the demand to £28,000.

In a statement on his website, Alex said: "I can confirm that MillionDollarHomepage.com has been subjected to a Distributed Denial of Service attack by malicious hackers who have caused the site to be extremely slow loading or completely unavailable since last Thursday, 12th January 2006.

"I can also confirm that a demand for a substantial amount of money was made which makes this a criminal act of extortion.

"The FBI are investigating."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006030002,00.html
 

Mr. Deleted

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Whois-Search said:
$1m blackmail attempt

By PETE BELL
Sun Online

BLACKMAILERS have targeted the student who made a fortune with his website MillionDollarHomepage.

Alex Tew, 21, made $1million by selling advertising space for $1 a pixel - the small dots of colour that form part of a bigger picture.

He reached his target at the beginning of this year - just four months after he launched the site.

But hackers contacted him and threatened to bombard his site with data to shut it down unless he paid them £2,800.

Alex ignored the threat, but last week the cyber criminals launched an attack and temporarily crippled the site.

Further threats followed, upping the demand to £28,000.

In a statement on his website, Alex said: "I can confirm that MillionDollarHomepage.com has been subjected to a Distributed Denial of Service attack by malicious hackers who have caused the site to be extremely slow loading or completely unavailable since last Thursday, 12th January 2006.

"I can also confirm that a demand for a substantial amount of money was made which makes this a criminal act of extortion.

"The FBI are investigating."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006030002,00.html
Hi joseph,

I'm pleased to report that The Million Dollar Homepage is back online after
almost 6 days of downtime due to a malicious attack by hackers who tried to
extort $50,000 from me. I'm pleased to say that I did not pay a penny, and
worked closely with my hosting company Sitelutions and DDoSprotection.com to
stop the attack. I can also report that the FBI are investigating (this is
because my website is hosted on servers in the US).

Happily, now that the site is back online, I'm able to properly announce the
winner of last week's eBay auction for the last 1,000 pixels. The auction
ended Wednesday 11th January, but unfortunately that was just as the attack
on the site began, so I was unable to upload the winning bidder's pixels and
give them the fanfare they deserved.

So, without further ado, I'm very happy to announce that Elijah Kliger of
Brooklyn, NY, is the proud owner of the last 1,000 pixels for his new site,
http://www.MillionDollarWeightLoss.com, which sells a variety of weight-loss
products and supplements. The winning bid was $38,100 - congratulations
Elijah!

The auction completed the sale of all one million pixels on the homepage and
brought the final total I've earnt from the site to a massive $1,037,100 -
not bad for less than 5 months work eh! I've kept saying it, but this whole
thing still hasn't sunk and I'm really not sure when it will. It's been an
amazing experience and I'm sure 2006 will be an exciting year.

I'll keep you posted - I have a few new ideas up my sleeve :)

Thanks for your support, and have a great year.

Alex

The Million Dollar Homepage
www.milliondollarhomepage.com
 

friday

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I'm able to properly announce the
winner of last week's eBay auction for the last 1,000 pixels.

Well if one was to be really honest, the auction price had very little to do with purchasing the last 1000 pixels, I think the bid reflects the value of the banner that Tew added at the very top announcing the winner and direct linking to the weighloss site. It was a clever marketing ploy. The real value is in that banner as opposed to the pixels themselves. I bet the winner gets 1000 times more traffic from the banner than from where the pixel ad is located. It was a nice enough way of selling banner space without causing a furore. Can't help but think that the winning banner is gaining a lot of the traffic to the detriment of the other pixel advertisers on the page.
 
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