Update 9/20: BigBig returned “good as new” on 9/13, but it’s down again today due to a database error. This happened from time to time BEFORE the site hack, and it would only last a day or so. Hope that’s all that’s going on right now; will just have to wait and see.
My favorite deal site and its message forum have been down since Friday and I’m in major withdrawal. And since most forums have rules against discussing OTHER forums, getting info about what happened is proving to be pretty tricky. However, thanks to a note in my daily trivia answers email, I got in touch with a lady who was able to get in to BigBig late on Thursday and found something rather strange.
Martha says that the site had some strange music and some text in a strange font and that at first glance she saw the word “devil” and thought maybe she had downloaded a virus, so she quickly shut her computer down. The next morning when she went back to BigBig, the site was not found.
Tonight Martha wrote that she decided to go back into her browser history for Thursday, and when she did, she saw a strange URL that just looked like this: >>>_|_nEt^DeVIL_|_|Rlz!!|<<< When she clicked on it, it tried to take her to BigBig.
In doing some digging on the ‘net, it appears that “Net Devil” is a hacker that takes advantage of a back door in several of the popular forum software programs to hijack the forum. BigBig isn’t the first victim of this person/persons; Martha was able to find a German site that had been hacked and looked very similar to how she remembered BigBig looking on Thursday night. In Googling around this evening, I’ve found many, many more. Some appear to be done by a German group, others by some kinda Muslim group. Eh, they’re all in the Crazy Guys With Nothing Else Better to Do Group, IMHO.
I’m SURE that Alex of BigBig has backups made of the forum and the site, and I know that they’ll be back up soon. IN THE MEANTIME, however, here are a few alternative forums I can suggest:
- FatWallet’s Forum: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/
- SlickDeals.net’s Forum: http://forums.slickdeals.net/
- TechBargains.com’s Forum (AKA DealCatcher.com): http://forums.techbargains.com/
- DealofDay.com’s Forum: http://forums.dealofday.com/
- GottaDeal.com’s Forum: http://forums.gottadeal.com/
- DealHunting.com’s Forum: http://forums.dealhunting.com/
- BargainShare.com’s Forum: http://www.bargainshare.com/
- MyCoupons’ Forum: http://www.mycoupons.com/boards/
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for posting this, I too, am in withdrawl. Seems Bigbigsavings was on and off. I thought maybe the hacker struck again, or it was never cleaned up completely. Hard to get rid of once this has happened. I will keep trying and hoping it returns. Thanks again.
For those who don’t know Alex pretty much has nothing to do with bigbigforums anymore. There has been post after post by a moderator there (Katt) that she has been trying to do what she can, but even though she has e-mailed and tried to contact Alex numerous times, he will not respond.
At this time Katt doesn’t even have the ability to ban people on the board, and can only close threads, when they get “out of hand”.
There have also been posts on bigbig and other forums, after it was found that Alex was selling members user info (e-mail addresses and such) to companies that “spam”.
Bigbigforums USED to be a good site, now it sucks I don’t got there anymore. They have lost a majority of their members.
I have noticed a decline in the bigbig forums as well.
Jennifer S. do you have any suggestions on any similar type forums?
Hi! I have some suggestions for you for alternate forums!
http://www.mycoupons.com/boards/ — MyCoupons’ forums contain great deal info, including coupon codes, as well as a section on rewards programs
http://forums.dealofday.com/ — DealOfDay’s forums also are pretty active as far as deal-hunting and coupons are concerned. Their rewards program section is quieter, though.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/ — SlickDeals.net has a VERY active deals forum including contests and sweeps, and freebies.
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/ — I have to give FatWallet the edge on SlickDeals, though, in terms of having more deals posted sooner. They have the same type of info (deals, coupons, contests, freebies, etc.).
There are other similar sites but these are on my absolute must-bookmark list!
Recently I came across http://www.elivedeals.com and bought a computer. I have saved a lot. It’s very good website. They always update and make sure deals are accurate.
Slickdeals is by far the best deal site. Don’t waste your time trying to find stuff on other sites – they just copy it from SD.
As of November, 2007, BigBigSavings.com is back in full force. Several updates a day and thousands of coupons online. We look forward to your visit!
This site USED to be good. There is a forum moderator who goes by 3lilpigs who will delete or close any posts she does not like, just because she doesn’t like you. It sucks now and most of the free things offered are just come-ons to collect e-mail addresses to send spam.