01 Jan 2008

The Trouble With NATS

Too Much Media with too many problems.

It's not often in these blog entries that I go behind the scenes of adult sites and how they are run because, generally, it's not particularly interesting. But one problem has arose over the last few months that is worthy of interest.

The creators of an affiliate tracking software system, that basically tracks for online porn companies how much traffic and money affiliates are making for them, has been hacked and suffered major problems in the last couple of months.

The system, called NATS, is by far one of the biggest of its type on the internet, so this is quite a major issue to say the very least, although it does seem as though said hackers were only after email lists for more spamming purposes.

It's quite concerning that they have been hacked because, as mentioned, it is such a huge tracking system that passes huge amounts of personal information through its books that would be easily accessed.

What is encouraging about the company's actions though is that they actually apologised for not taking greater actions sooner on this matter. With all the security breaches that have been experienced in the UK recently, you have no idea how encouraging that is!

The big question will be whether comapnies end up withdrawing from the NATS system as a result of these breaches. The question is though where would they go instead?

Posted by Steve 12:02:00