Bebo changed my account for security reasons !!

Im a photographer and use a bebo profile as well as my pro site to upload photographs. Bebo at the request of some clients who want to copy them to their own profiles.

The bebo profile is listed under www. bebo.com/Pro-Photography, and is on all my marketing flyers and brochures.

I also have a profile called eyeswideopen that discusses conspiracy and other topics.

I received an email 2 days ago saying that the admin had changed my profile name to Pro_Photography for security reasons. My reply to them was as follows :

I have just received your email re change to my user name. Why did it have to be changed? the reason " for security reasons" does not tell me anything. I would appreciate a reply as I have just taken a delivery of 2000 flyers advertising my business with the original url on them ie www.bebo.com/Pro-Photography. I think due to the amount of expence wasted by myself, that a full explanation is in order, especially as the flyers were also creating interest in your social networking site. Regards Danny

A normal response I think.

There response ...

Thank you for contacting us about this matter. We cannot elaborate on the specific 'security reasons' and apologize for any inconvenience. Kindest Regards Robert G.

Is big brother a bebo admin? or is it easier to log, copy and store all my correspondance if its Pro_Photography, as opposed to Pro-Photography.

Anyone else any ideas why this had to happen?

[edit on 29-8-2008 by captiva]

Sounds like big brother at work. Come on? Since when is Pro_photography easier then Pro-Photography.

The - cannot be read by Echelon system or minotaur / Carnivore systems.

hence they will i assume go round knocking peoples names off lists till they all comply.


Bebo / facebook et al are all used by intelligence agencies to mine for contacts and information. Dammit, one of thems even owned by a US State intelligence agency through a proxy company.

reply to post by Dan Tanna


Am I right in assuming that the Echelon / Minotaur / Carnivore systems are basically script based trackers?. I can see the point if Im peddling porn or something but I dont feel worthy of such intricate spying just because Im a photographer. MMMmmm mind you, the eyesopenwide group profile is mine, so what better way to watch what Im saying than linking to the photography user name, clever stuff eh?

Originally posted by Dan Tanna
The - cannot be read by Echelon system or minotaur / Carnivore systems.

hence they will i assume go round knocking peoples names off lists till they all comply.


Bebo / facebook et al are all used by intelligence agencies to mine for contacts and information. Dammit, one of thems even owned by a US State intelligence agency through a proxy company.

you got any evidence to support the above statement? I am intrigued

reply to post by captiva



Minotaur is also a picture 'watching' prog. Carn/Min work side by side, watching over all traffic, backed up by echolon and another system in use.

The - makes it go cross eyed

Hey, yeah they did it this to me as well, it seems they are changing people who have dashes in their names i.e. John-Smiths-Bebo, to underscores, i.e. John_Smiths_Bebo.

I think it's happened to a lot of people, but no one really knows why judging from the brief investigation I did when it happened to me last week.

I have no idea why they don't want dashes in user names. Some kind of admin or coding issue perhaps? Personally, I think Dan Tanna is right on the money, which worries me really, time to delete the old account perhaps?

[edit on 29/8/2008 by GrooveCat]

reply to post by Dan Tanna


Hahaha, that's funny my "what are you doing now" on facebook thing says "BEWARE OF SEPTEMBER 08, THE END OF THE U.S. AS WE KNOW IT" or something along those lines.

Originally posted by Dan Tanna
The - cannot be read by Echelon system or minotaur / Carnivore systems.

hence they will i assume go round knocking peoples names off lists till they all comply.


Bebo / facebook et al are all used by intelligence agencies to mine for contacts and information. Dammit, one of thems even owned by a US State intelligence agency through a proxy company.

Thats what happend to it groove cat. They want to speed read it and a - in it makes it unreadable.

[edit on 29-8-2008 by Dan Tanna]

How the hell can an '_' possibly be more secure than a '-'??

It's a BS excuse and I'd file against them for expense incurred for printing flyers.

Both '-' and '_' are part of the regular ASCII character set.

'-' has ASCII code &h2d (45)
'_' has ASCII code &h5f (95)

It's been in computing since at least the 8086 (IBM XT)!!!!!!!!!

I can tell you now - there is NO difference in "security" between the two.

The reason this was done was because aol account usernames cannot have hypens in them and can only have underscores.

If you navigate to an affected profile using the hypen it will still display the profile even though it now has a underscore as username

In regards to your fliers, the address using the '-' instead of the '_' still links to your profile. Even though it should require the underscore, your fliers still have a working address on them.