Category Archives: Uncategorized

5 sessions I’m excited about – #PCTO14

PodCamp Toronto 2014
PodCamp Toronto 2014

This year I’ll be attending PodCamp Toronto again. However, I won’t be presenting as in year’s past. This time I’m on the organizing committee. I’m also excited to be attending a number of the sessions. Here are my top 5 sessions I’m most excited about:

  1. How We ruined Radio and the Internet – hosted by the dynamic duo Humble and Fred. These former Toronto DJ’s now have one of the most listened to podcasts in Canada as well as a show on Sirius Radio.
  2. Blogging Across Canada – Katharine Stanbridge rode her bike across Canada in the summer of 2013. Every night she wrote a blog post. I’m very excited to listen to her experiences!
  3. My Name is Barbara – Saul Colt will be at his usual best (read entertaining and informative) in this session from one of the world’s best word of mouth marketers.
  4. Working Justin Trudeau’s Digital Campaign: A Case Study – In what could be a glimpse into how the next prime minister of Canada used digital.
  5. Podcasting 101 – Mike Boon has one of the most popular blogs in Toronto and is a local pioneer in podcasting. Learn how he has helped others get started and what he’s doing on his own show.

Hope to see you there! If you have not registered do so NOW!

Kickstarter Security Breach

Kickstarter Hacked!
Kickstarter Hacked!

One of the world’s most popular crowdfunding sites recently experienced a security breach. Kickstarter announced late yesterday that hackers had gained access to important and private customer data.

While no credit card information was obtained by this unauthorized access, Kickstarter did admit that various other pieces of information were accessed by these hackers.

Here’s the press release that Kickstarter emailed out:

On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.

No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account.

While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.

To change your password, log in to your account at Kickstarter.com and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password. For additional help with password security, we recommend tools like 1Password and LastPass.

We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.

Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.

Thank you,

Yancey Strickler

Kickstarter CEO