Hardwarezone Forum, the most popular forum (with hundred of thousands of members) in singapore is purchased by SPH for 7 million dollars a few years back. I, myself as a hardwarezone member frequent one of the most active sub-forum called EDMW ( Eat-Drink-Man-Woman). Every seconds, there are threads and posts being created. With such high level of activity, Hardwarezone definitely generate enough buzz to have the power to influence the public and media.

These recent years in singapore, it’s very obvious that the media and government is trying to tackle the internet media, which is exposed to billions of users. With more and more startup websites being launched by the goverment and media like for examples, rednano search engine, stomp, mocca, soshiok, we have to agree that internet nowadays plays an important part in influencing the public in singapore. A few days back while i am flipping through the papers, i saw a really interesting article that inspired me to write this blogpost. It’s about a guy who created a thread topic in hardwarezone forum, claiming that he is going to tampines with a chopper and chop everyone that he sees. Within hours after this thread was created, there are hundreds of replies and i guessed that someone called the police and informed them regarding this incident.

Did you see the “wow” factor? The power of how one thread in hardwarezone can caused so much commotion in the public within couple of hours? The forum has gained so much recognition in singapore that is able to get such news and attention into the media easily. You won’t be surprise that if you create this thread called ” I just get raped, help me!” for the sake of fun, the next thing you know, you are in the papers tomorrow.

However, this has inturn caused some privacy security issues. Now, posting in the forum is not as secure as what you think it is. It’s not that anonymous anymore. With the details that is logged, ( your ip address), police and authorities can easily track you now! Beware each time when you create threads now! If you are some guys that are some sort of tech-savy, i am sure that you heard of proxies. Most of you probably uses them to get pass your school filters. You may say, ” No worries! i can use a proxy whenever i log in into the forum” in that case, they wont be able to track my new ip.

But, proxies are not safe at all. If the police really wants to track you down, they have the authority to request the proxy to give them the logs ( contain your real ip address ). Similarly, i have seen and heard of cases whereas the criminals get nabbed because of using proxy as a way of scamming and disobeying the law.

Do you guys agree that hardwarezone is growing so influential in singapore? Give me your views!

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