At 25th of June, a hackerbot broke into the Filmsomniac.com -server and harnessed it to send spam traffic. It seems that Filmsomniac wasn't chosen to be attacked but the bot was just randomly scanning for sites with certain vulnerabilities and unfortunately found one from Filmsomniac.com. This is something that never should have happened and I am really sorry about it. But, considering the nature of the hack, it is very unprobably that the idea was to try to steal data. Nothing also points to the direction that this would have happened and no data has been missed because of the hack. And also, even though the hacker would have compromised the database, the only personal data of users saved on the database is the email addresses used to register to the service. For example all the passwords are saved encrypted so there's no way to "unencrypt" them to the original password. So, fortunately the damage of the hack was quite small. But, it would require me to build the server instance from scratch again.
When I started thinking about building the server instance from scratch, I noticed that I had very little motivation to do it. Filmsomniac.com is about 7,5 years old now, and although it has been a hobby for me, the original idea was that it would grow into a service used by as many people as possible. This have never happend. The service still has only about 40-50 active members who use it and keep coming back. The site is also technically quite old-fashioned and in need to be modernized. It also lacks mobile apps, which might increase the userbase. But, since this is just a one-man-band, to do all this would require a huge amount of studying and learning from me and then hundreds of hours of work to build the modernized site and Android and iPhone apps as well.
So, because of all this and after thinking it for days, I have decided that this is a good moment to end this journey called Filmsomniac. I won't be building the new server instance and I won't revive the site... Filmsomniac.com won't come online anymore...
If you wish to get all your personal watching data and lists and all the content you have created, please send me an email to jubakala@gmail.com (the Filmsomniac.com -emails don't work without the new server instance) or, send a direct message at Twitter to https://twitter.com/Filmsomniac or at Facebook to https://www.facebook.com/filmsomniac. Remember to include your Filmsomniac-username with the message. I will then send you textfiles containing the lists of watched films and TV show episodes in the order you have added them. Also watchlists and your personal lists etc. will be included. This will take some time though, since I will build some kind of script for this so it will be fast... In essence you will be send all your personal watching data that would be viewable on the site. I also include imdb-ids for films and shows where available.
I am really sorry that this had to end like this. But I am also extremely greateful to each and every person who was part of the Filmsomniac.com throught the years...
PS. I will keep this announcement online until the end of August. So until then you have time to request your data.
PPS. Good similar services to Filmsomniac are
- Letterboxd.com (Movies only)
- Trakt.tv (Movies & TV shows)
- TVTime (Mobile app, Android & iOS, Movies and TV Shows)
Yours,
Jussi H.
Owner of Filmsomniac.com