Some thoughts about AlterGold, its removed blog and fake newsletters

Almost three weeks ago when AlterGold payment system has sent the message about the system update everybody though that with a new admin they have got a new system. In that update a new admin has described vividly all the new advantages and features of the system however it has courted controversy. The thing is that the newsletters were describing all the updates intended to improve the system and to make it a super processor however one point has spoiled everything:

EXCHANGE PARTNERS We have been making tech improvements in our system to double fraud control. To allow our technicians to work freely on these upgrades, we need to temporarily suspend/close all Exchange activity for the month of September. We will gladly resume our Exchange services on October 1. Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We appreciate your business, and look forward to continuing to serve you as we implement our improvements. We now have over 19,600 AG members, and our aim is to double our growth by December!”

It means that till October nobody is allowed to make any exchanges. And at the same time the system warned about some troubles with the out exchanges: Throughout the month of September, AG will be slow on Out Exchanges. In other words until the October the funds will be “semi-blocked” as one could use it however only within the system.

As it was proved that the most patient people are the devoted users of the payment system. Their trust in the system is great that they are ready to suffer for a common good.

On 2008.23.09 all the users of this payment gateway have got the following message:

This is an urgent announcement that AlterGold website is now being taken down for maintenance and upgrades. We are almost done with our new system and now our technical team will start upgrades and database conversions therefore our website, WAP, SCI and API servers will be taken down for maintenance. Please allow us to complete these upgrades in 48 to 72 hours.

Best Regards,
Project Manager, AlterGold.

Nobody was surprised as the update sent on September 10 has informed about some maintenance: A new, improved and better AlterGold will be delivered before the end of the month. This will include a script upgrade that will make it almost impossible for user accounts to be compromised by hackers, or those who phish or hack user accounts.

However, 72 hours passed and another announcement appeared:

However not this delay has surprised us but the blog of AG. Or it’s better to say its absence. What is blog of the payment system? It is a kind of back up that informs about all the news and changes. And this concerns not only the payment processors but all the blogs as such. Earlier one could see an image of AlterGold blog on AG site but now it has vanished.

We have entered the address of the blog https://blog.altergold.com/ in address bar. After some loading we have got the message that the system was not available:

It seemed us strange so we decided to check everything as the same message appears when some website is under DDoS attack.

We have entered blog.altergold.com in Google search line and got several links:

But NONE of the links is active today. More over, there is even no message that the page is unavailable. There is nothing there except a white screen.

So, it is not DDoS attack; the reason is even simpler: the site was removed. Why has AlterGold done this? It doesn’t need its blog? Or it’s a final stage before closing? No message sent by e-mail informed about the removing of the blog…

And as for the messages e-mailed we found one more intersting thing. AlterGold said that it lists on the site all the messages it e-mails to its clients. However, the last message listed is dated by February 17, 2008. So, should we figure that the last messages were the fake ones?

Who can answer all those questions? Usually the admins reply on such questions in the blogs of their sites… But since the blog is dead should we think that AlterGold is dead as well???