GlobalDigitalPay is offline: Maintenance? Scam? Millions lost?

April 26, 2010 - 12:58pm | Analytics | News |

| More

GlobalDigitalPay is offline: Maintenance? Scam? Millions lost?

Some time ago a popular e-currency service GlobalDigitalPay has gone offline. According to preliminary information the payment processor “got hacked and hundreds of thousands stole and laundered to Liberty Reserve.” Meantime, e-currency exchangers stopped autoexchange of all GDP to other currencies “presumably at the request of GDP.”

When a visitor to the website tries to load globaldigitalpay.com directory a browser reports an error. According to the sources with the knowledge of the insider information the company has hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen while GlobalDigitalPay is broke as a result.

On April 23, 2010 GlobalDigitalPay posted an explanation without any timeframe of the possible comeback. Here is the quote of the posting in the Support Center section of the website:

The GDP website is unavailable due to emergency maintenance. Please be assured we will back online as soon as we have carried out necessary fixes and updates. This could possibly take a few days and we apologise for the inconvenience this will cause. We have every intention of returning to normal trading as soon as possible.

Our Support Centre will continue to be online to keep you updated.

Live Chat Support is also unavailable and users can only leave their message ticket with GlobalDigitalPay promising that “one of our agents will get back to you shortly.”

Later on these weekends the company provided further explanation where it promised to be fully available online within the next days:

We are still working to get the web site online but have encountered some unforeseen technical problems and are likely to be offline for longer than anticipated.

We hit some issues during our maintenance downtime for some infrastructure and back end upgrades so this put us back a day or two. Then we got a DDoS (on the maintenance page) which was quickly handled, but delayed us further. The weekend means we have less staff to help, so this also slows us down, but we will be fully manned from Monday along with additional help from our web hosts.

We have to then upgrade the server, application and firewall etc and run some tests. It looks like we will not be online until Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

We realise that this is not acceptable as an online business and we are very sorry for the extreme inconvenience. We are more confident than ever that when we return we will be able to provide an even better service and continue to grow into a more powerful and competitive digital currency.

We actually grew a bit too fast and did not have the proper infrastructure in place to be able to handle such huge demand on our services in a short space of time (we have only been open for 10 months!!). So this is our opportunity to put a better framework in place behind the scenes so we are able to expand sensibly.

The future is very bright indeed. We have more user account based enhancements planned, better user security options, our own debit card and the web site will finally be translated into several languages.

Please hold out for a few more days. May we kindly ask you to not blame your Exchange Agent for unfulfilled orders as the blame lies solely with us, not them.

Also, do not believe the silly rumors circulating on the forums and message boards. Please keep up to date on the GDP Support Center or with your Exchange Agent for genuine news.

Officials at LondonGoldExchange also confirmed the same maintenance works saying: “GDP will be back, but probably in a day or two. They have had system problems, planned a load of updates, then had config issues and now are under DDoS!”

AurumXchange Company made the same statement: “We received information from Global Digital Pay that they are doing emergency maintenance in their system, and there is no reason to panic.”

Commenting on the losses suffered by the GDP some users reported that million dollars have been stolen. The fact has not been commented by the company itself. Instead, it was LondonGoldExchange who denied it: “1 million lost? You are totally wrong. Please be assured everyone GDP will be back ASAP.”

However, such explanations seem strange and unpersuasive for several users and observers. They note that such a perfect chain of misadventures that just in time happened at the same time looks artificial and suspicious. One such user says:

Sure LOL. All of it happening at the same time! Boy I haven't heard that one before. Updates, DDOS, AND system problems, all at the same time. What an "Act of God" indeed . A day or two?

Another user adds:

Strange. Planned updates? Not that anyone saw those announced anywhere. "Probably in a day or two" sounds very reassuring, especially for things that are planned. I would expect a more firm reply. If not for exchangers, at least for people who are afraid for their funds. If not 1 million lost, can we know the approximate amount? Honesty is the best policy, and worked well before if backed up by events that will happen.

Some unnamed sources report that GDP has gone forever and the maintenance clauses posted by the company are just dust in eyes thrown in a move to gain the time before GDP can totally take all the money and run away. The same sources report that the company has no registration and as such is not subject to any monitoring and control which makes it almost impossible to trace the individuals behind GDP activity. They also say the website itself has poor script and GDP does not use even the essential protection services implemented by other websites.

The sources further say that in fact exchangers are in panic but they try to conceal their own fear so that customers would not start bombarding them. And surely they do not want lose their face and reputation because the exchangers indeed suffered serious losses with the hack, the sources report.

While it is only Monday today, and GDP promised that they “will not be online until Tuesday or Wednesday”, we should wait and hope the situation is not as dramatic as it may look at first sight. It is well known that several times there were problems with other ecurrency services which also went offline for maintenance and people though they ran away as scammers, but later these payment processors returned and they still continue operating online.