eriklove.com and ENN Hijacked

-- SILICON VALLEY, California

For about one week in late August 2004, eriklove.com and ENN were knocked offline and visitors were sent to an illicit "search" page, complete with annoying pop-up windows.

"We were hijacked," ENN Chief Editor Ian Douglass explained to a throng of reporters outside ENN headquarters in Yorba Linda.  A web hijacking occurs when an address, like www.eriklove.com, is redirected to someone else's website.  "It's like if I stole your phone number, so that when you call it, it goes to my phone instead," Ian explained, noting that he actually did this to Erik when he was trying to steal his girlfriend in late 1996.

"Despite paying our bill to keep eriklove.com in our control for 2004 and 2005, our substandard web hosting company simply forgot to renew our reservation," Ian continued.  "We paid for it, but they forgot to take care of it.  At least they are cool enough to have offered us a full refund."

After the company responsible for bringing you eriklove.com forgot to renew the claim to the www.eriklove.com address, the address was left up-for-grabs.  Another substandard company, ENom, decided to take over the popular eriklove.com address.  They then directed all eriklove.com traffic to their "ridiculous and annoying 'search' page."  This meant that the billions of Erik fans around the world were unable to visit eriklove.com -- and both of the emails sent to Erik over the seven-day period were lost.  This kind of practice -- taking other people's internet addresses -- is called "hijacking" and it is how ENom has built their billion-dollar fortune.

After noticing the problem on the evening of August 24, Erik immediately sprung into action.

"ENom is clearly a front for Koizumi," Erik said, referring to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has a long-standing feud with Erik.  "And they demanded a ransom of approximately $34,000 if I wanted eriklove.com back."  Rather than engage in some "action hero style raid on ENom headquarters," Erik explained, "I just decided to go ahead and pay the ransom.  That's why we're back online today."

Ian has promised that similar incidents will not occur in the future, because he personally plans to visit Koizumi's Tokyo headquarters to "show them what the Rock is cooking."

Stay with ENN as we continue to bring you the latest Erik News, even if we're hijacked.