This is a copy of my original post that appeared on Blogspot while my site was undergoing a Denial of Service (DDoS) and botnet attack. The original post appears here.
TITLE:Â NULL & VOID: Statement and Winner Announcement from HighTechDad on HP TouchSmart Giveaway
UPDATED #2 @12:20pm (Pacific): I made a huge mistake here. Popular Vote giveaways tend to not be legitimate and I realize now that I should never have made that part of this giveaway. Voting like on American Idol or some of the Gap Kids contest always are at the mercy of those who understand how to get around things (e.g., autodialers, scripts, whatever). Shame on me for thinking that this giveaway would be different.
As numerous things have happened during this giveaway, many of which I have documented in this post and elsewhere, I realize that this giveaway has truly become INVALID. I have been threatened with legal action (I have no team of high-powered lawyers on my side), my site has been crippled by someone maliciously (and I’m not blaming anyone), voting was disrupted for one reason or another during the timing (that alone makes the whole thing invalid anyway), I have lost time and money dealing with this, people seem to not only dislike each other but me as well for making decisions that I thought were sound and the general spirit of the Holidays which was the WHOLE IDEA has been lost here. It is very upsetting to me and my family. HighTechDad.com is a hobby, a passion and something that I do in my limited free time. My brand has been tarnished by this and I need to simply end this controversy.
Due to this, I am forced to make an extremely difficult decision here of which many will be upset but I hope that we can all be adults about this and understand my reasoning behind my decision.
I will be telling HP and their PR firm that this giveaway is invalid. Do note, this is my decision, and if you want to hate me for it, I guess that is your prerogative.
I personally apologize to everyone who entered, voted and promoted this giveaway. I know it was a lot of work and your efforts should be applauded. However, and I don’t want to be wishy washy about this, this decision is final. I have also decided NOT to do any similar giveaways on my site in the future. It is not worth my time or effort to be “generous” in this way.
I guess the old saying “One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch” holds true here and I’m sorry it had to end this way.
Do note, there are other giveaways of this nature on other blogs out there so I encourage you to enter them. I, however, will not be part of them anymore.
UPDATED @10:04am (Pacific): Given that I am a person of honesty and integrity, I need to put a hold on this announcement. The DDoS attack on my site stopped the minute that I announced the winner. I now have access (somewhat) to my server and the logs as well as some other information that has been uncovered due to some more research. I must say that I am extremely disheartened by all of this and verging on anger. The fact that suddenly my site is available minutes after the announcement and some of the other items leads me to believe that this giveaway has become invalid. I still believe in the entrants that I selected for voting, however, the fact that people COULD NOT vote during the period makes the whole giveaway invalid in my opinion.
Therefore, I have a couple of options available.
1: Run a lightening vote on a 3rd party site with the same contestants,
2: cancel this all together or
3: donate this HP to a charity.
Please log a comment about these choices on this post. I’m sorry that it has come to this but I believe that this is the most FAIR option available to me. And trust me, I will NOT be doing these again in the future.
To say that this was an exciting giveaway would be understating things dramatically. As of this writing, my site is under a heavy botnet/Denial of Service (DDoS) attack and will not respond. Therefore, I have had to post this on a different site just so that I could get the word out about this Giveaway.
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