Brought Down By Your ICQ Logs

from the ouch dept

I saw the now infamous eFront ICQ logs earlier this week when someone sent them to me, and they're fascinating reading if you want to see what goes through the mind of a failing dot com CEO. If you haven't seen them yet, someone somehow got their hands on the ICQ logs of conversations held by eFront's CEO Sam Jain, where he basically tries to figure out ways to cheat some of their affiliate sites out of cash he owes them - due to the problems they're having raising money and getting revenue in from advertising. However, now that they're out, they're causing all sorts of problems. It seems that many of the senior exec staff have resigned and Jain was asked to step down (but refused). Other companies are distancing themselves. While most people know that such things aren't secure - they're still the most insanely convenient way to converse and who the hell would expect this to happen? Sure, it's fun to make fun of him, and yes, the company was in trouble anyway - but to make things worse because someone stole his chat logs is getting out of hand.