Heat Treating Hacks On Being Hacked
“Fake News” and cyber-hacking are in the news constantly these days. What does THAT have to do with heat-treating, you ask? Well, heat-treating is a business and you cannot do business today without using the internet. So, in the interest of keeping up with current events, this post is about our run-in with fake-news and cyber-hacking.
Flame Treating Systems, a couple of times. The first was the Ukrainians hacking into our website and essentially redirecting the URL to some Russian website. That was a fun experience. The hack was into the Word Press platform that is being used for the website. We had to shut everything down and start from scratch. We learned some things, mainly that you can never stay completely ahead of hackers.
That leads me to the reason for this blog topic: the latest hack. Alibaba, a Chinese website which is sort of a combination of Amazon and Google, is posting a used FTSI Spinning Machine for sale. I have no idea how it got there. Well, I have some idea…. The post mentions John, my main shop guy, who, along with me, had some talks a couple years back with a Chinese rep who wanted to sell our stuff in China. It’s possible he had something to do with it. But the bottom line is: that listing was not authorized or posted by anyone at Flame Treating Systems, so please disregard any Alibaba listing for any equipment made by Flame Treating Systems.
We do have a spinning machine here in our shop to use for demos and some flame hardening for customers. At one point I considered selling it, but quickly learned that we cannot be without it! We have too many customers depending on it.
I would like to thank the fellow who pointed this out to me. In that spirit, here is a picture of our in-shop spinner doing what it’s good at:
So, I repeat: No used spinning machine for sale at Flame Treating Systems, and be careful out there. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world on the internet with cyber hacking, fake news and listings on sites like Alibaba. If you have any questions about what Flame Treating Systems sells that’s “real,” give me a call at 919-956-5208 or email me at mark@flametreatingsystems.com