Visitors to Sen. John McCain’s MySpace page might have been surprised at the presidential candidate’s sudden turnaround in some of his views Tuesday.
The senator was the victim of a prank that had his Web page stating that he had changed his mind and come out in favor of gay marriage, as well as stating a bias toward attractive lesbians.
Mike Davidson, CEO of the online news site Newsvine, is taking responsibility — or more like full credit — for tampering with McCain’s site. And he said it’s a bit of cyber payback.
Davidson said he designed the MySpace template that was used for McCain’s MySpace page and that McCain’s camp didn’t credit him for the template as requested. He also charged that they’re using his images and are pulling images directly from his server so that every time a McCain MySpace page is loaded on someone’s machine, his bandwidth is being used.
“About 20 minutes ago, I single-handedly changed John McCain’s opinion on gay marriage, at least as far as his MySpace page goes,” Davidson wrote in a Tuesday blog post titled, “Hacking a More Tasteful John McCain.”
A message under McCain’s picture was changed to read: “Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage particularly marriage between passionate females.”
The fraudulent information reportedly was up on McCain’s site for about an hour.
I’d like to hope the kid writing McCain’s “myspace” page got a sound spanking and no dinner… Let’s be realistic, Johnny… adults don’t use myspace, and the 14-year-old audience can’t vote. Stop wasting your time trying to appear “cool”.