The Brown List is a website where people can vent their rage
By Lee Bell
Mon Aug 11 2014, 15:11
ANTI-VIRUS PIONEER and former fugitive John McAfee surprised attendees at the Def Con hacker conference on Friday when he showed up unexpectedy to announce The Brown List, a website where people can vent their rage about whatever is pissing them off.
Carrying the motto “it’s payback time”, the website offers a forum for users who’ve had a bad hair day and feel like having a moan about various issues, bugbears and pet hates. It also aims to provide an arena for users to suggest solutions to these problems. The suggestions are then voted on by website members who decide the best responses.
“Instead of just lashing out, give us your positive solutions,” he told an audience of hundreds of hackers taking part in the three-day conference, explaining that the website is intended for ordinary people to lodge complaints on anything from government corruption to bad consumer products.
Best known for recent calamities abroad – including a colourful year during which he spent some time on the run from police and adopting disguises so that he could play games with journalists – John McAfee fled Belize in Central America in 2012 after police sought to question him about the murder of a neighbour. Many bizarre and controversial reports followed, including rumours of his death and reports he blogged from a prison cell.
“[The website] taps into anger in a positive way,” McAfee said in a brief interview with Reuters before taking the stage. “Instead of getting angry and shooting at somebody on the highway, or yelling at your wife, you can log onto the site.”
McAfee said he plans to make money by offering subscription services to businesses and is looking for more investors for the website, which he has started with $450,000 (£270,000) from a private investor that he refused to name.
Last September, McAfee was rumoured to be dead following bogus reports on Twitter. We later learned that the reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated,
Tweeting his shock about waking up dead, McAfee said, “I felt fine when I went to bed last night. I had such great plans… ‘RIP John McAfee’.
“For those wondering if im dead the answer is… ‘The Media is killing me, but somehow [I’m] still tweeting’ #NotDeadYet.”
In January 2013, McAfee claimed that he led an espionage campaign against authorities in Belize, reportedly in retaliation for the April 2012 raid on his home in Belize.
According to McAfee’s blog post, he gave away 75 hacked netbooks to Belize authorities in an attempt to uncover government corruption. The “gifts” were loaded with keyloggers and hacking software that could turn on the laptops’ cameras unnoticed.
