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The User Group Network was destroyed by a hacker
Someone in the world thought UGNN.com should disappear along with all of its content and images.
Today UGNN is on Facebook
Thank you for your faithful loyalty over the years. UGNN is the moniker for "User Group Network News" which was a public service entity for computer users and "user groups" which opened online as a web site shortly after America Online announced they were discontinuing "communities". (1992) At that point, user groups, and the famous "UG Infomanager" moved to the web.
Due to security holes in WordPress, the site was hacked, for the second time, and none of the files could be restored. Remarkably, there are some places online where many issues were saved, like the San Gabriel Apple User Group, and oddly enough, the "Way Back Machine." Some content will be restored to this web presence in the months to come.
What happened?
When the User Group Network was at its peak before switching to WordPress, it had thousands of content articles, including Lynn Wegley's famous "InfoManager" text newsletter which was published between 1990 and 2008 --- 1,350 issues every Monday morning -- a treasure trove of over 7,000 individual blurbs! All through the first decade of the new millennium we had more than 1,700 user group subscribers who had filled out a substantial dossier to become a member. It was the one of the first websites on the planet to offer content specifically for Apple Macintosh users. As it matured, it spun off "Safenetting" for internet safety. Another spin-off was the User Group Academy, and "The Appleseeds Awards" which contributed nearly $100,000 to user groups for projects in the early 1990s, and is still active in philanthropy today. As part of the mission, UGN was very active in SpamCop and Knujon the two premier spam fighting entities of the time. As the world of technology matured, and the "connected" world has taken over the attention of most societies, UGNN also began to keep up with current issues in Technology which affects all people.
The story goes on and one, and we're still held hostage in ISP/Internet Provider hell. Sandy Foderick of Apple Computer User Groups thanks Lynn and Fred.