Myspace Restores Vampirefreaks Users' Accounts, Issues Apology

Order has been restored within members of the gothic and other alternative communities who use both the Vampirefreaks and Myspace websites.

On August 31, all members who had their Myspace accounts deleted on the count of using an "@vampirefreaks.com" email address had their profiles restored and were issued a formal message of apology from Myspace founder and developer, Tom Anderson.

Anderson mentions that the measure was in light of the fact that he and the rest of his technical team receive multiple complaints on a daily basis of users' inboxes being clogged with profiles linked to adult websites, invites from solicitors for products, scams and services and people that, most of the time, even use fake pictures.

"Spammers regularly buy domains and create 1,000s of MySpace accounts under a single domain. We monitor and delete them on a regular basis, usually on the same day they are created," explained Anderson in his message to users of the popular Gothic/Industrial culture website. "Someone in the abuse group at MySpace made the mistake without checking to see that Vampirefreaks.com domain was a legitimate site with real email addresses, so the 2,000 VampireFreak accounts in the MySpace system were wiped out!"

Anderson also mentions in the message that he was alerted to the mistake by a friend who is a member of the Vampirefreaks website and used one of their email addresses.

Earlier that week, Anderson and his Myspace website, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, was condemned by users of Vampirefreaks.com, which is similar to Myspace in its features and uses, though caters to those interested in Gothic/Industrial music and its surrounding culture. Vampirefreaks was begat by a New Yorker computer science graduate and Industrial DJ who simply goes by the name of "Jet."

There was much speculation amongst Vampirefreaks members that the move was politically motivated or in regards to Anderson's rumored hatred of the gothic subculture.

In the last line of his message to Vampirefreaks members, Anderson mentions, "And no, we don't have anything against Vampirefreaks.com or vampires in general!" While the chances are slim and none that there are actual undead vampires on the eight-year old networking site, the apology has been widely accepted.