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TheFalsities


Note: as the title suggests, this section is for leads that were proven false. I'm sorry if a search led you here, and you thought these things were real. We only keep these things in case WE are proven wrong.

CAPitALLism / Windows Washers

[WWW]CAPitALLism has appeared on the main page time and time again, due to the fact that they have incorporated "ilovebees" and similar keywords into their pages, assumedly to take advantage of the flood of search engine hits to spread their political ideology.

October 3rd. CAPitALLism has written an article documenting the process of subverting ilovebees. While it offers an interesting tribute to the game, once again proves not-in-game [WWW]http://www.capitallism.org/capisce/capisce.php

UPDATE AUGUST 3rd I've been tracking them since the beginning, due to a lingering curiosity and then a love of Tokyo. Log into [WWW]CAPitALLism and click to enter -- Note that the site has been "hacked" and the Winder Washers tell us to disconnect. --UserIlovebees 14:46, 2 Aug 2004 (PDT)

Reasons the site is not in-game:

  1. WHOIS records indicate that ilovebees.com was created on June 14, 2004. Dana's [WWW]Blogger profile indicates her login was created in June. The posting habits of Blogger profiles immediately surrounding Dana's indicate that Dana's profile was created on [WWW]June 28 or [WWW]June 29. WHOIS shows that capitallism.org, however, was created on October 1, 2003. Why would this domain name have been registered so long before the launch of the game when others were created mere weeks prior?

  2. capitallism.org was registered through Domains by Proxy. Once again, ilovebees was not.

  3. The content of the site shows no clear indication (broken images, clues, etc.) that it is in-game, aside from the recently added pop-up accessible in the footer. On the other hand, the rest of the site is populated with the authors' political bent toward capping wages in America. Other pages on the site describe taking advantage of trends on the Internet to spread their message.

  4. There are repeated mentions on capitallism.org of being updated from Tokyo. A link to CAPitALLism was first added to the Main page [WWW]at 12:04 on 25 Jul 2004 by someone at the IP address 219.163.49.74, which [WWW]is located in Tokyo.

  5. Additionally : (taken from MainPage)

These two sites predating this ARG clearly show that Capitallism.org is not part of the game.

TheFridgeOwl

A google search reveals a similar kind of post on [WWW]http://thefridgeowl.com. This page, although possibly a clue, seems bogus. This popup does not come up in the same fashion, and after some investigation, I do not believe that the dates change. Looks like a copy-cat to me. I'll leave the link here in the case that there is a connection.

Further investigation leads to further evidence that [WWW]http://thefridgeowl.com is a copycat. The image is one from SomethingAwful. The domain is registered by Domains By Proxy to hide the registrant's identity, which wasn't done for ilovebees.com.

Non-ilovebees blogspot sites (and comments in ilovebees)

[WWW]Cortana/Durandal - There were a series of "Cortana Letters" sent out before the release of Halo 1. This is most likely a bit of unrelated opportunism.

Generally, these seem too obvious to be part of the puzzle.

Cafe Shop Shirts

[WWW]CafePress shop - Halo 2 logo appears on the t-shirt back NOTE: probable fake, fan created site This link appeared in [WWW]this forum post and has not been verified since. Note: Logo no longer appears on shirt! Maybe MS/Bungie legal fixed that?

gspawn: I contacted CafePress about the possible copyright violation caused by the Halo 2 material (the logo was actually a wallpaper from Bungie.net). Not long after, that logo was removed, and several users online commented that the ILB CafePress was being automatically refunded- EVERYONE who was on the list to recieve any materials had their card refunded and order cancelled (no idea what sites are still doing this). Soon after, the site changed and implemented as little copyrighted material as possible while increasing their selection. If this isn't confirmation that this shop is fake, I don't know what could be. The CafePress employees believe it's fake, and you should too. Just so everyone knows, the Halo "fonts" are widely available (Bungie noted the Halo 2 logo text is done by hand, and isn't part of a real font). You'll also notice that several of the shirts include things like screenshots of the "black screen" from the front page. You can go on and on about reasons why these shops are absolutely fake...

Another cafepress store popped up http://www.cafeshops.com/i_love_bees

Ruled out as profiteering.

Universiteit van Amsterdam (University of Amsterdam)

Under the [WWW]Studieprogramma heading is another instance of the popup, similar in fashion to the one at TheFridgeOwl above. Again this is probably bogus because the dates do not change, and the University is a real university and thus should not be an in-game website. However it is interesting that it somehow got on an official university webpage. Probably a practical joke by a few webmasters.

I see no popups or anything worthy of attention. Am I missing something, or was this fixed? -Lemures

Looks like whoever threw that up there had to take it down. Probably got in trouble with university officials. :D -MaclimesZero

RE Technologies

[WWW]RE Technologies - Maybe another fake site with the black popup -- this site actually updates their countdowns -- still looks fake.

Black popup disappeared, site looks back to normal, so another fake.

Neotaku

[WWW]neotaku - Probably fake... includes a black popup and a link to ilovebees.com -no longer has black thingy, in forums admin admits to "just having a little fun"-

Professor James Steele

Supposedly a CS professor who knows Dana in "real life". Left some posts on Dana's blog that explain some of the trouble with the webpage. In reality a fictional character made by ARG players.


Actually, Professor James Steele is just a chatter and ARG player. It's just his account on Blog Spot. --UserCrispyG

ihatebees

[WWW]ihatebees - Someone adding to the confusion. Has the black popup countdown.

Also note that the bolded letters spell out "God is watching."

hojo.tk

[WWW]hojo.tk - Another site found deep in the results of a "ilovebees" Google search. Just another copy of the black popup counter, most likely.

Upon inspection of the source code (the black popup blocks most of the site) there are META tags for description and keywords.

description: "this site isn't about bees, but the widow thinks it is"

keywords: "it claims more victims, i love bees, ilovebees, dana awbrey"

The coding for the Javascript countdown code is seen and was not renamed. It's still countdowntochina.js.

There are several links to random pictures, sound clips (funny prank calls) and other stuff. I'm not going to go into details just see for yourself. There's also a link at the bottom for a e-mail address that leads to w0rd@aol.com.

None of this is relevant really, I just thought I'd add some of my investigation. (From what I see I was the first to discover this site.)

EDIT:The hojo.tk webstore has logos made from the Halo text. A little too coincidental for me. - TheJustin =From gspawn: As noted above, Halo fonts are widely available, and the Bungie crew note that their is no real "Halo" font except for the one used on the menus (which is available freely online because people have used fontmaking programs to create it). The Halo logo and other occurences of what looks like the "Halo" font are all hand-made (or photoshopped as it may be).


Note: This website name was registered as a free .tk site. The source code says that the original site is http://anti-trust.org/hojo/index.shtml. The Whois site says that anti-trust.org is registered to Michele Mayernick, who lives in Connecticut. This is most likely a copycat, as the domain was registered on 27-Dec-2002 02:19:35 UTC. -TheGirs
AN ADDED NOTE: Did a Yahoo search instead of the cliche Google search and found an old hojo.tk page hosted with Angelfire. Here's the address if anyone is interested: www.angelfire.com/freak/tp2k2. I was just investigating to shed some more light on the site, and frankly, this makes it even more obvious of being a fake. - TheJustin
CONFESSION: Full confession and motive of the hoax ilovebees site can be found at [WWW]http://_hojo.livejournal.com. Sorry for all the confusion.

UnrippedZues7

According to a [WWW]post on the bungie.net forums, the ladybee777@hotmail.com MSN profile contains information about an nickname called "UnrippedZues7". When added to your AIM buddy list, this user would put up cryptic away messages such as "wheras once i was blind, now i can see" and "the riddle ends here".

This user is in no way connected with the game. The profile from which the username comes is not ladybee777@hotmail.com (in fact there is no MSN profile associated with this e-mail address), but an out-of-game e-mail address [WWW]honey777@hotmail.com. This is nothing more than another user who is just trying to create confusion by posing as an in-game character.

Also, note the misspelling of "Zeus" in the name.

MSNBC

Moved from TheNews

Anyone noticed the link at MSNBC for their Week in Pictures? They have a lot of pictures of current events, but Image #7 is of a bee landing on a flower? Our fabled number 7, a bee, and Microsoft is involved? A coincidence? [WWW]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3842331/ ---UserDarkViper 17:22, 30 Jul 2004 (PDT) probably. UserScrivener 23:14, 30 Jul 2004 (PDT)

777@ilovebees.com

Moved from TheNews

Found email 777@ilovebees.com on the site http://www.dfunkd.com/dramaqueen/, itå«s a gossip site i found while searching on "HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE". new info? havenå«t tried emailing the adress, someone can do it, cause i need sleep... -Arkangel Gossip, that's just what it is, mail bounces from that address(unknown user) --Sweetjimmy

www.ilovepees.com and UrMouth

On the ILB blog UrMouth has been posting quite a few links to his fake site. (for which he's probably getting quite the boost to his banner income!) Most notably on the WhoIs for the site:

First Registered: July 26, 2004

While some people may find the silly animations convincing, it's also worth noting one of UrMouth's early posts on the blog:

UrMouth said...

Yada yada yada, blah blah blah... Ive been watching you people talk for so long while i actually figure out what the meaning is behind all this... I actually have but no just as bungie did I'll keep you anticipating my response. Instead, I'm in the process of making a website which will show you exactly what everything on here means. My suggestion, pay close attention to my next post.

7/28/2004 02:21:38 PM

Sure enough, www.ilovepees.com was born.

--acki2003 08:37 31 Jul, 2004 (PDT)

Fake e-mail from ilovebees@hotmail.com

From: Princess <ladybee777@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Jul 29, 2004 11:53:21 America/Montreal
To: traxus@bungie.org
Subject: aid

Return-Path: <ladybee777@hotmail.com>
Return-Path: ladybee777@hotmail.com
Received: from smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk (195.188.213.8) by bungie.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 3.2.4) for <traxus@bungie.org>; Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:53:25 -0400
Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([62.30.24.197]) by smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:53:42 +0100 Message-Id: <41091D71.1010407@hotmail.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (Windows/20040502)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Originalarrivaltime: 29 Jul 2004 15:53:42.0453 (UTC) FILETIME=[38EEE650:01C47584]

I'm wanting http protocol.
mention project Gutenburg in one message.

love,

Comments: The Received headers indicate that this e-mail never went through hotmail.com, but through blueyonder.co.uk. ladybee777 has never identified herself as "Princess." And "Gutenberg" is misspelled, but it wasn't in the original e-mail that Traxus sent. Smells like a hoax.

Xydexx.com

purevolume.com

Post from ladybee777@hotmail.com on bungie.net forum

Dana's email change on the blog, re: Lil_c, Aug 3

ilovebeer.org

I really think the ilovebeer content should get seperated fully onto a different site. Go to the recent changes pages for the last couple of days, we're accumulating almost as much info on the parody than the real puzzle. This is going to get confusing, especially to anyone new to the ARG. --UserGunsmithCat 20:12, 7 Aug 2004 (PDT)

Fake email from danatwing@yahoo.com

Delivered-To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
Received: by 10.38.162.3 with SMTP id k3cs1098rne;
        Fri, 6 Aug 2004 09:02:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.38.179.35 with SMTP id b35mr499988rnf;
        Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:01:58 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <danatwing@yahoo.com>
Received: from web51701.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.38.219])
        by mx.gmail.com with SMTP id 72si32413rna;
        Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:00:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <20040806160007.97909.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com>
Received: from [149.166.51.61] by web51701.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:00:07 PDT
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 09:00:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dana Twing <danatwing@yahoo.com>
Subject: Help!
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Everybody seems to be trying to reset my gmail
password and now I can't login...can you help by
telling people to stop?
-d.


                
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Comments: A reverse lookup on the IP address in the Received headers show this is from Indiana, not . Although the body sounds plausible, Dana has been able to send from her gmail account. Finally, if it were true, her blog would be a much more logical place to post the request.

I'm slightly concerned/annoyed - AFAIK, my address is only posted on this wiki, so whoever sent this went to a bunch of trouble on the off chance this would confuse us. -UserKoi


Email from danabee777@hotmail.com

I need to get out of here, she doesnt know what she is doing. I'm back in the states now, in my profile you will find my locaton. cant make thislong. she is coming

>From: "jonathan abe-perreira" <hpone@hotmail.com>
>To: <danabee777@hotmail.com>
>Subject: hi i think i can help
>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:02:21 -1000
>

I need to get out of here, she doesnt know what she is doing. I'm back in the states now, in my profile you will find my locaton. cant make thislong. she is coming


www.drdrater.com

Some of the axon pay phones -- including, notably, those shown on the G4TechTV coverage of the phones in Santa Monica -- had stickers on them for this web site. The site owner has confirmed that there is no connection to ILB. In addition, the site tries to download trojan viruses, and if you call the telephone number listed under "Contact Me" you will be left on hold and charged $2.99 per minute. Stay away! -- TheShadow 23:39, 29 Aug 2004 (PDT)