I’m sad to see the events as they unfolded on ratebeer.com recently. First a few weeks or months back, upon visiting the site, Firefox started warning of script redirects. If you wanted to still use RateBeer, you could, but only by ignoring the issues the site was experiencing, or by protecting yourself by antiscripting tools (e.g. the noscript plugin for Firefox) and/or great anti-virus tools. Sigh. Then yesterday, and a day or so before that, each beer listed would run a redirect script upon clicking. For the unprotected, it was more than just a nuisance — it was a threat. For the protected, the site became virtually unusable unless you starting typing in missing parts of URLs stripped by the antiscripting tools. Sigh again.
RateBeer shelf tags were perhaps the first way that I began to discover great beer, and I still use them today. I’m sad to say that it looks like that particular tool and its era are probably gone. The site currently reads:
RateBeer Security Timeout: I need some help!
So far I haven’t found a soul who can help. If you can help, please shoot me an email at joet @ ratebeer.com. I have recently been laid off, so I am a bit on the hurting for cash side. Anyone who can help here would be greatly appreciated. PayPal donations to joet@ratebeer.com would be greatly appreciated.Cheers,
Joep.s. thanks for all your support and understanding. 82 was compromised so it was closed.
Address : http://www.ratebeer.com/
Sorry to hear it Joe. Things are tough all over.
John.
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BeerCritic 
latest update:
RateBeer Security Timeout
Thank you!
The community response has been overwhelming. Thanks to all of you who sent us help, beer (yeah!), offered advice, sent us your hard earned dollars, pounds, crowns, pesos and euros, offered help, words of encouragement, and simply toasted us all here in the trenches. We are now very close to meeting today’s goals of having a plan and the money to execute it.
I hope we can be back in a limited way in less than three days but this is really up to our security advisor. I want to be absolutely certain we’re offering our users a safe environment before we open our doors. I’ll send updates here and to the ratebeer community at facebook.
cheers,
Joe
Donations: joet@ratebeer.com
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/ema/index-outside
Cheers,
Joe
p.s. thanks for all your support and understanding. 82 was compromised so it was closed.
Comment by lemasney 11/05/2008 @ 3:34 AMIts November 22 now and after a couple of days of up and running, Ratebeer doesn’t exist??? And I among others put in numerous ratings which I couldn’t while they were originally down.
Comment by Jim Hilt 11/22/2008 @ 11:28 PMAny word?
Wow, when i saw it up again, I figured it was up again for good. Looks like bad news for ratebeer. Sad, for sure.
Comment by lemasney 11/24/2008 @ 2:12 AM