A small prank taken too seriously, now i'm told there will be legal sanctions.

A few days ago, 24th of may, I've played a small prank on the game site "www.thehunter.com"

I've played around with their public API (api.thehunter.com) that allows the user to interact with the game through web requests. This ranges from getting a list of server, to getting information on your latest hunts.

However during this time, i also found that you could change memberships, corrupt accounts and remove photos. After finding, and REPORTING, these problems one by one, they responded by elimenating the seperate problem, while leaving the larger issue alone. The API was fully public, and noone seemed to just give the list of commands a quick check for anything wierd.

Last weekend i found a simple command to post a new Splash, or news item, on their game site. Hoping to enterain the players a little, while breaking a little more attention to the lax stance on security to the devs, i posted a picture of a T-rex.

http://puu.sh/921KG/997eae35bc.jpg

Some forum topics arose, most finding it rather funny and a small amount of players wondering about the security of their data. After about 3 hours, the trex was removed, the command was removed and my game/forum accounts where banned (plus an ip ban on the forums).

I've later made a new forum account (using TOR) to post a quick explaination about how it was purely a joke and no harm was done. Including how the joke was done. As the command was gone anyways and it was purely to inform the players. Again, my account was instantly banned. I've repeated this once more to PM the community members instead of posting it.

This monday, the website made an official response: http://news.thehunter.com/t-rex-on-thehunter-com-what-really-happened/

Mentioning legal actions, I wanted to get some advise on what i should do, or expect.

To be clear, I have not worked around any security or broke anything. Compare it to posting a command on a webpage. It was a public api, which allowed anyone to post a splash image. Also, the Forum ToS where not broken as i did not post any "abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country, the country where “theHunter Forums” is hosted or International Law."

I hope someone can help me out with this,

zeroZshadow The Netherlands

EDIT: you can find the Terms of Service here, http://www.thehunter.com/landing/