A series of malicious attacks impacted our Internet services, which in turn affected your ability to consistently use and enjoy IMVU. Over the past two weeks IMVU experienced some of its worst service outages in its nine-year history, with 15 to 80 minute outages occurring almost every other day.
We recognize our customers have many reasons for using IMVU, from lighthearted fun, expressing creativity, role-playing to making meaningful connections. Some people like meeting new people and having casual chats with them while others form and maintain deep and personal real-world relationships beyond IMVU. So many of the customer stories we hear and share with the rest of our team really touch our hearts. Many others depend on IMVU for generating real-world income by selling their products in our catalog. Whatever your reason, we know it is important and we understand the outages lead to a bad IMVU experience. We owe you a better experience and will keep working hard until we can reliably deliver on that promise.
The attacks used large numbers of computers to target our Internet connections, not our servers or internal networks. We can assure you that your personal and account information was never compromised. The attackers targeted IMVU but hurt many people including you (our customer), your friends that couldn't connect with you, our creators for which IMVU is a business and the families of our employees that have been missing their loved ones while they worked 24/7 to restore service to our customers.
We are serious in our response to the attacks, pursuing technical and legal solutions. We have had tired but determined teams working non-stop to fight and prevent additional attacks. Since the attacks qualify as a crime, law enforcement has started a criminal investigation.
Our Internet services have been fairly stable over the past few days and we are working hard to keep them that way. We realize we always have to earn the right to call you our customer and we hope you will give us the opportunity to provide the service you deserve. We are grateful for the customers that continued to stick with us through the tough times over the past two weeks. For those that have stepped away in frustration, we understand and hope you will let us welcome you back. We will be here waiting along with your friends.
Very Sincerely,