Latest news with #McEwan
9 News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- 9 News
From BookTok to New York Times bestseller: How Aussie teacher defied the odds
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here She'd spent the last few years working part-time while pursuing a writing career that had landed her on bestseller lists around the world. Passionate about education as well as authoring, she worked hard to juggle both careers. That ended in early 2025. Once a primary school teacher, now you can find Stacey McEwan's name on bestseller lists around the world. (Stacey McEwan/Facebook) "Due to the critical teacher shortage , I was told 'you either need to come back to teaching full time or you need to quit,'" McEwan told "So I quit the department altogether, and just went full throttle on authoring." Have you got a story? Contact reporter Maddison Leach at mleach@ Fortunately, her latest release A Forbidden Alchemy released to rave reviews in July and even earned a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. But McEwan is painfully aware that her success (and income) as an author is not guaranteed, even with one of the most powerful online communities behind her. Born and raised on the Gold Coast, McEwan spent 11 years in the classroom. She wrote fantasy novels on the side and tried getting a few published but was rejected again and again. "I didn't really know what I was doing," she admitted. McEwan spent years writing books and being rejected by publishers before her debut novel was picked up/ (Instagram/@staceymcewanbooks) The Australian publishing industry is highly competitive and the odds of a debut author's unsolicited submission actually being purchased for publication are low. Knowing that, McEwan focused on teaching until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Like millions of Aussies, she downloaded TikTok as a way to pass the time during lockdown and was immediately sucked into BookTok, the app's reading community. There she racked up thousands of followers "almost overnight". It was her husband who suggested she leverage that budding internet fame to self-publish her first novel, a fantasy book she'd already written. Instead, British-based publisher Angry Robot "swept in" and offered to buy it. McEwan planned to self-publish her first novel, Ledge, until a publisher "swept in" and offered her a book deal. (Stacey McEwan/Facebook) McEwan signed her first book deal and published her debut fantasy novel, Ledge , in 2021. Two sequels followed in 2023 and 2024. The Aussie mum of two admits she owes a lot of her initial success to TikTok and timing. "I'm not too proud to say that if I hadn't have put my idiot face online, that this wouldn't be happening right now," she said. There's no doubt the Angry Robot book deal was influenced by her BookTok popularity and the fact that she was pushing a romantasy (romance and fantasy) novel right as the genre was exploding. And romantasy is its hottest subgenre right now. "It was really just a case of perfect timing," McEwan said. Her first three novels became bestsellers, boosting her social profile even more. But in the age of online hate mobs and celebrity 'cancellations', being a big deal on social media doesn't always have a happy ending. All it takes is one move – legitimate, or perceived – for an author to get 'cancelled' these days. It can make the career feel precarious, especially for breakout authors like McEwan who owe so much of their fame to online popularity. McEwan signed her first book deal during the pandemic and is now a bestselling author. (Instagram/@staceymcewanbooks) "Being of any kind of public figure on social media feels a lot like putting your head on a chopping block and just hoping that no one swings the blade," she said. "It's the wild, wild west out there and one certainly does have to be careful." It's up to most authors to run their own social media accounts, promoting their books and interacting with fans while also making sure they don't say or do the wrong thing. Because being 'cancelled' can tank book sales and slash an author's income in an instant and most don't have huge advances or established fortunes to fall back on. "I got an advance for [my first book], but it was a small amount and it certainly wasn't anything that was going to set me up for the future," McEwan said. "I really had to rely on how well the book was going to sell." Back then she had her teaching career to fall back on but that's gone now. While she was still teaching part-time, McEwan landed a global deal with publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster for her next duology. The advance alone was enough to finance her for a year, so she took unpaid leave from teaching to write A Forbidden Alchemy. The novel follows Nina Harrow and Patrick Colson, childhood friends who find themselves on opposite sides of a war fuelled by class inequality. "I like the idea of the lower classes questioning why it is that they must remain so," McEwan said. McEwan took unpaid leave from teaching to write A Forbidden Alchemy. (Simon & Schuster) Months before it hit shelves, McEwan was told she had to go back to teaching full-time or quit altogether. She chose the latter and so far, it's been the right choice. McEwan just returned from the very successful US leg of her A Forbidden Alchemy book tour and you can walk into bookstores all over Australia and find her name staring back at you from the 'bestseller' shelves. "I have a lot of people that I went to school with, that I used to work with, past teachers, students, [and] employers going, 'what's happening?'" McEwan said. "'Is this you, or is this just someone with your name?' ... those reactions only fuel me." 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Scotsman
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Book Festival 2025: Here are 25 past Booker Prize nominees at this year's event
2 . Ian McEwan One of the greatest living writers – and a man who needs no introduction – Ian McEwan will appear during the 2025 Edinburgh International Book Festival ahead of the publication of his new novel, What We Can Know at McEwan Hall on Sunday, August 24. McEwan became a Booker Prize winner in 1998 for his novel Amsterdam and he is one of the few writers to have been nominated on six occasions. | Getty Images
The Advertiser
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Australia's enduring love affair with the US is at a critical point
Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation? Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation? Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation? Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
NZ Herald
15-06-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Mighty Ape boss fronts over glitch that saw some users logged into other users' accounts
Cooper was also annoyed that a make-good offer from Mighty Ape (which he had not received) of a $50.00 credit required a minimum $50.01 purchase. And that there was no option for a user to cancel their Mighty Ape account via the site's account management console (the option is available via chat or by phoning Mighty Ape). Mighty Ape's communication to affected customers on May 30, seven days after the incident. Image / Consumer NZ In a May 30 article, Consumer NZ strongly criticised Mighty Ape's initial communication to customers, which it saw as too scant in detail. It did not think the online retailer had taken accountability because it had called the incident a 'technical issue'. The publication said the incident should have been defined as a data breach, not an IT error. No one at Mighty Ape would confirm details of what happened, including whether users had in fact found themselves logged into each other's accounts. In a June 13 interview with McEwan (the earliest he was available after a June 6 request), the Herald asked, was the May 22 incident a privacy breach? 'Oh, absolutely,' McEwan replied. 'And we proactively and voluntarily reached out to the Privacy Commissioner to let them know what had occurred and to share with them the details of what had happened and make sure that the actions that we're taking were the right actions, including how we communicated to customers and how we've addressed the issue moving forward.' McEwan picture in Mighty Ape's warehouse in Silverdale, north of Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell What went wrong? 'We actually found that there was potential for people to be able to view other people's accounts. In this case, it affected 309 customers, and there was potential for them to then be able to view that account. 'I would definitely like to acknowledge the technical glitch that occurred. It was a caching issue. 'It affected a limited number of customers, and we take ownership for that and apologise for that, and we've been working forward with our customers to resolve any issues that may have happened.' 309 affected Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy told the Herald, 'It's clear that in some instances users had full access to other users' accounts and undertook activity with those accounts.' One had even made an order on another user's credit card - to see if that was possible - then immediately cancelled the transaction. 'Based on what we have seen, we would expect Mighty Ape's conversations with the OPC [Office of the Privacy Commissioner] to have also included formal notification of a privacy breach as required by the Act,' Duffy said. McEwan says Mighty Ape's upgrade, which began last October, has added many technology features from Kogan that will benefit customers, as well as the new Marketplace that lets third-parties sell via the site. Photo / Dean Purcell 'Unfortunately, Mighty Ape has only provided general details of what has occurred here, so it is difficult to understand the full scale of the breach and make a definitive call.' A spokeswoman for the Privacy Commissioner confirmed Mighty Ape had been in touch about the breach, but refused to say if it had reached the threshold for a formal notification. Mighty Ape has never previously defined the 'limited number' of users affected. McEwan told the Herald it was 309. Were the initial communications too vague? (The initial public communication, and all public communications since, has made no mention of users' being able to log into other users' accounts.) 'We were quite broad in our statement, and then as we understood the issue further, we went back to those customers that were actually affected, to provide them further information and reassurance,' McEwan said. 'Absolutely we've taken ownership of it. We've contacted all those customers affected. In fact, initially, we over-communicated. 'We went out to a much broader group than what, as we investigated, was a limited number affected. It affected 309 customers, and there was potential for them to view other people's accounts.' But it wasn't just potential, was it? They found themselves logged into other users' accounts. They actually were logged into other users' accounts, the Herald said. 'Yep, that's correct,' McEwan replied. The MD said follow-up communications were full and frank, but were narrowcast to only the affected customers. Don't downplay an incident, expert says Privacy expert Frith Tweedie, a former EY partner, technology lawyer and now principal at Simply Privacy, offered more detail on what constitutes a data breach under the Privacy Act 2020 - but added that any organisation involved in a possible data breach had to consider reputational issues as much as the letter of the law. 'The definition of a 'privacy breach' is broad and it's important to understand that they don't only occur in your classic 'hacker in a hoodie' type scenarios,' Tweedie said. 'What matters is that unauthorised people were able to access other users' personal information [in the Mighty Ape incident], which counts as a 'privacy breach' under the Privacy Act. 'When an organisation gives incomplete information, it creates unnecessary anxiety and makes people feel like their privacy isn't being taken seriously" - Simply Privacy principal Frith Tweedie. 'The reported access to names, contact details, order history and even partial payment information makes it hard to argue that serious harm wasn't at least possible, which would make this a 'notifiable privacy breach'.' Tweedie added, 'Responding to a privacy or data breach isn't just a legal issue, it's also about trust'. 'People understand that mistakes happen, but they want fast, clear and direct communication when things do go wrong. 'When an organisation delays acknowledging a breach, or gives incomplete information, it creates unnecessary anxiety and makes people feel like their privacy isn't being taken seriously.' Should Mighty Ape have been taken offline? Consumer NZ said Mighty Ape should have taken its website offline until the breach was resolved - pointing to the action taken by gaming platform Steam in 2015. McEwan said there was no need to take the website down as it had contained the issue within two hours. Under new management ASX-listed Australian online retailer Kogan bought Mighty Ape for A$122.4 million ($128.3m) in 2020. As part of the deal, the site's founder, Simon Barton, and his immediate team stayed on until 2023. There's been a flurry of leadership changes since with three chief executives departing since the deal - most recently Daniel Balasoglou in February this year. Mighty Ape's website now has the same look design (if different branding) as its Australian parent and Dick Smith, whose online operations were also bought by Kogan. The upgrade that began in October was designed to introduce more under-the-bonnet Kogan systems. It also added a key new service, Mighty Ape Marketplace, which lets third-party retailers sell their goods via Mighty Ape. Glitch slashes Christmas season earnings In a half-year results investor presentation, filed to the ASX on February 25, covering the six months to December 31 2024, Kogan said: 'In late October 2024, the Mighty Ape website underwent a major upgrade, introducing enhanced functionality ... Mighty Ape active customers declined following technical issues experienced as part of the Mighty Ape website upgrade. 'Many technical issues identified have been resolved, with a recovery of financial and operational performance expected in the second half of FY2025.' In the final two months of last year, Mighty Ape only just managed to squeak to a A$100,000 operating earnings profit. 'The technical issues saw adjusted ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation] reduce by 96.2% on the previously comparable period over the November and December 2024 peak sales period,' Kogan's filing said. Revenue fell 22.1% to A$30m over the two months. 'The team has been diagnosing and remedying many of the major issues, with some work yet to go. We expect to resolve all major issues in the coming period,' the filing said. It added that McEwan would be taking over from Balasoglou in a 'leadership change'. Balasoglou, who led Mighty Ape for less than a year, had a financial officer background, most recently as Lotto NZ's CFO. McEwan has had a career in logistics, including general manager of operations roles for DHL NZ and Ingram Micro NZ (which distributes products for Apple, Cisco, Nvidia and other big tech names. Upgrade blues continued In a May 20, 2025 business update filing to the ASX, offering a general business update for the quarter to April 30, Kogan said: 'Mighty Ape continued to be impacted by technical challenges following the website platform upgrade announced in February 2025, which affected sales performance and inventory levels. 'Throughout the period, the team progressively resolved several stability issues and gradually progressed towards restoring marketing efficiency. 'Early signs of recovery are evident, with gross sales showing positive momentum driven by the Mighty Ape Marketplace scaling rapidly since launch. 'Over the coming months, Mighty Ape will continue to right-size inventory levels. The company expects Mighty Ape to return to profitable trading performance in FY26.' McEwan said the upgrade had added many features from Kogan that would benefit customers and make the site more efficient, and that the new Marketplace feature let small retailers reach Mighty Ape's large-scale audience. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner confirmed Mighty Ape had been in touch to discuss the issue, but would not comment on whether a formal data breach notification had been warranted. Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald's business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
Glasgow Times
21-05-2025
- Glasgow Times
Glasgow man stopped in Audi had cocaine in underpants
Greig McEwan was stopped by police in his grey Audi around 10.30pm near Freelands Crescent, Old Kilpatrick a year ago. Officers went to speak to the 25-year-old and noticed he was nervous and placed his hands on the front of his trousers. They formed the opinion he was in possession of drugs. An initial cursory search failed to turn up anything but then they noticed a bag on the floor. A full search at Clydebank police office found six knotted bags in the front of his underwear. There were another four in the rear. They tested positive for cocaine and the total value was £160. McEwan, of McIntyre Street, Anderston, Glasgow, later pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of the class A drug on April 5, 2024. At Dumbarton Sheriff Court on May 13, Sheriff Lorna Anderson ordered him to do 135 hours of unpaid work in the community within nine months. She added that would allow "wriggle room" if he got work offshore.
