Marco Marsala of Italy posted a cry for help on the Server Fault forum earlier this week. He claimed he accidentally erased all the data on his servers including backups. StackOverflow, which runs the forum, said Friday it had been a hoax. It pointed to an Italian news report that describes it as a marketing effort to promote Marsala’s company. The story was picked up by major news outlets and prompted a string of responses, some sympathetic and others less so so. “You’re going out of business. You need to call your lawyer,” one person wrote.”]