yahoo! was severely criticized for sending out yahoo! t-shirts as reward to the security researchers for finding and reporting security vulnerabilities in yahoo!, sparking what came to be called "t-shirt-gate". high-tech bridge, a geneva, switzerland-based security testing company issued a press release saying yahoo! offered $12.50 in credit per vulnerability, which could be used toward yahoo-branded items such as t-shirts, cups and pens from its store. ramses martinez, director of yahoo's security team claimed later in a blog post that he was behind the voucher reward program, and that he basically had been paying for them out of his own pocket. eventually, yahoo! launched its new bug bounty program on october 31 of the same year, that allows security researchers to submit bugs and receive rewards between $250 and $15,000, depending on the severity of the bug discovered.