Blogger meets his Troll

BaZmO* · 25-09-2012 11:02pm

asherbassad wrote: »

Pretty scummy attitude there pal. Internet harassment is a serious problem and your comments, considering the number of victims (many of them young girls) who commit suicide as a result of cyber-bullying, show a distinct callousness and lack of understanding.

What on earth are you talking about?

gronemeyer · 25-09-2012 11:09pm

Scioch wrote: »

Wouldnt be surprised if this guy has a screenplay of this ready to go as soon as he's drummed up enough publicity.

It sounds more worthy of a feature film, if only he could throw aliens and explosions in, to make it more believable...

dlofnep · 25-09-2012 11:12pm

Internet addict, living in Ireland? He surely posts on AH. Come forth little one and show yourself!

Scioch · 25-09-2012 11:19pm

dlofnep wrote: »

Internet addict, living in Ireland? He surely posts on AH. Come forth little one and show yourself!

I say he who smelt it, dealt it.

Zab · 25-09-2012 11:38pm

say_who_now? wrote: »

This alone tells me the guy made the whole thing up. My IP resolves to Dublin or Galway depending which provider I'm connected to at any part of the day and I'm rarely ever in either county, so the "IT guru/genius/whatever" would've had to hack the IP's ISP database to pin down the exact address of the account holder, which while in itself is not impossible- it's certainly illegal!
:

If one of my friends was using an IP address there's a good chance I'd be able to work out who. There are definitely realistic ways that the computer friend could have tracked down who the IP address belonged to without resorting to the ISP's logs. I don't know if the story is true or not, but he isn't writing a technical account of how he tracked the troll down so it shouldn't be taken as such.

anncoates · 25-09-2012 11:45pm

What happened to the old fashioned abduct him.and break.his legs resolution?

delta36 · 26-09-2012 12:06am

Holy motherf****** s**t balls.

I can't believe the blogger reacted so calmly to the guy at the end. Fair play to him.

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 7:39am

Zab wrote: »

If one of my friends was using an IP address there's a good chance I'd be able to work out who. There are definitely realistic ways that the computer friend could have tracked down who the IP address belonged to without resorting to the ISP's logs. I don't know if the story is true or not, but he isn't writing a technical account of how he tracked the troll down so it shouldn't be taken as such.

Mmhmm, time to get up for breakfast Walter. He ain't no Tom Clancy or Michael Crighton anyway, that's for sure! :rolleyes:

PogMoThoin · 26-09-2012 8:22am

Zab wrote: »

If one of my friends was using an IP address there's a good chance I'd be able to work out who

Nonsense, unless you have access to the ISP database cross referencing the exact time it's not possible. And that only pinpoints the router, not the user

suicide_circus · 26-09-2012 8:44am

No more than anyone using twitter deserves.

gandalf · 26-09-2012 8:56am

Fair play to Leo, if I was in his shoes I don't think I would have been capable of showing any mercy at all.

26-09-2012 9:14am

Zab wrote: »

If one of my friends was using an IP address there's a good chance I'd be able to work out who. .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW7Op86ox9g

dlofnep · 26-09-2012 9:51am

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nonsense, unless you have access to the ISP database cross referencing the exact time it's not possible. And that only pinpoints the router, not the user

Well, you could always enumerate the system itself

You wouldn't need any information from the ISP.

UCDVet · 26-09-2012 10:24am

I have to agree with others - it really sounds like a made up story that didn't happen; IMHO.

It wouldn't be hard to get the trolls IP address, assuming they weren't going to great lengths to hide it. Sending an e-mail will include the origination IP or getting them to visit a website you control. Easy enough.

Taking an IP address and matching it to an address? Very difficult. The location based 'estimates' you see on websites are just that, estimates, based off lookup tables.

http://html5demos.com/geo shows a location 3km north of where I am.
http://www.whereisip.net/ shows a location 4km northeast of where I am.

I can conceive of an elaborate system where, if he suspected his friends, he could make individual posts on something like Facebook that each was only visible to one friend that included a unique link to a website. Each friend that clicked on it would then provide him with a friend -> IP mapping. Then he could compare that to the IP of the troll and realize it was the same as a friend.

But it's a real stretch to see that happening.

And even then - it wouldn't identify which family member it was. In fact, it wouldn't identify anything more than someone had access to one of their computers. It's just as likely (in this world of super hax0rs and evil trolls) that the troll HACKED into his friends home computer.

But no, this guy managed to track down the troll and comes to discover his parents *think* he's an evil bastard who would do those things; with no evidence of it. Then, they setup a 'sting' operation - where the kid breaks down, cries, confesses....

And the kids OWN PARENTS want to involve the law; but not this kind hearted old man, who did nothing wrong, but was still persecuted, out-witted his foe, and then showed compassion and love.

Seems fishy to me.

scamalert · 26-09-2012 10:49am

Its easy to terrorize someone,or get into fights over twitter facebook or forums,ive myself insulted people,and even got called to meet face to face.End story in most cases i did apologize if i was wrong or to rude,or ignored and moved on.And the reality is like the OP described all the abuse mostly comes from sitting behind the screen,until you realize the person on the other end could snap your neck as easily as a match

darraghdoyle · 26-09-2012 11:00am

Jaysis Boardsies, some of yis are fierce cynical altogether.

If this is made up, then Leo's gone to a hell of a lot of effort... for what? A bit of traffic to his blog?

I don't know the guy - follow him on twitter and Google+ - and have followed this story for a while now. If it is a set up, it's one of the most elaborate for the sake of a few blog hits I've seen in ages.

On Google+ - he posted this on August 15 https://plus.google.com/108745413579513709888/posts/d3gnZf7Df7M

and then followed up with this https://plus.google.com/108745413579513709888/posts/HtkfTsbSk8n

in case you can't see the image, here's what he was sent

then he came back August 16 https://plus.google.com/108745413579513709888/posts/3rXfHSHNJJd

then September 20 https://plus.google.com/108745413579513709888/posts/ScM6J9AWy34

and a follow up https://plus.google.com/108745413579513709888/posts/NNoM7dGHWvG

So if he's lying, he's gone to a lot of effort to make it look authentic...

dr.bollocko · 26-09-2012 11:06am

I just think the manner in which he indicated he located his troll sounds like BS.

The internet law of proof or GTFO applies here IMO.

Gordon · 26-09-2012 11:09am

dr.bollocko wrote: »

I just think the manner in which he indicated he located his troll sounds like BS.

The internet law of proof or GTFO applies here IMO.

Pretty easy I'd imagine, just create a tracking image and set up a trap for him somehow, I've done it myself on someone.

It's not something you would want to prove, as it would give the game away.

dr.bollocko · 26-09-2012 11:11am

Gordon wrote: »

Pretty easy I'd imagine, just create a tracking image and set up a trap for him somehow, I've done it myself on someone.

It's not something you would want to prove, as it would give the game away.

So you can get the IP address... But from that then the home address?

Gordon · 26-09-2012 11:24am

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Gordon wrote: »

Pretty easy I'd imagine, just create a tracking image and set up a trap for him somehow, I've done it myself on someone.

It's not something you would want to prove, as it would give the game away.

So you can get the IP address... But from that then the home address?

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

Sykk · 26-09-2012 11:37am

say_who_now? wrote: »

Turns out this guy isn't half fond of bigging himself up-

http://www.traynorseye.com/2012/08/men-of-letters.html

knob! :rolleyes:

What a disgusting person...

Reminds me of someone who posts their every experience on Facebook, but only he's talking even more garbage. Didn't know that was possible!

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 11:41am

darraghdoyle wrote: »

Jaysis Boardsies, some of yis are fierce cynical altogether.

If this is made up, then Leo's gone to a hell of a lot of effort... for what? A bit of traffic to his blog?

I don't know the guy - follow him on twitter and Google+ - and have followed this story for a while now. If it is a set up, it's one of the most elaborate for the sake of a few blog hits I've seen in ages.

So if he's lying, he's gone to a lot of effort to make it look authentic...

It's less of a stretch to imagine the trouble he went to Darragh than it is to imagine he was able to LEGALLY obtain the person's home address, much less that the Gardai did not take his claims seriously. As has been posted in the thread already, the Gardai take this kind of thing VERY seriously if it's reported to them. I can only imagine as has been posted on this site before that Dav has a stack of court orders re: disclosure of posters personal details to deal with every day.

In just the blog entry that I posted in this thread earlier, I was left wondering was the point of his "recording the conversation" more to do with the fact that the country was in the crapper, the fact his postman reads the letters section in the Irish Times to see do any of the people on his mail route write in, or that he just wanted to boast about his Doctorate?

I've rarely ever met my postman, let alone had so much as an exchange with him where I'd be able to wedge the fact I have a PhD into the conversation and expect him to give a damn!

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to garner attention for themselves, and most of the time these people are so full of their own self-importance that they will fabricate extraordinary stories and play them down to make themselves appear to be more interesting, to draw an audience in. Eventually they fabricate even more extraordinary stories to keep their audience interested, until the point where their stories are so far fetched that they are almost laughable because they are so ridiculous. I think that's all that's happened here.

The problem with what he's done is that you can only cry wolf once, so he should probably prepare himself for the comedown off the crest of the attention seeking wave he has created for himself.

dr.bollocko · 26-09-2012 11:41am

Gordon wrote: »

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

Legally..... potentially dodgy?

Should I fashion a tinfoil hat now or calmly move on with my life?

I am not saying it is impossible or anything. But his description of how it went down struck me as improbable.

That allied with the sudden popularity in the red tops of catching internet trolls for this and that made me think it was just too ... I dunno sketchy / incomplete to be anything but fiction.

Robbo · 26-09-2012 11:46am

This kind of story seemed to work well for Scott Templeton, can't see why it won't for this lad here.

Gordon · 26-09-2012 12:11pm

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Gordon wrote: »

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

Legally..... potentially dodgy?

Do you never get emails from companies that contain images? All of these are logging your ip address on their servers. It's possible (I'm not an expert on data and legal stuff like this though) that this info must be stored for a certain amount of time due to dpa. No, I can't imagine it's illegal. Happy to have an expert explain though!

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 12:15pm

Robbo wrote: »

This kind of story seemed to work well for Scott Templeton, can't see why it won't for this lad here.

Having just read the wiki on Scott Templeton, that is EXACTLY the type of individual I was referring to in my earlier post. I'll eventually get round to watching "The Wire" at some stage, my laundry guy raves about it! :pac: :rolleyes:

Thud · 26-09-2012 12:15pm

Gordon wrote: »

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

he got 3 addresses not just the home one:

"It transpired that the abuse had emanated from three separate IP addresses in different corners of Ireland. Two of them were public wifi locations but the third...."

Anyone see anyof the abusive tweets?

Hipster glasses wearing PR guy who likes self promotion....smells fishy

26-09-2012 12:18pm

Gordon wrote: »

Do you never get emails from companies that contain images? All of these are logging your ip address on their servers. It's possible (I'm not an expert on data and legal stuff like this though) that this info must be stored for a certain amount of time due to dpa. No, I can't imagine it's illegal. Happy to have an expert explain though!

Getting an IP address is trivial. Tracking that IP address to a real address is most definitely not

buck65 · 26-09-2012 12:29pm

Stay the **** off social network sites...apart from boards

kunst nugget · 26-09-2012 12:30pm

say_who_now? wrote: »

Having just read the wiki on Scott Templeton, that is EXACTLY the type of individual I was referring to in my earlier post. I'll eventually get round to watching "The Wire" at some stage, my laundry guy raves about it! :pac: :rolleyes:

Is this the laundry guy who read your letter in the Irish Times and made a quip about your doctorate?

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 12:39pm

Gordon wrote: »

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Gordon wrote: »

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

Legally..... potentially dodgy?

Do you never get emails from companies that contain images? All of these are logging your ip address on their servers. It's possible (I'm not an expert on data and legal stuff like this though) that this info must be stored for a certain amount of time due to dpa. No, I can't imagine it's illegal. Happy to have an expert explain though!

Nothing illegal about a company storing your IP address when you grant them permission to do so by agreeing to their terms and conditions. What IS illegal though is for an employee of that company to use your IP address for their own personal gain, and even at that, backtracing the route taken by the IP address will still only give you the address of the router, and if you can still manage to get past the router's firewall and get the internal IP address of a specific machine, unless you can correlate this information with the IP address of a personally identifiable twitter or facebook post (neither company will give out this information without a court order, and even then expect resistance!), you cannot say the person in that house was responsible. It's likely, but then you'd have to be able to produce evidence in court to back up that claim.

If the kid brazened it out, as the kids in the Phoebe Prince case did, then it would have been interesting to see how had it gone to court, this guy would be able to say with such confidence that he was able to obtain the kid's home address by "perfectly legal" means!

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 12:46pm

kunst nugget wrote: »

Is this the laundry guy who read your letter in the Irish Times and made a quip about your doctorate?

Nah KN, as luck would have it he found my certificate in the àrse pocket of my Louis Copeland tailored chinos! :pac:

scamalert · 26-09-2012 1:00pm

dr.bollocko wrote: »

I just think the manner in which he indicated he located his troll sounds like BS.

The internet law of proof or GTFO applies here IMO.

Maybe take a read on www.419eater.com/ the $hit people can do these days online with little knowledge.It amazes be that your a mod even here with such little IT knowledge,but maybe pressing ban button doesn't require much knowledge.

26-09-2012 1:21pm

scamalert wrote: »

Maybe take a read on www.419eater.com/ the $hit people can do these days online with little knowledge.It amazes be that your a mod even here with such little IT knowledge,but maybe pressing ban button doesn't require much knowledge.

Go on then so, use your superior IT knowledge to explain to us all exactly how he managed to convert an IP address to a specific house address

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 1:22pm

scamalert wrote: »

Maybe take a read on www.419eater.com/ the $hit people can do these days online with little knowledge. It amazes be that your a mod even here with such little IT knowledge,but maybe pressing ban button doesn't require much knowledge.

Absolutely agree with you there scamalert, like setting up multiple twitter and facebook accounts to spam yourself so that you can make yourself look interesting enough to write about it on your blog for attention sake requires no technical knowledge whatsoever.

What DOES require technical knowledge however, is the ability to illegally obtain a person's home address from their online activity.

One doesn't need to be a mechanic to drive a car.

kunst nugget · 26-09-2012 1:56pm

One other thing that strikes me as odd in this. If I had a friend who was an IT genius and he helped me find a troll using perfectly legal technology, I be shouting his name from the heavens as I gave him profuse thanks, i.e. 'If it wasn't for my friend, Mr. Mark E. Smith, an IT genius, I never would have caught this troll.'

Maybe that's just me though…

Fenian Army · 26-09-2012 2:02pm

What 17yo Irish kid says "thanks for giving me a break dude"

anyway, what a dick, should have posted his name and went to the garda

dr.bollocko · 26-09-2012 2:03pm

scamalert wrote: »

Maybe take a read on www.419eater.com/ the $hit people can do these days online with little knowledge.It amazes be that your a mod even here with such little IT knowledge,but maybe pressing ban button doesn't require much knowledge.

Did I ban you on this account? Or was it a previous account I banned you with? Or do you just hate all the mods?

I am not saying I don't believe it because it can't be done.

I have little interest in conversing with somebody who glosses over what I am actually asking just to get a petty dig in.

I am not referring to what can be done. I am familiar with the reality of what people can do with minimal information.

I am asking about this specific situation that the author of this blog describes where this white knight shows up and pulls a house address out of his hat in two sentences.

That's what I want more detail on.

What I am talking about is specifically getting your house address, exact location, from a dynamically assigned IP address with an expiring lease in a legal manner without requests from police to ISPs. That's what I am asking about.

And to be fair, even this would have required a situation where the police were contacted and ignored a death threat.

Zab · 26-09-2012 2:21pm

say_who_now? wrote: »

Mmhmm, time to get up for breakfast Walter. He ain't no Tom Clancy or Michael Crighton anyway, that's for sure! :rolleyes:

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nonsense, unless you have access to the ISP database cross referencing the exact time it's not possible. And that only pinpoints the router, not the user

You guys are being naive and seeing things too simply. If my friend uses Outlook to send email then his IP address will probably be in the header of his emails. Many instant messengers such as Skype also make direct connections. And that assumes I don't have access to the records of a website that people log in to (such as boards) or become more active by sending out emails like Gordon mentions (either with images or links).

These methods do only work out whose router it is, not the exact end user. It doesn't seem like too much of a leap for him to decide between his friend and his 17 year old son though, and perhaps he just talked to his friend about it. As I said he wasn't writing a technical description of how the tracking went.

I stand by my statement. If you give me an IP address being used by one of my friends I'll probably be able to work out who. Although there's no easily accessibly IP address-to-real-address database, IP addresses also aren't secrets.

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 2:23pm

Fenian Army wrote: »

What 17yo Irish kid says "thanks for giving me a break dude"

Because your stereotypical "opressed emo kid" takes out his frustrated angst on the internet, and talks "americanese", BUT, when shown the error of his ways, becomes all remorseful and repentant...

*fade to black*

A year later the kid is helping old grannies across the road and maintains a cheery disposition and cue a snapshot of the happy family that thanks to the bloggers intervention have been saved from the "evils" of technology!

*THE END*

26-09-2012 2:28pm

Zab wrote: »

You guys are being naive and seeing things too simply. If my friend uses Outlook to send email then his IP address will probably be in the header of his emails. Many instant messengers such as Skype also make direct connections. And that assumes I don't have access to the records of a website that people log in to (such as boards) or become more active by sending out emails like Gordon mentions (either with images or links).

These methods do only work out whose router it is, not the exact end user. It doesn't seem like too much of a leap for him to decide between his friend and his 17 year old son though, and perhaps he just talked to his friend about it. As I said he wasn't writing a technical description of how the tracking went.

I stand by my statement. If you give me an IP address being used by one of my friends I'll probably be able to work out who. Although there's no easily accessibly IP address-to-real-address database, IP addresses also aren't secrets.

For a home user, an IP address is leased by an ISP. You will only get the ISP's details from an IP address. That may be enough to narrow it down, if you only have no more than one friend in a city. In most cases, it will not be.

As I already stated, IP addresses are trivial to find, getting the corresponding real-world address is not

Zab · 26-09-2012 2:31pm

28064212 wrote: »

For a home user, an IP address is leased by an ISP. You will only get the ISP's details from an IP address. That may be enough to narrow it down, if you only have no more than one friend in a city. In most cases, it will not be.

As I already stated, IP addresses are trivial to find, getting the corresponding real-world address is not

Did you even read the post you quoted?

dr.bollocko · 26-09-2012 2:33pm

28064212 wrote: »

For a home user, an IP address is leased by an ISP. You will only get the ISP's details from an IP address. That may be enough to narrow it down, if you only have no more than one friend in a city. In most cases, it will not be.

As I already stated, IP addresses are trivial to find, getting the corresponding real-world address is not

I was thinking.. Say if you knew the ISP and it was a cable provider that would lower it down to areas of a city which were cable areas....

In some cases it might be possible to narrow it to a few particular areas. But even then that operates on a one friend per city routine.

26-09-2012 2:34pm

Zab wrote: »

Did you even read the post you quoted?

Yes. An IP address does not "work out whose router it is". The only way to get that information would be by accessing the ISP's database and finding out which customer had the lease on that particular IP at that particular time

say_who_now? · 26-09-2012 2:39pm

Zab wrote: »

I stand by my statement. If you give me an IP address being used by one of my friends I'll probably be able to work out who. Although there's no easily accessibly IP address-to-real-address database, IP addresses also aren't secrets.

No, you won't.

And there are plenty of easily accessible IP to real address databases, for COMPANY registered addresses, not so much for individuals.

With Outlook and Skype, you already know who the individual is, and it's not too hard to Google their name, but if they have any sense, they won't have put their home address on the internet, so that still leaves you the problem of tying their IP address to their home address, LEGALLY remember?

If I use my dear old nana's internet connection to access my fake twitter and facebook profiles and spam the hell out of yours, then fill your e-mail inbox with spam, good luck to you trying to prove it was me, whether by illegal or legal means.

Now who's being naive?

scamalert · 26-09-2012 2:41pm

28064212 wrote: »

Go on then so, use your superior IT knowledge to explain to us all exactly how he managed to convert an IP address to a specific house address

well he got a hit on one true ip address,the other two had to be close by,meaning same town,and if you hit locations like mcdonalds guards could easily ask to check cctv cameras at specific time the connection was used,if person suspects that its the same person, as originally his neighbors son was suspected and busted.And that's only one way of doing it.

gctest50 · 26-09-2012 2:41pm

28064212 wrote: »

The only way to get that information would be by accessing the ISP's database and finding out which customer had the lease on that particular IP at that particular time

And ISPs willingly let people poke around their database ?

What if he was behind seven proxies ?

Thud · 26-09-2012 2:46pm

scamalert wrote: »

well he got a hit on one true ip address,the other two had to be close by,meaning same town,and if you hit locations like mcdonalds guards could easily ask to check cctv cameras at specific time the connection was used,if person suspects that its the same person, as originally his neighbors son was suspected and busted.And that's only one way of doing it.

the guards wouldn't help him....or so he says

26-09-2012 2:48pm

scamalert wrote: »

well he got a hit on one true ip address,the other two had to be close by

What do you mean by a "true ip address"? He got an IP address. He had no way to resolve that to a real address

scamalert wrote: »

meaning same town,and if you hit locations like mcdonalds guards could easily ask to check cctv cameras at specific time the connection was used,if person suspects that its the same person, as originally his neighbors son was suspected and busted.And that's only one way of doing it.

Have you even read the original story? He claims to have traced a real-world address from a single IP address. That is not possible, unless the house has a business account, static IP and specifically registered that address as the owner of that IP. At a conservative estimate, perhaps 0.00001% of residential houses in the country would have that set-up

Again, outline the steps that he used to take an IP address and resolve it directly to a real-world residential address

26-09-2012 2:49pm

gctest50 wrote: »

And ISPs willingly let you poke around their database ?

What? I'm specifically saying the opposite

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