Tracing Abusive IP Address

jokerhigh

I have recently been pestered with abusive and threatening messages on my MySpace account, the messages were extremely personal and whoever was behind them knew me very well and they were quite vicious and malicious.

This has left me a bit traumatised and obviously I would like to know who is behind this. How can I go about finding out who is behind it? I have tried mailing Myspaces technical support but 3 days later I am still awaiting a response.

Is there anyway I can trace the IP address of the Myspace profile involved and thus find the culprit as at the minute Myspace are of no help - or has anyone had any luck with this before?

Any help would be greatly appreciated in this instane.

Oriel

In my opinion, in a word, no.
Without myspace's help (which I don't think you'll get) it would require legal intervention to access logs.
Set up a website, and try to get the person to go to that website, then you'll stand more of a chance.

RoyalMarine

The only possible way to get the ip address that was used to create a profile is through myspace admin. They are the only ones who can tell you that. But, they wont.

the only instance where myspace will release that kind of information is through a court subpoena. and i dont think your gonna go down that road.

personally id set my profile to private, and remove anyone i dont know on my myspace and only keep your friends who you know are your friends as listed to post comments and view the profile.

thats why they created the "make my myspace private"

jokerhigh

Thanks for the input guys, really appreciate it!

Obviously I'm not going to make a big deal over this unless it were to continue and get threatening, I have currently that profile in particular blocked so hopefully that will be the end of it, it is however frustrating not knowing who it was.

Guess I'll just wait and see what, if anything, MySpace does..

Thanks for the heads up!

Oriel

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

The only possible way to get the ip address that was used to create a profile is through myspace admin. They are the only ones who can tell you that. But, they wont.

the only instance where myspace will release that kind of information is through a court subpoena. and i dont think your gonna go down that road.

personally id set my profile to private, and remove anyone i dont know on my myspace and only keep your friends who you know are your friends as listed to post comments and view the profile.

thats why they created the "make my myspace private"

That's pretty much exactly what I said, except your way isn't going to find out who's sending the messages.
OP, set up some form of a trap, and reply to the myspace poster, and get them to visit the trap. That way, you'll be able to get their ip address. That will be a start at least.

RoyalMarine

Oriel wrote: »

That's pretty much exactly what I said, except your way isn't going to find out who's sending the messages.
OP, set up some form of a trap, and reply to the myspace poster, and get them to visit the trap. That way, you'll be able to get their ip address. That will be a start at least.

going down the line of getting somoene to log onto a website which is set up to record their details without their consent is illegal afaik.

CelloPoint

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

going down the line of getting somoene to log onto a website which is set up to record their details without their consent is illegal afaik.

What law would that be?

I often sent hidden images in my emails to see when/if someone's read it.

I'm sure the Royal Marines Comms are no stranger to what really goes on on the internet.

layke

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

going down the line of getting somoene to log onto a website which is set up to record their details without their consent is illegal afaik.

No it's not to a certain extent, for example getting an IP address is not illegal. I have a web server that records every IP that comes it's way. Most in fact have some sort of logging system behind them.

The problem is even if you get the IP you then have to go to the ISP that owns it and ask them to chase it up. For example back home in Dublin I have a static IP, but when you look at the details you will only see my ISP not my personal info. In the end even if you get the IP (make sure you note the time and date of the message posted because it may be a dynamic address) you'll have to go to the Guards and lodge a complaint. My ISP will not give you personal details about me unless ordered to do so by a state official.

Swindon

CelloPoint wrote: »

What law would that be?

I often sent hidden images in my emails to see when/if someone's read it.

I'm sure the Royal Marines Comms are no stranger to what really goes on on the internet.

How and why would u do that?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

You host the images locally on a server and link to them in the email.

The server will log when the image is accessed along with ip.

It's a technique often used by spammers to detect email accounts that are in use.

dave878

Try to befriend the person by pretending to be a very attractive member of the opposite sex and play it out over months.
in the end you may even get his/her name adddress, the whole lot.
much better that an IP address

If the Gardai get involved, he/she will very likely only get a warning and you will not find out who sent the messages, unless the threats were of a serious nature.

CptSternn

First, trying to find out who posted mean comments on your MySpace page is pointless. Even if they can trace it, if they use some web proxy like Anonysurf or some other free service, you will still find nothing.

Second, it's easy enough to delete them. You can moderate them yourself, and if you ever had to do it for a band on MySpace, you will be amazed at the number of really vulgar comments you have to remove almost daily.

I can tell you from personal experience. I even have death threats on my YouTube profile page (same username CptSternn - feel free to check them out) among other things that have been posted about me.

I kinda like 'em. Gives my profile character.

Besides, people who post nasty things from hidden IP's under fake monikers are not the people you have to worry about. It's the ones who catch you out in public and want to tell you how much they dislike you face to face that you have to be weary of.

Personally, if the person isn't man enough to do that, well, I'm not going to waste one minute of my time worrying about such a coward. Ya know?

Mach

You could always set a trap, set a e-mail account with gmail or some elses make it public and see if thsi person takes the bait and e-mail you. Then you'll have the IP address, and then do reverse IP lookup, and find out what ISP they are using.

aidan_walsh

Flaws in your plan:
1) Gmail doesn't give IP address information of senders.
2) Even if they did, you'd have the IP address of their SMTP server. Which would be useless.

Design_Dude

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Flaws in your plan:
1) Gmail doesn't give IP address information of senders.
2) Even if they did, you'd have the IP address of their SMTP server. Which would be useless.

With hotmail if you go the advanced tab, you can see the IP of the computer that the particular email was sent from:):)

CptSternn

If you REALLY want to track visitors, you can put a web bug on your profile.

Setup an account somewhere that allows you to track incoming IP's. If you have a website hosted somewhere, that is fine.

Then just use a graphic from that page in your profile. When you run your logs you will see who hit that image.

You can then track which IP's visited your profile, when, then match up the message time with it.

Of course this won't tell you exactly who it is, but you can see what country and ISP they are using.

You used to be able to track the user account as well before MySpace started encrypting their variables they pass from page to page.

There are a few scripts out there that claim to be able to decrypt these variables, but they only work for a few weeks until MySpace changes their algorithm.