June 06, 2005

A Word About Identity Theft

By Demosophist

Someone in the comments section of several of my posts has been impersonating me by posting in my name. The fellow also posts under other names, including "Cornell," and his IP address is listed as 207.69.138.6 . This is a Redhat Linux test page for the Apache server, so it appears that whoever the imposter is he has enough savvy to also fake his IP address Here's what Austin Bay said recently about "identity theft," one of the primary reasons he gives for instituting a cumbersome system of comment moderation:

Identity theft (a noxious act committed by one young man earlier this week) is an out and out crime– and in this case not only a crime against specific people, but an attack on free speech. Why? The identity crook who steals another’s name and fakes a post is attempting to silence others by intimidation and slander. It’s Internet brownshirt activity– a step beyond vandalism.

One step closer, in other words, in the direction of the very kind of evil that we're currently fighting a war to stop. In fact, it's entirely possible that the imposter is a jihadist or jihadist sympathizer. I will do my best to monitor comments to my posts and to delete and block imposters, but if this is part of a pattern rather than an isolated incident it might be advisable to consider a more formal method of comment moderation. Ultimately, of course, that decision is up to Rusty, but there's probably a good reason why the more popular blogs have installed these controls.
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Yips from Rusty, with apologies to Llama Butchers for stealing schtick: Yeah, as soon as we upgrade to a version of MT (that's Moveable Type, the program I use to create this blog) that doesn't require 13 hamsters running frantically (17 on heavy posting days) for power, we're going to go with comment registration.

By Demosophist at 11:38 PM | |