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Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

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Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#31

Post by woodchuck64 »

Strange logic or comprehension problem. How did the author go from "does not work in all cases" to does not work at all? Is he really ready to stake his reputation on the claim that an IP address can NEVER lead to an individual's home address?

"(NOTE: this does not work in all cases but even a general location is a piece in the puzzle when tracking a troll.) The late addition of this note to ‘Tracking a troll’ only confirms what has just been explained in this article – that an IP address does not enable you to identify an individual’s home address. An author whose article was specifically referenced by Traynor as ’proof’ of his home address claim, has had to admit that the method given in his article does not actually allow you to identify someone’s home address"

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#32

Post by jerrya »

bduerst wrote: post #28
jerrya wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a "dynamic" IP address from Cox, it has changed three times in six years.

Anecdotal, but did you request the static IP? I can't imagine Cox handing those out like Pez.

I think that's the point.

Cox (and my understanding many other ISPs as well) CHARGE for static IPs, but give out dynamic IPs that basically never change because it is actually just easier for them to set the service up that way.

The few times the IP address changed was when they did an upgrade at their site, a very long outage, and I think a time when an installer screwed up a neighbors installation.

I cannot guarantee my address tonight will be what it is now, but the reality is, it will be.

I believe (stress no real evidence of this) that my home router tries to give out the same IP addresses to the same MAC addresses. I say this because after I reboot the router, my various machines will pop up at the same IP addresses they had before (and none of them are Apple products known to do this on purpose.)

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#33

Post by gojomo »

btilly wrote: post #16
mquander wrote: post #2

"Almost certainly" seems like a stretch. - The arguments regarding Traynor's behavior on Twitter carry absolutely no water with me and sound like totally average behavior. It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you. - Police in America frequently decline to investigate things like harassment and petty theft in favor of spending their time elsewhere. I don't know about Ireland, but it seems ve…

It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you. But after you've received some hate messages, it also sounds like the kind of thing that you'd learn pretty quickly. In other words if you're making up a story, it is the kind of detail that you'd not noticed you'd gotten wrong. But if you're actually harassed, it is the kind of thing that wouldn't keep happening to you for years. Seems like a good…

It looks to me like Traynor understood that the follow-backs enabled the DMs, but resisted changing his behavior (at first) to not let the troll win. If the follow-backs sometimes led to nice exchanges with new friends, it's reasonable to hope the troll would tire, or that handling via unfollow/Twitter-reporting would be enough, before going full "shields up".

The way Traynor describes it, after he eventually went fully private on Twitter, the harassment moved to other forums.

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#34

Post by woodchuck64 »

btilly wrote: post #16
mquander wrote: post #2

"Almost certainly" seems like a stretch. - The arguments regarding Traynor's behavior on Twitter carry absolutely no water with me and sound like totally average behavior. It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you. - Police in America frequently decline to investigate things like harassment and petty theft in favor of spending their time elsewhere. I don't know about Ireland, but it seems ve…

It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you. But after you've received some hate messages, it also sounds like the kind of thing that you'd learn pretty quickly. In other words if you're making up a story, it is the kind of detail that you'd not noticed you'd gotten wrong. But if you're actually harassed, it is the kind of thing that wouldn't keep happening to you for years. Seems like a good…

> But after you've received some hate messages, it also sounds like the kind of thing that you'd learn pretty quickly.

He can't know in advance if he has a troll following him, and he likes to reciprocate followers. Should he, in a sense, penalize followers because of a troll?

I don't see anything in the original story about the delay between July 2009 and making his twitter account private. Is there anything to think it was years rather than weeks?

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#35

Post by gojomo »

Evbn wrote: post #8
bithive123 wrote: post #3

The author of this article is almost certainly trolling. It's perfectly logical that the victim would change his Twitter behavior even after discovering the identity of the harasser. If your car were stolen but then recovered and the thief arrested, would you stop locking it? After all, the threat has been eliminated... Just because you cannot traceroute an IP to a physical address doesn't mean you can't determine wh…

0. He didn't change his behavior during the abuse, when he could have trivially stopped it by unfollowing. If your car was stolen, would you keep the loaner unlocked before your car was even recovered? 1. Only if they use non webmail 2. To sell a story. The default assumption should always be that tales like this are false or at least extremely embellished.

Traynor did change his behavior: but when he unfollowed one account, another took its place. It took him a while to change his habit of an optimistic follow-back -- if some of his follow-backs resulted in pleasant exchanges with new friends, why wouldn't he try to outlast the troll for a while? -- but it's clear he eventually did.

And Traynor reports that when he made his Twitter account private, the harassment moved to other forums: Facebook, blog comments, email.

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#36

Post by aidenn0 »

bduerst wrote: post #28
jerrya wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a "dynamic" IP address from Cox, it has changed three times in six years.

Anecdotal, but did you request the static IP? I can't imagine Cox handing those out like Pez.

I have cox as well and my IP only changes when:

1) My cable modem has been offline for a while (e.g. power failure) 2) My subnet changes, which has happened twice in 6 years.

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#37

Post by Zuider »

mquander wrote: post #2

"Almost certainly" seems like a stretch. - The arguments regarding Traynor's behavior on Twitter carry absolutely no water with me and sound like totally average behavior. It's not very intuitive that only people you follow can message you. - Police in America frequently decline to investigate things like harassment and petty theft in favor of spending their time elsewhere. I don't know about Ireland, but it seems ve…

In reference to your second point, racially motivated crime is taken very seriously in Ireland.

Traynor was apparently subjected to sustained and horrific racial abuse based on his being Jewish. There has been an escalation of attacks on Jews in Europe by Islamists and neo-Nazi groups. This, combined with death threats and the fact that the abuser knew where Traynor lived would very definitely attract the full attention of the law.

There is either a problem with the police here, or with the story.

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#38

Post by InclinedPlane »

bduerst wrote: post #4

The only strong case here is in the IP address geo-identification. Traynor could identify them if he were to cross validate the IP address location with a list of known friends and family - people of whom would have Traynor's personal address. But Traynor should have suspected his friend - not his friend's teenage son. That's the part of the story that doesn't add up.

"But Traynor should have suspected his friend - not his friend's teenage son. That's the part of the story that doesn't add up."

Really? He should suspect his friend that he knows intimately rather than his friend's teenage son which he doesn't know very well and is of an age to be up to mischief? In what universe does that line of reasoning make sense?

Re: Why Leo Traynor’s troll story may be a lie

#40

Post by Torgo »

jerrya wrote: post #21

Just to add a bit more fuel to the fire, while a reasonable skepticism should always be well, reasonable, I think it takes a lot of chutzpah to so directly out and out call this fake given the sparsity of the argument as it is. Compare this to skepticism over ElevatorGate. FWIW, here's a woman at skepchick expressing doubt that Leo even exists: http://skepchick.org/2012/10/leo-traynor-anti-semitism-and-t...

Someone should send her a link to Derailing for Dummies. Questioning his account of the events is dangerously close to blaming the victim, derailing the argument from the cause discussing anti-Semitism, and forms a pattern of discouragement against people who come forward as the victims of trolling. This is NOT ok.
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