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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

#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 very unsurprising (if disappointing) that they would ignore his complaint.

The only compelling reason to disbelieve anything is the whole home address discovery thing, which does seem very strange. Although it's possible that there was some convenient coincidence that permitted the identification, probably that part of the story was embellished or false somehow. (edit: After looking at replies, I changed my mind, I think it's more likely mostly true. There's a lot of plausible avenues of discovery given the length of the alleged abuse.)

The rest, however, seems very conventional and I don't see a good reason to disbelieve it.

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

#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 where an IP is being used with a high degree of confidence. If the parents were indeed friends of the victim, any email correspondence sent from their home connection would include their IP in the headers.

The biggest flaw however is that there is no plausible motive given for the victim to lie. Sure, it's possible that he lied, but why would he?

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

#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.

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

#5
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…

One plausible scenario for the IP address is that he had comments from his friend on his blog, and then baited the troll to also comment there. The IP addresses would then be identical, providing the identification. Dynamic IP addresses would pose a problem, but most broadband has (semi-)fixed addresses, and even dynamic addresses would come from the same range so could be enough to trigger a hunch.

Rather than embellished, I'd more easily suspect the story of being selective. I just can't imagine someone not expressing anger when confronted with someone who harassed you.

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

#8

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.

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

#9

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…

Well perhaps it's just as much a flaw that there wasn't really a motive for the troll. I think it's very likely that something is missing from the story to explain why he was targeted in particular.
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