{"id":5906,"date":"2013-07-05T15:08:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T05:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:29:28","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:29:28","slug":"when-blocking-a-troll-escalates-risk-of-troll-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/when-blocking-a-troll-escalates-risk-of-troll-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"When blocking a troll escalates risk of troll-harm: A @geeksrulz investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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@AuspolTrolls is featured here in the top row<\/p><\/div>\n

by Tony Yegles (The Geek)<\/p>\n

<\/a>5 July 2013<\/p>\n

In which my investigation into who is behind Twitter DIRTBOT accounts @LaborDirt and @ALPdirt and websites Labordirt.com<\/strong> and Twittertrolls.com\u00a0<\/strong>reveals a\u00a0series of inadvertent coincidences, happenstances and riddles wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do you do when you come across obnoxious online behaviour of the troll-abuser-defamer kind on Twitter or\u00a0other social media?\u00a0I have pondered this issue before<\/a>\u00a0and am now coming to the realisation that blocking and ignoring is no longer\u00a0the way to go.\u00a0Shining the bright light of public exposure might be a better way, and this\u00a0is what I am trying\u00a0to do in this post.\u00a0Here is a quick overview to get your bearings, as\u00a0this post is quite long.<\/p>\n

The Protagonists
\n<\/b>I discuss\u00a0the main protagonists as we know them –\u00a0people, Twitter\u00a0accounts, websites, apps –\u00a0and\u00a0the links and connections between them.<\/p>\n

The Sequence of Events<\/b>
\nI then\u00a0deal with the detailed sequence of events in terms of the many technical configuration\u00a0changes to establish\u00a0who did what when and potentially why. For this I use detailed historical records from domaintools.com<\/a>,\u00a0which has\u00a0an extensive\u00a0collection of domain name ownership records, as well as\u00a0Whois Lookup, Whois History, Reverse Whois, DNS & IP Tools and Topsy Twitter search engine.\u00a0Someone\u00a0made the decision, someone made the\u00a0changes and there is of course a reason behind the change.<\/p>\n

The troll attacks on me\u00a0<\/b>
\nThirdly I examine a concerted troll attack on me\u00a0which has at its origins my exposure\u00a0of a\u00a0spam account called\u00a0@labordirt<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>which has\u00a0links to\u00a0a troll account\u00a0@dotnetnoobie<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>and my\u00a0\u00a0investigation of\u00a0the Russian Spambots<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Labortdirt.com
\n<\/b>Fourthly I explain how the labordirt.com<\/strong>\u00a0Twitter troll app works and the\u00a0implications\u00a0for Twitter, cyberbullying, spam, abuse and the law.<\/p>\n

Twittertrolls.com<\/b>
\nFifthly I delve into real ugly cyberstalking\u00a0territory\u00a0which should concern all people who use social media and who express a political opinion. If you value your personal private information this is worth reading. It might be time for\u00a0law enforcement agencies to stop using\u00a0social media for marketing purposes and do some real work online.<\/p>\n

Conclusion
\n<\/b>A young woman is cyberstalked, her images and personal contact details taken\u00a0from her Facebook\u00a0account and published\u00a0on an anonymous troll abuse site. Has it really come to this, where you get attacked\u00a0for having an opinion and expressing it on social media? I believe what we are witnessing is a dual strategy as expressed by two sites –\u00a0labordirt.com<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0twittertroll.com<\/b>.\u00a0The first one is to try to completely\u00a0flood Twitter\u00a0with\u00a0anti-ALP messages and drown out any other voices. The second strategy is to attack the voices that get through\u00a0this tsunami of dirt and spam – to personally and directly attack them\u00a0via anonymous Twitter accounts. Worse still,\u00a0the attacks have also morphed into\u00a0cyberstalking sites like\u00a0twittertrolls.com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Feel free to skip\u00a0the more technical section\u00a0in the\u00a0Sequence of Events<\/b>\u00a0as you will get the gist of it by reading the status\u00a0at the end of that section.<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/p>\n

The Protagonists\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

David Thiessen with the Twitter handle\u00a0@dotnetnoobie; anonymous Twitter troll spambots,\u00a0dirtbots\u00a0and abuse accounts\u00a0@LaborDirt, @ALPDirt; a Twitter app site called\u00a0labordirt.com; a cyberstalking site twittertrolls.com; a vanished site called\u00a0davidthiessen.com<\/a>; another vanished site dotnetnoobie.com<\/a>;\u00a0a German webhost Hetzner.de and IP addresses\u00a046.4.145.239<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a046.4.145.249<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0finally\u00a018 or more alleged accomplices.<\/p>\n

The Sequence of Events<\/span><\/strong>
\nPlease skip this section if it is too technical. The technical detail is needed to establish a sequence of events to configuration settings, who did what when. Someone\u00a0made the decision, someone made the\u00a0changes and there is of course a reason behind the change.<\/p>\n

2011-04-10<\/strong> \u00a0The domain name\u00a0dotnetnoobie.com<\/b>\u00a0is moved to IP address\u00a046.4.145.239<\/a>\u00a0in Germany.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

August 2012\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

David Thiessen<\/strong>, a known UeberTroll suffering from multiple Twitter accounts personality syndrome, is confirmed here<\/a> as\u00a0@dotnetnoobie<\/b>\u00a0by an independent third\u00a0party. I don’t think David Thiessen has ever denied\u00a0he is @dotnetnoobie – but he may.<\/p>\n

“For his effort on the\u00a0Deep Earth<\/a>\u00a0open source community project, we have given David Theissen (aka DotNetNoobie) one of the subscriptions.”<\/p>\n

October 2012<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

It appears the @alpdirt<\/strong>\u00a0Twitter account was created on\u00a0October 10, 2012 and the @labordirt<\/strong>\u00a0Twitter account on\u00a0October 18, 2012. It seems @alpdirt was used as a backup account while @labordirt took all the flak for posting a tsunami of spam. From memory it was blocked by Twitter at least once in February 2013. See graph below for an interesting but unexplained baton change by labordirt.com\u00a0from @labordirt to @alpdirt in April 2013.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One of the first tweets that I can find is this one at 5.18 AM.<\/p>\n

\n

#auspol<\/a> The #AWU<\/a> Scandal – Bill Gets the Money Back – But What About Bruce? http:\/\/t.co\/X6FiBFsE<\/a><\/p>\n

— Labor Dirt (@LaborDirt) October 18, 2012<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n