I suppose that can be done, however it does put you at some risk. Forging a
subpoena, and posing as a lawyer or cop doesnt sound like a very good idea
to me.
Tracking down a person by thier IP can be a lot harder than that also. If a
person is the registered owner of an IP address (ARIN), then its pretty easy
to track them down usually. If a person is using an ISP that rents/leases
IP's from another company, it can be harder. If a person uses a disposable
email address (like spammers often do), or uses a computer at a cybercafe, it
can be extremely difficult if at all possible to track them down. There are
lots of other ways to avoid detection that I wont go into...
So... to your question, yes, it can be that easy, however, it can be
virtually impossible.
I heard of a situation where a troll was being quite nasty, and a couple
people got together and tracked the guy down to a YMCA (where he was
aparently living), found out a lot of personal information about him (ex
wife, counselor(or therapist), and even his parole officer). It turned out
that the guy was pretty a disturbed inividual, and his parole officer was
quite intererested in his online activities...
Jamie
On Tuesday 04 February 2003 11:27 am, Harald Sundt wrote:
: Can it REALLY be this easy?
:
: Hal
:
:
: Quote:
:
: I can't see the posts you're responding to (since I surf here through
: Google Groups), but if some troll doesn't understand the need for
: privacy, it's easy to convince them otherwise. Here's how to do it:
:
: 1) Get the person's IP address from their post's headers, then trace
: the IP addy to the Internet Service Provider.
:
: 2) Posing as an attorney or police detective, call the person's
: Internet Service Provider and ask them who used that IP address.
:
: 3) At this point, the idiot employee of the ISP usually tells you
: everything he knows.
:
: - But if he doesn't tell you, then all you have to
: do is mail certified a fake subpoena to the ISP and then get the
: records that way. (Almost nobody knows what a real subpoena looks
: like, so it's easy to fake one.)-
:
: 4) Once you have the person's name and address, you can do a public
: records search for their Date of Birth. Also, the Social Security
: Number usually appears in one record or another. (Depending on the
: state they live in, their driver's registration records might reveal
: it for example.)
:
: 5) Then post on Usenet the person's name, address, date of birth,
: Social Security Number, and driver's license number.
:
: 6) The final result is that the person will then realize how important
: privacy is.
:
: :)
: :
: :Unquote
--
People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
-- Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel
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