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Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazil

by yebyen 9y ago

Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate? I am not on the list, but I looked up 7 members of my family and four of them are, several of them showing up more than once. Including my 3-year-old nephew, who I am sure is very smart but definitely did not submit comments to the FCC in support of repealing Net Neutrality. (And if he did, he would not use wording identical to hundreds of thousands of other commenters. /totallynotrobots/) Maybe there's nothing actually novel or surprising to discuss in it there, but I feel like covering the issue this way is absolutely burying the lede a bit.

sp332 9y ago
Did you check the address on the comment to make sure it was the same person? Because I don't see how Comcast would even have the name of a 3-year-old.
- yebyen 9y ago
  None of the addresses matched at all, at least for my family members. His parents post to Facebook, I don't know if that's the connection, but my nephew's name is definitely out there on the Internet, so I searched for him and saw two identical posts in his name from different states. (It's probably a common name and I would concede there, but the comments match the regex formula[1] that's in the Reddit thread exactly, they are definitely not legitimate comments.) [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_is_trying_to_censor_our_pronet_neutrality/dhxyjwg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_... Have you found one that matches exactly both name and address? Because I haven't found any, but I'm still convinced that something is rotten here in Denmark. (All of these family members never were Comcast customers or lived in Comcast service areas, so like I said, I'm not at all convinced this is some kind of Comcast data breach. Just that some kind of massive fraud is being perpetrated, by someone in favor of repealing NN.) I heard a few people say that they found exact matches for names and addresses, but I haven't seen anyone say for sure that they simultaneously matched a real person's name with an address that they actually occupied. I don't think they're doing that. I did see a comment from someone who looked up their town, found a lot of names they recognized, tried matching them to any county records and came up empty (eg. nobody by that name submitting those comments paid property taxes at the address.)
  - sp332 9y ago
    According to http://kdvr.com/2017/05/14/7000-coloradans-names-addresses-used-to-post-fake-comments-about-government-decision/ http://kdvr.com/2017/05/14/7000-coloradans-names-addresses-u... the addresses seemed to be real. Also I thought the comments were appearing to come from Comcast subscribers, but according to http://jeffreyfossett.com/2017/05/13/fcc-filings.html http://jeffreyfossett.com/2017/05/13/fcc-filings.html it's coming from data breaches instead.
    - yebyen 9y ago
      That's interesting. Thank you. As a counter-example to the Comcast breach angle, I am a Comcast subscriber and my name was not used. But my wife's maiden name is more common and it was used, more than once. (I have a very un-common name and it was unlikely to be on the breach list unless it was a genuine match.)
nathcd 9y ago
> Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419311

by yebyen 9y ago

sp332 9y ago

Did you check the address on the comment to make sure it was the same person? Because I don't see how Comcast would even have the name of a 3-year-old.

yebyen 9y ago
None of the addresses matched at all, at least for my family members. His parents post to Facebook, I don't know if that's the connection, but my nephew's name is definitely out there on the Internet, so I searched for him and saw two identical posts in his name from different states. (It's probably a common name and I would concede there, but the comments match the regex formula[1] that's in the Reddit thread exactly, they are definitely not legitimate comments.) [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_is_trying_to_censor_our_pronet_neutrality/dhxyjwg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_... Have you found one that matches exactly both name and address? Because I haven't found any, but I'm still convinced that something is rotten here in Denmark. (All of these family members never were Comcast customers or lived in Comcast service areas, so like I said, I'm not at all convinced this is some kind of Comcast data breach. Just that some kind of massive fraud is being perpetrated, by someone in favor of repealing NN.) I heard a few people say that they found exact matches for names and addresses, but I haven't seen anyone say for sure that they simultaneously matched a real person's name with an address that they actually occupied. I don't think they're doing that. I did see a comment from someone who looked up their town, found a lot of names they recognized, tried matching them to any county records and came up empty (eg. nobody by that name submitting those comments paid property taxes at the address.)
- sp332 9y ago
  According to http://kdvr.com/2017/05/14/7000-coloradans-names-addresses-used-to-post-fake-comments-about-government-decision/ http://kdvr.com/2017/05/14/7000-coloradans-names-addresses-u... the addresses seemed to be real. Also I thought the comments were appearing to come from Comcast subscribers, but according to http://jeffreyfossett.com/2017/05/13/fcc-filings.html http://jeffreyfossett.com/2017/05/13/fcc-filings.html it's coming from data breaches instead.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    That's interesting. Thank you. As a counter-example to the Comcast breach angle, I am a Comcast subscriber and my name was not used. But my wife's maiden name is more common and it was used, more than once. (I have a very un-common name and it was unlikely to be on the breach list unless it was a genuine match.)

nathcd 9y ago

> Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419311