Web Anonymity is Officially Dead!

Shane and I were never editing anonymously anyway...

Fool us once, Ray Niro, shame on you. Fool us seven times [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], shame on us. Here is the latest update on the Ray Niro/TrollTracker situation:

Ray Niro emailed me yesterday, complaining about the personal attacks being made on him in Slashdot.

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He also tells me he now definitely knows who I am. I'm waiting for confirmation, since he didn't tell me my name. Then we'll see. According to him, one of my "friends" turned me in for the cash. Thanks, whoever you are, if true.

Meanwhile, I might as well get rid of a couple of posts I have saved, and was planning to post next week, when I'm not going to be able to post for various reasons. You know, go out with a bang, so to speak!

In case you are new to this saga, the father of patent trolling (perhaps also the patent holder of patent trolling as a business method) offered a bounty. He became somewhat of a head-hunter seeking to find the identity of a blogger in pursuit of a sane patent system.

Anonymity was killed by the money. For similar reasons, a Microsoft blogger called mini-microsoft no longer blogs much and he rarely criticises Microsoft as much as he used to. The platform he uses, Blogger, has already leaked out details upon demand. It spilled the beans on its own customers.

“Intimidation is becoming a new method for media control, censorship and attacks against criticism.”Intimidation is becoming a new method for media control, censorship and attacks against criticism. This ought to worry you because many anonymous people out there on the Web are proven Microsoft shills. It's not a legend, it's a fact (see examples galore). In other words, wealthy companies can deceive using anonymous figures whereas their critics get threatened.

Speaking for myself, be aware that in USENET and Digg the personal attacks against me pretty much doubled in the past week. It would be about 20 attacks per day, many of which are obscene and slanderous. This is annoying, very annoying. It's distracting. I have asked others whether they have noticed anything similar, especially amid times when we see dumping techniques. I know for a fact that somebody else needed to stop checking E-mail because of abuse that was becoming a handful.

Anyway, getting back on subject, Ray Niro can't just take criticism for his abuse of the patent system. When there is bribery involved, anonymity becomes an impossibility. I have seen friends whose strong desire for anonymity was of no use when they criticised Microsoft. Anonymous people with remailer thrashers and/or proxies went out of their way to publicly post full addresses of the people in question and sometimes made implicit threats. I still get a fair share of death wishes myself.

Didn't some 'special' lady called Maureen O'Gaga spy to Pamela Jones a couple of years ago? Was she just a curious journalist? It is hard to tell, but the situation is appalling. If you think you can exist on the Web anonymously (and I too lived anonymously on cyberspace some years ago), then you ought to think again. If someone wants to know your identity, then you haven't a chance in the world! Even Dan Lyons, who attacked Linux and other rivals of Microsoft under that "Fake Steve Jobs" persona, got exposed.

We covered the Dan Lyons Astroturf phenomenon several times in the past [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. This is ugly business. Very ugly. ⬆