Those of you who have been following events will have been aware that the troll calling himself Dickie Doubleday included me in his web of victims. Thus far, to my knowledge, those who have been trolled or had their identities usurped by this creature are myself, OoL, Captain Ranty, The Angry Exile, Pat Nurse, The Fuel Injected Moose, Trooper Thompson, Dick Puddlecote, The Snow Wolf, Frank Davis and Leg Iron. There may be others and I apologise if I’ve missed you off.
The trolling was bad enough, but the line was crossed when DD decided to masquerade as others in a deliberate attempt to undermine their online credibility. This, and the posting of profane comments – the word “cunt” or “fuck” repeatedly pasted and posted to the comments of the site in question not only placed him in breach of his ISP’s terms and conditions – Virgin Media are specific about such behaviour – it is also probably in breach of the malicious communications act 1988.
One of my qualities – or faults if you take a different view – is my stubbornness. I have an incredibly strong will, which is why I have always tackled bullies head on. In the case of trolling, my usual approach is to delete the comments and move on. If they don’t go away then I will try various blocking techniques. Blocking proxy access for a while has worked in the past. In this case, it did not. Indeed, DD prided himself on bypassing the blocks and saw the use of first comment moderation to prevent his comments being published as some sort of victory. The reality here was rather more mundane – I have always used the WordPress default of first comment approval and every time he tried to spoof someone’s identity with a proxy IP, this kicked in. So I wasn’t complying with his “sanctions” (what an egotistic twat) as he liked to call them, at all. Indeed, I did nothing, WordPress did it all for me.
His use of the word “sanctions” to justify his bullying gives us an insight into the deluded mindset of this individual – on the one hand he is highly intolerant of freedom of speech – for that is all that the affected parties are actually guilty of; expressing an opinion he disapproves of. The other is the planet sized ego that lives behind this persona. Just who the flying fuck does he think he is dictating to us?
However, being somewhat bloody minded and refusing to be bullied by such a low life, I switched moderation off. If he wants it on, then I’ll do precisely the opposite. It’s how I always deal with egomaniacs who try to push me around – refuse to comply.
Then it really started – for a period of four hours one morning, I spent my time deleting repeated copy and pasted comments usually with nonsense or the same profanities mentioned above. Actually, deleting them was a mistake as I was to find out later.
I decided, along with the other affected parties, eventually that we would take the fight to the foe. We would uncover him and if necessary report him to his ISP or, better yet, his place of work. What we needed was evidence that linked the proxies back to his real ISP. Unfortunately, my comment metadata no longer had the relevant information as I’d deleted it. Like some latter day Lady Macbeth, I had cast out the damned spot and the precious evidence with it.
I had a solution to this, though. Armed with a WordPress plugin that reveals the true IP behind the proxy, I set a honey pot. And sure enough, like a fly on shit, our troll came to play. For someone who thought he was my intellectual superior, it never seemed to occur to him that I was trolling him and doing so for a valid purpose. Indeed, his overweening sense of superiority was the weak point I exploited. In the posts that followed, he not only repeated the earlier offences and fell foul of his ISP’s terms and conditions:
- You are responsible for the way the services are used. You must not do any of the following acts or allow anyone else to do the following acts in relation to the services:
- Send a message or communication that is offensive, abusive, defamatory (damages someone’s reputation), obscene, menacing or illegal;
- Cause annoyance, nuisance, inconvenience or needless worry to, or break the rights of, any other person;
- Perform any illegal activity;
- Break, or try to break, the security of anyone else’s equipment, hardware or software;
- Deliberately receive, use, own, post, transmit or publish obscene material (including, but not limited to, child pornography);
He threatened myself and others with an ongoing campaign. For someone so absolutely sure of his intellectual superiority, he seemed oblivious to the fatal flaw in anonymous proxies – they aren’t anonymous. The comment metadata on the visited website offers up the originating IP in plain sight. It helps to have a techie who is a forensic SQL specialist, mind and we have one at OoL – so many thanks, Chuck.
“HTTP_X_PROXY_ID”;s:9:”674138844″;s:20:”HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR”
;s:12:”86.14.74.170“;s:8:”HTTP_VIA”;s:37:”1.1 87.121.77.17 (Mikrotik HttpProxy)”
Real IP makes it simpler for the website owner to see the originating IP and to use that to filter out the offending comments, however. No matter how many spoofed IPs he used, his originating IP was the key to ensuring that his comments never saw the light of day while I gathered sufficient evidence to convince Virgin Media that this individual was waging a campaign.
Well done Dickie – or, more precisely, well done the troll hunters. Now that we had him on our line, all we had to do was wait. Dickie was drawn to the glittering minnow dangled before him. Hook, line and sinker as they say.
The thing to bear in mind if you plan a campaign of trolling is that anonymous proxies aren’t infallible and that the determined can track down your real IP – and with it, your ISP. From then on, it is a simple matter to report your behaviour to the ISP and let them deal with it. The second point is that out there you will, sooner or later, encounter someone even more bloody-minded than you are, who despises your bullying with sufficient vigour to take your game and use it against you – but you, so conceited, so arrogant, so pompous in your self-assured vainglory cannot recognise it when it comes. And that will be your downfall.
Now all that remains is to await the outcome of the report I submitted to Virgin Media. If they decide to take the matter up with the police, well, so be it. I’ll be happy to merely see him penalised by his ISP.
———————————
Update: I am advised that Virgin Media have dealt with this. What sanctions they have imposed I know not, but am not much bothered. What matters is that Dickie Doubleday has had a shot across the bows.
If he has any sense, he will realise that he played the game and lost. Now therefore would be a good moment to withdraw from the field with whatever dignity he has left.
———————————
Update:
Other bloggers affected for those who might want to expand their reading:
Subrosa
Bill Sticker
Nothing 2 Declare
Velvet Glove Iron Fist
Ambush Predator
The Pub Curmudgeon
Good. This is excellent information. DD was a nuisance, nothing he did was of any value at all, to anyone. In fact, he was outright hateful and threatening, a bully.
Hence our decision to take some action.
Excellent – well done Mr Longrider. And thank you for introducing me to a new blog (in the list of those trolled)
Y’know, I think there might be an example of the law of unintended consequences in there somewhere 😉
Did the same for me: if it weren’t for Dickie’s (poor) impersonations I wouldn’t have found a good anti- anti-smoker blog. All the same, good job, LR and Chuck.
That has to be the funniest aspect of all of this; he managed to have precisely the opposite effect to that desired. Not least the round robin emails we used to share his IPs and to exchange intelligence.
LR,
Well done!
Thank you for being so stubborn, and thank you for reporting him.
What he consistently failed to understand was that abuse and threats posted constantly are NOT free speech, they are abusive and they are threatening.
If he moves on (or IS moved on to another ISP) we will do the same again. If his ISP requires more information/evidence, I have 259 nasty comments to send to them. Please let me know if they are needed.
Bloggers 1-Troll 0.
A good result.
CR.
Not to mention the usurping of peoples’ identities in order to undermine them at other sites. That was really nasty.
Keep those comments. Although Virgin weren’t interested as they could not be directly linked to their IP, if we ever have to take the matter up with plod, then it is useful evidence of malicious communication. Hopefully, he will get the hint and we will have no need to take it further. Still, if he wants to spend some time at Her Majesty’s gaff, that’s up to him.
It’s also worth pointing out that Chuck did a lot of the forensic work digging about in the log files.
Cap’n,
Abusive and threatening language IS free speech cap’n and this is where you and I will disagree. Having worked a good time on doors as you, I’d have been swinging all the time had I continually reacted to abusive and threatening speech. However, they crossed the line whe their freedom to speak freely moved into the physical realm. Remember growing up with ‘sticks and stones’?
DD was a class A prick, but suffice to say, all the investigation and groundwork into stopping him, moved straight into the very behaviour of ‘the enemy’ most of the bloggers within this community are fighting against. WTF is going on when I start seeing people quoting ‘acts of parliament’ and reporting him to his ISP? It is precisely this behaviour that the elites use to control us with and destroy our liberties with.
The word ‘cunt’ is an expletive yet how many people think Blair is? To Blair he’d take offense. To us we’re merely telling the truth. Thus the truth is offensive and now sadly, in many cases a prosecutable offence.
A classic example of acts being created with which to control were racism ones. The elites knew they were going to flood the North of England with Indians, who would work for a pittance thus making the indigenous unemployed. Should they get angry then they would be seen as being racist. My point is this cap’n, most acts are created to benefit the minority over the majority. If you had paedophiles in power, they’d create acts to shut down anti paedophilia activity as well as make it legal. This is coming. Homosexuality used these exact same procedures in the past. DD may have been a monumental pain in the arse but the action taken against him ended up with any of you no longer being able to take the moral highground on liberty. He won, because you now use comment moderation. He proved how people today have lost patience and are prepared to give up liberty for security. He proved that all of you are hypocrites. It’s worth thinking about.
Blogs are private property. If someone came into your home and verbally abused you and your family or started ranting and raging – or painting graffiti on the walls, you would feel perfectly at liberty to show them the door. Blogs are no different. I quote from my comments policy:
To suggest that we are behaving as the enemy is to misunderstand this basic principle. You may come here and disagree, that is fine. That is free speech. Vandalism and graffiti is not.
My reference to acts of parliament was simply a statement of fact. I did not state that I agreed with said acts and subsequent comments on this thread indicate that I do not.
However, reporting him to his ISP is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. He had plenty of opportunity to stop his campaign of harassment (and harassment is not free speech), yet chose to continue to breach the terms and conditions of his ISP.
The man is a bully. Nowhere in the principles of liberty is there any requirement to tolerate bullies. Liberty does not include the liberty to bully and harass others. I have no qualms about what I did and would do it again.
Um, actually, if you read the post, you will see that I switched moderation off and it remains off. If I had switched it on, your comment would have gone into the moderation queue.
No, he didn’t win. There is no obligation to tolerate the intolerable, nor is there any requirement to exercise patience in the face of boorish behaviour. Liberty does not mean a free for all.
Lots of bloggers use moderation as a tool to filter out SPAM and abusive behaviour. This is not a reflection on them, nor is it a reflection on them if they prefer people not to use profanities – their gaff, their rules. I’m relaxed about swearing, but pasting the word “cunt” repeatedly is not by any stretch of the imagination free speech, it is vandalism.
There are no double standards here, despite an attempt to see them, so, no, I won’t be thinking about it, the charge is absurd.
Why did you work on ‘doors’ if not to refuse entry to individuals who ruin the whole night for everyone else? Same principle here. If you refused entry to someone who then ignored that and broke in repeatedly and spread faeces all over the walls again and again, are you telling me you wouldn’t call the authorities?
Quite.
H,
What would you have me do?
For three years my blog was open to all. The epitome of free speech. I was lucky in that most commenters were supportive, apart from the odd one or two that lobbed a grenade into the room and scarpered. No big deal. Then this prick shows up and makes demands of me that were unfair, and uncalled for. He either asked ridiculous questions or made ridiculous comments without bothering with the back story. Which made his comments fatuous. Then he escalated to abuse, and, getting a kick out of that, he moved on to harassment. I had to moderate my blog because of one childish twat. He ruined it for everyone.
He will (eventually) regret his actions. This is not a threat. It is a promise. His actions are not defensible and I am surprised at you.
His latest trick? Posting personal details of a friend of mine. DD thinks they are my details but, like everything else, he is wrong on this too.
We are dealing here with a sub-normal. I pity him, but pity isn’t working.
Time to try something else.
CR.
To reinforce other responses:
there is no ‘freedom of speech’ outside an existing property right. The question is not what someone says, but where they say it. I cannot submit a letter to The Times and complain my ‘freedom of speech’ has been infringed if they don’t publish it. Neither can I muscle my way into your house and parade around reciting Mein Kampf in the nude, unless I have your consent of course.
It is only when the abridgement of ‘freedom of speech’ involves a violation of someone’s property rights, does it become an attack on liberty.
I would also add that freedom of speech as a civil liberty relates to restrictions imposed by the state, not property owners, who are under no obligation to pay for a platform for fuckwits to spill their bile.
Well done! Have Virgin said what “dealing with it” means? Also, they must know who he is, if he’s one of their customers.
They didn’t say – but I didn’t really expect them to as it’s none of my business. Also, although they know who the person is, again, it isn’t appropriate that they tell me.
well done to all concerned. Cops? who needs em?
Yeah. To be fair, although I believe he has broken the law, I don’t particularly want to see a prosecution as that would be over the top. However, that is very much up to him. If he goes away and leaves well alone, then that’s fine. We can all move on. If he doesn’t let up, then I’ll escalate it to the next stage.
He imitated me several times but fortunately I was informed about his actions. Not that I could do anything other than ensure any of his comments couldn’t creep onto my posts.
Well done LR. I admire all of you for your tenacity.
Part of that tenacity comes from being bullied when I was at school. I learned the hard way that bullies are cowards and you have to stand up to them and mean it.
Excellent work LR. I suspect they may well have suspended his account for a while, I believe VM are quite hot on this sort of thing.
Bien fait, monsieur Longrider.
Good work LR. I’ve not really been following the “Dickie Doubleday” saga. Who is he? What’s his problem – apart from the obvious.
The “who” is still unknown and without a court order, VM aren’t going to say.
As to his problem, initially it seems that he took a dislike to the pro-choice smoking blogs. He claimed that they were spreading disinformation about the dangers of tobacco. It spread from there to the freemen movement and there is a very strange conversation in CR’s archives relating to road safety. DD seems to think that older drivers should be forcibly taken off the roads, despite the accident statistics suggesting that they are not the problem.
At some point after that, there was a real falling out and DD appeared on other blogs – including this one – posing as CR leaving insulting messages in an attempt to undermine his on-line credibility. It all snowballed for there on in.
Ah right, thanks for the reply.
The thing to bear in mind if you plan a campaign of trolling is that anonymous proxies aren’t infallible and that the determined can track down your real IP – and with it, your ISP
May I ask how? Not because I want to start a campaign trolling. I have always posted here under my real first name, but because I thought that anonymous proxies were one useful counter-surveillance strategy against the government’s snooping proposals. If they are that easily cracked, what’s the point?
Sure – the comment metadata is saved to the site’s backups. I show an example in the post of this. You will see that it clearly shows both the proxy IP and the originating IP in the same line. Also, the plugin Real IP will show the originating IP – presumably it just strips out the proxy one. So, no, anonymous proxies aren’t all they are cracked up to be. And using them to evade surveillance is something of an illusion. This chap was fairly easy to trace as it tuned out. I’ve learned a thing or two in this process and this was one of them.