netvocates (4): tying some details together

Deconsumption has made another excellent post in follow-up, and furtherance, of the netvocates thing. I followed a link to a post about “anti-network neutrality astroturfing comment spam” on The Abstract Factory. Commentors there reckon that a person calling themselves “Stevens33” and another going by the name of “Net Chick” are going around posting suspicious comments. You’ll find one from Stevens33, on a post about net neutrality, on danablankenhorn’s blog.

Another blog, a bit tasty, posted about net neutrality and ended up in awe of the response: “look at all this boom and chat on my little blog. I will comment on all of your comments soon.” Guess who was amongst the suddenly appearing commentors?: Stevens33 and NetChick (see 17 May 8.29pm and 8.40pm). Both Stevens33 and NetChick can also be seen on ipdemocracy commenting on a thread about, you guessed it, net neutrality.

Now it may just be that these are two mates who travel around, posting in agreement as they go along. But I’d be quite interested to see, from the owners of those blogs, what IP addresses were registered and whether they noticed, about the time, a visit from netvocates? They usually visit via:

http://arrca.netvocates.com/Default/index.cfm

and/or

http://192.***.*.***/jcs/watch.daa?sessionid=-1359069044&pagenum=

(I didn’t show the whole address but it will be familiar if you’ve had a visit)

Have you had a visit from one of these AND a post from one of the commentors above, or a strange post that you’ve got the IP address for? Read on…

Netvocates is a Comcast customer in New Hampshire. As with any ISP, I’m sure that Comcast would be happy to shut down the account of any customer who violates the terms and conditions of the service. I draw your attention to the following terms of Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy:

ii) [it is against the acceptable use policy to] transmit unsolicited bulk or commercial messages or “spam” in violation of law This includes, but is not limited to, unsolicited advertising, promotional materials or other solicitation material, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, chain mail, informational announcements, charity requests, and petitions for signatures;

xiii) [it is against the acceptable use policy to] send numerous copies of the same or substantially similar messages, empty messages, or messages which contain no substantive content, or send very large messages or files to a recipient that disrupts a server, account, newsgroup, or chat service;

as well as…

xvii) (participate in the collection of e-mail addresses, screen names, or other identifiers of others (without their prior consent), a practice sometimes known as spidering or harvesting, or participate in the use of software (including “spyware”) designed to facilitate this activity;

xxii) collect, or attempt to collect, personal information about third parties without their consent;

Get in touch if you’ve come across anything interesting that might help. Or make the complaint yourself (the the pulldown that says “sales/promotional offer inquiry” has an option for “report internet service abuse”).

[see my other posts about netvocates]