Troll-ism

Posted on Comments

Someone is using Twitter-bots to attack conservative blogs:

Enoch and company have had to rebuild this blog because a nasty script was superimposed here, and the likelihood that it was an accident is much diminished by its also having been foisted on our old blog, POWIP. On Twitter, there’s a rash of direct messages telling me and other righties that people are saying horrible things about us. If you’re dumb enough to click the link, your account also becomes a bot account that will inform other people that they are being libelled online.

Hmmm. Meanwhile, the Lonely Conservative finds herself beseiged by every possible manner of trollish attacks:

Some of the comments this troll (or these trolls) leave include email addresses of other conservative bloggers. They fill up my email spam. They sign petitions in my name. They email spam to others in my name. They send me emails that appear to be from my friends. They go to other websites and leave comments in my name – with my email address and links back to this blog – that are vile and wretched. Thankfully I have some friends who are kind enough to let me know when they see this happening. As much as I would like to leave comments on all of the blogs I visit, I rarely have time. If I did there would be nothing on this blog. I suspect that’s the reason they’re doing what they do – to distract me. To shut me up. They’ve even broken federal law by calling my home using phony caller ID services. The police officer I filed a report with was very kind and understanding. My phone company assured me that once the report is ready they will be happy to provide me with the telephone numbers where those calls really originated. We’ll have to wait and see where that leads us.

Hmmm. Who could be doing this, I wonder? And why?

23 comments

  1. Oh, thanks, but it’s not Twitter bots who are getting at blogs, as far as I know. I never click on those things.

    I think in our case someone was trying to get a re-direct to a virus-carrying site. Because of the rebuild (in which we added anti-viral software), our links aren’t showing yet, and visitors who brave the loud browser warnings have to hover over the text to find them.

    But, yeah, on the whole, you’re correct. There seems to be a programmatic attempt going on to silence right-leaning social media users and bloggers by means of technical shenanigans, rather than the usual attempts at demagoguing. Or, in concert with.

  4. I had to remove POWIP from my blog roll because I kept getting warnings of viruses (no reflection on POWIP).  I can’t say I am surprised.  I go on The Raw Story sometimes and (wow) they make Animika seem smart.  

  9. I had a troll years ago when I was still potentially Instalanchable, who was using one of those IP masking services. I just kept blocking every IP he used and it actually started cutting into his ability to get through — eventually. If he got through twice using similar IPs I blocked the whole intervening swath.

    I remember reading somewhere he finally got a life, though how that ever happened I can’t imagine.

  11. IMO, it’s the Anonymous and WikiLeaks hacker kiddies–getting paid Cheetos money by OFA and co.

  12.  Those people don’t even rate being called hackers; I doubt they’ve written a single line of useful code in their lives. What they are is nihilist script kiddies, and they deserve every bit of grief they get from John Law.

  15. You are right. The Bloggerlady is wrong.

    I go on The Raw Story sometimes and (wow) they make Animika Adobe_Walls seem smart. 

    Now, it’s possible.

  17.  No, no, and again, no.

    Anamika, this is a “cleverness fail” of monumental proportions.  You just said you cannot be made to sound smart.

    You would have done better to ignore it, but you had to attempt cleverness. In future, don’t.

  18. Jeff G had to rebuild his blog a month or so ago, a Russian advert group. But it’s nice and shiny now. His attackers came through ads. Gotta watch what scripts are allowed to run when you let ’em run for money.

  19. Bill Quick had something similar back in Feb. It turned out to be a hack of his ISP. Nasty stuff… it lunched both his laptop and mine with 5-6 viruses in combination. In my case, McAfee stopped 3 but the others made my laptop unstartable.

  22. They are pretty desperate, I don’t know if anyone else on twitter has been tracked down & contacted through their online business in an attempt to intimidate & silence.  It wasn’t hard to find me that way though as I once had my business link on twitter.

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