Based on a couple of threads already created by an alt with faked chat logs, it seems that someone who has done a lot of damage to several people already is trying to get ahead of a story now that they have been caught and put some sort of spin on it or distract from the truth. Forum policy precludes me from naming names, but it does not prevent me from providing a general warning to others.
A few weeks ago, around the timing of Hamlet's infamous list of the powerful in SL, a document was sent to the Metaverse Messenger and to a reporter at Stratics from an anonymous Yahoo mail account under the name "FICazoid", with a subject of "Breaking News". Attached to this email was a 9 page PDF file which starts out with three pages of ranting on a wide variety of topics, from the end of dwell to Resmods, and of course, about the "FIC". The fourth page contained a graphic that crashes most PDF viewers. The remaining 5 pages are dedicated to detailed attacks on six individual public figures, myself included. Some selections from the document to illustrate what I am speaking of:
"This 30 year old greased up (illegal) import from a third world country is so desperate for attention that he'll stop at nothing to to get it and keep it."
"The irony in this, perhaps the saddest fact of all is the reality of a social exile stricken by the overall mediocrity she must face upon logging off."
"...a regular virtual Evita, from prostitute to president of her own fan club overnight, and all by manner of association.. Which is perhaps the most pathetic way to FICdom."
"While still up there on FIC row, she even about three tiers down on that chain as well, so it seems being undistinguished suits her, and it’s likely the only spotlight this woman will ever get is from a prim."
"She keeps her hubby...a barely visible Second Life player, in a drawer, and pulls him out to use him when she needs to harvest resources for her projects, like land for primitives, or cash on the side."
The document is a mixture of manifesto, extremely personal attacks, and complete delusion - a lot of what is said about each individual has no basis in fact. Some of it is so bad it is laughable - just a quick attempt by someone to take a swing at some public figures and figure no one cares about the truth so they can make up whatever they want.
When the document came out, the Metaverse Messenger and Stratics both would not touch it, as no site would (aside from the fact that they would be opening themselves up to libel for printing it, the document is just very clearly not news or journalism - just the rant of someone very paranoid).
For those mentioned in the document, it was easy to laugh off how ridiculous the claims were, but what was unnerving about it was that someone took the time to put together a document that filled with hatred, to the point of obsession. So much of it was so personal, and could only have come from someone in the circle of people it was discussing, that it made each of us question those around us and who we confided in.
The first document provided very few clues as to the identity of the creator. However, a few were left behind, including a very important identifying piece. The headers of the email from Yahoo contained the IP address of the sender of the document. For all their attempts at anonymity, they seemed to have overlooked this part (had they used Google mail instead of Yahoo, the trail would have gone cold at that point).
It became important to each of us to identify who wrote the document. Having an anonymous person out there, especially when the first document ended with this note:
"There are more FICazoid editions in the future, and I?m following up on some rather Juicy stories, thus am remaining anonymous. I'm certain this fact will be brushed off as cowardly and lead one to believe this alone if an attempt to seek attention; Even though I?m anonymous. Funny, isn?t it, how people love to brush off fact and will use any element, no matter how benign, in which to do it: to save their tarnished ego. I move amongst you. You may not know who I am, but I?ve been here a long time... I'm watching. And I'm listening."
Unfortunately, with just a single IP address and some theories on who it was, all we could do was speculate and rule out those it didn't seem to be. The only things we did know for certain is the document was emailed to the Metaverse Messenger from a computer in a specific place, and what ISP it came from. Additionally, we knew the document was produced on an older version of WordPerfect for Windows - though that piece of information wasn't very useful. One other noteworthy thing is that the document contained amongst the rant a private piece of information that had only been shared with four individuals - two were able to easily be ruled out, which left two people as suspected creators. One was easy to rule out, or so we thought, because they were one of the people written about in the document, so the focus remained on the other person.
Yesterday document # 2 appeared. This time the document was shorter by a few pages, and attacked a whole new group of people (though included me once again). What was noteworthy about this document was it again contained very personal information that only someone with very close proxiimity to some of the people written about would know. This time the document went only to the Metaverse Messenger. The headers once again revealed it was sent by the same person - same IP address as the document several weeks ago.
Again, it seemed we were at a dead end, but then some things started to click about the two documents. The person who we had been so quick to discard as not possibly being the creator suddenly became the primary suspect for a couple of reasons. Recently, during a conversation about bad weather that was occuring at the time in Texas, the person in question commented on the fact that they lived in the same state as the IP address from the email. The nature of the private information in both documents also pointed very strongly to them, but there was still nothing definitive.
Also, a huge question was created in considering this person as the creator of the document: Why would someone who has been in SL for over three years risk their entire reputation, their friendships, their business relationships, etc... on befriending people and then trashing them behind their backs. Why would they include themselves in the documents in question (even though, by comparison, the "attack" against this person is very mild and actually seems to be more geared at establishing them in the reader's mind as "someone important"
. The inclusion of this person in the original group was also bizarre - all of the people that the document ranted about were high profile SL figures, except for her - she is not particularly well known. So this glaring question was sitting there of "why??".I definitely did not want to be right about this, and so I sought out actually to be able to prove the document was not created by this person. for someone to attack their friends in the way these documents do points to a level of jealousy, duplicity, and obsession that borders on the frightening - certainly you do not want to think someone you are close to would do this to you.
The only definitive way to link the two was to get an IP address match. I figured that this would certainly clear the person. A link was sent to them to look at a personal photograph by one of their friends. This particular photo happened to be hosted on a web server - and by the person viewing the picture, they revealed their IP address. It was a 100% match.
Further examination of the documents and comparison to the writings of this person in her blog also showed the writing styles to be identical - down to the fact that they both make an unusual amount of typos and make no attempt to correct them, and also have some very distinctive writing quirks that are identical in the blog and the document (as well as in this person's forum posts as well).
The attempts to find a way to clear this person actually solidified the fact that the documents came from their computer. The original email several weeks ago, the email sent yesterday, and the log record from the web server with the photo all matched the same IP address. Additionally, the writing comparison further solidified the fact that it had been produced by this person.
Last night, this evidence was presented to the person in question. At first they acted incredulous, then got defensive, then offensive, then offered up conspiracy theories of IP spoofing and having enemies, then basically conceeded defeat under the preponderance of evidence. Then the forum posts from an alt appeared in the middle of the night, with the same typos and a faked chat log trying to pin all of this on someone else.
So there you have it. Those who were attacked in both documents have been made aware of all of this, as has the other person who was considered as a suspect before the second document, as the person who did create this tried last night to pin the blame on them instead. I am sure there will be other forum posts about this - I just wanted to put this out in is entireity because I have a feeling that this is going to get nasty.
We were fully prepared to keep this situation quiet and not embarass the person publicly. The ball is in their court, but they seem to want to make a public issue out of it.
Anytime you get missives from lithium treatment patients, it should be headline news.
