Re: Hunting for Mr Badmouth

[Tim Greer <chatmaster () charter net>]

On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 16:46, Bob Walker wrote:
> I'm hoping this board can help me.  I've been tasked with trying to
> track down an individual who posted some comments to a yahoo message
> board defaming a company.  Is there any way to track this individual,
> short of a court order to yahoo?  His profile is private, and (duh!)
> he's not responding to postings to email.
>
> Any ideas on a direction to look or a tool to use would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Bob 

You'd have to get a court order, it's not for Yahoo! Inc. to decide if
something is libel/defamation or not.  And, once you do, if you do (it's
usually better to ignore the posts and since it's a public forum, you
have every right and ability to respond to defend yourself (thus making
it more difficult to hold Yahoo! Inc. liable in any manner that would
allow you to use a court order to make them provide logs to the
authoritative entity) or for anyone to have reason bother with your
problem.  I don't mean that in a non sympathetic way when I say that. 
Also, you have to remember that it will take a while and the person
could be using a proxy server or some other less (or non) track-able
method to access the board where the comments are being posted.  And,
are these really damaging your reputation to where it's costing you
enough money, or are you just angry about it?  Most people will ignore
people blasting each other on web boards and don't believe everything
they read.  The people that do, well, they are not worth worrying about
anyway.


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