ID:274893
 
I found this rather amusing. My wife and I have a website with lots of stuff about our recent wedding, and like all good wedding sites, we have a guestbook. Since the wedding has come and gone, traffic from people we know has died down and we started to get visits, and even messages from random strangers. 7 of the last 8 guestbook entries were from people we don't know. Or were they?

Those messages seemed strikingly similar, even though they came from 5 different names. A little perusal of the server logs indicated that they all came from the same IP address. In fact, this person had been visiting our website several times a week for a few months straight. Creepy. So I set out to gather as much information as I could about our new stalker.

I found their ISP, general location, and a few other tidbits of information. I wrote a nice personal message that was set to be shown only to that particular IP address the next time they visited our site. Hopefully it would be a bit of a shock knowing that we were on to them, and knew some information about them. And it might be interesting to see the response, if any.

As luck would have it, cable modem DHCP would foil my great plan. Their next visit to our site would come from a slightly different IP address, off by just a few numbers in the last octet. I should have checked for the entire subnet, but didn't - so they never saw my clever message. Our stalker posted two more messages, blissfully unaware of the careful scrutiny now applied to their every move.

This morning I decided to investigate a little more. I starting searching for other wedding sites and checking out their guestbooks for similar behavior. Surely our stalker wasn't fixated on us, and us alone? Eureka! We were not alone. In fact, by my count this poor couple has been subjected to at least 25 bogus messages from The Wedsite Stalker. Our mere 7 pales in comparison! I felt compelled to leave a sympathetic message for them.

Further investigation revealed that Nick and Jennifer had also been targeted. Who else? Who will be next? What kind of person does this kind of thing, anyway? Will The Stalker see my message to Dave and Lindsey? What will he/she do if so? What should I do next?

I don't know, but surely this is a dangerous game...
Ha! Speak of the devil... Seems my message at the other site got some attention. Just about 10 minutes ago, personality #6 stopped by to explain. Very, very amusing. Which one, if any, is the real one?

[Edit] Yikes! Good thing the nice one came along to our site. The angry one wasn't so polite at Dave and Lindsey's guestbook. I seem to be good at provoking message board mayhem lately...
In response to Air Mapster
:S now thats one wierd guy, oh and G-luck mikey :D
Heh, well as long as this stalker doesn't appear in your doorway acting like a schitzo and changing his/her name over and over, then you will be just fine off. Oh, and I left you a good luck message at your guest book, and again good luck!


<<>>Kusanagi<<>>
Yeah, I stalked the Internet once. I got slapped with a restraining order barring me from coming within 100 yards of it.

Oh yeah, and if anyone asks, I wasn't here, got it?
This is really bizarre, Mapster.

What would lead a person to serially post wellwishing messages on strangers' wedding guestbooks using assumed names, then become hysterical when confronted?

I sense a story in here somewhere. And actually, I'm interested in the real story behind it too, but I don't have the tools or the inclination to look into it. I wonder if there's some online mag we can tip off, who'll do the story for us.

Z
In response to Kusanagi
With a schizophrenic in the immediate family, I can be one of the first to complain about the term "schitzo" used in your post.
In response to Spuzzum
Well, it's my fault that I don't know any shizophrenic people and that I don't use that word every day, my bad :(.


<<>>Kusanagi<<>>
Isn't it funny when people use words like IP to sound smart, but they have no idea what IP is.
In response to Jango Fett
Jango Fett wrote:
Isn't it funny when people use words like IP to sound smart, but they have no idea what IP is.

Air Mapster knows what he's talking about. Are you trying to make some half-tangential point or something?

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
No, Jango Fett seems to like to contradict everything someone says to make himself feel better....


<<>>Kusanagi<<>>