IP addresses & ISPs

aeskay SG

hello people. i figure this is the most suitable forum to ask whether ISPs will release personal information of individual IP addresses on demand.

this is because there's been several people coming to my class tagboard to tag nonsensical stuff, such as accusing my classmates of crimes, or scold expletives (but no racist comments yet). recently they also started to make use of the singtel online sms to disturb one of them with similar comments.

we plan to report this to our school, since we have gathered the culprits' IP addresses and the time when they tagged. however this won't be very useful unless we can somehow get their details from the ISPs. so, can we request for such info? or do we have a strong enough case to report to the police?

many thanks.

SBS n SMRT SG

Try reporting to your Principal or FT, and ask him/her to ask the people to admit their crimes, if that does not help, you may also want to make a police report stating abuse of freedom of speech and insulting remarks which may be termed as slender, forget using IP tracker, it will end up in the base station of the service provider that culprit is using such as Queenstown for singnet.

If you are using cbox, try report abuse and spam and block their IP address for long and for good and if the problem did not cease, try going for other tagboards which gives out usernames and passwords such as what u see at the side of this post named the Shoutbox.

Otherwise, create a forum here in sgforums and encourage them to sign up using their real names and tag here and there is a moderating option which could block users and user control to ban users.

I hope this helps.

BrUtUs SG

hello people. i figure this is the most suitable forum to ask whether ISPs will release personal information of individual IP addresses on demand.

many thanks.

after the xedo crap u tink they will anyhow give u info? no case to request they give out info... + ur sch stuff is small thing, they will jz ask u settle urself... as for the singtel sms thing, ur class shouldnt hv put personal contact online... btw tis is sec sch? jz complain tis to ur teacher or principal...

ndmmxiaomayi SG

No, the ISPs won't release it. Since there's no clear evidence that laws have been broken, it gives no reason for the ISPs to release the details.

I suggest that you tinker with the permissions of the class tagboard (if it's a blog or similar). Lock it such that only your classmates can enter. IP banning is not possible due to the way IP addresses are distributed in Singapore.

Also, bear in mind IP banning will ban your classmates as well (if the IP address is from Singapore).

If things get worse, you may want to report to your school.

aeskay SG

Thanks for the advices. we have already decided to report this to the school authorities, although from your responses it seem like they couldn't do much about digging out the culprits technologically.

SBS n SMRT: can tagging on tagboards qualify for slander? anyway but since we have the time when the tags were made, shouldn't the ISP be able to trace to the individual culprits? but of cause, whether they will hand this information to us (or the police) is the big question.

BrUtUs: we're from a jc, that's why i really wonder there are still such childish people abusing the internet.

ndmmxiaomayi: maybe we can't ban the IPs involved, but it would help if we can like, find out who they are and get the school informed. but don't think there is a police case here at all? even if there were expletives and accusations or even racist comments.

LatecomerX SG

What I would recommend is for you to prevent further occurences of such problems. For example, if your class is using the tagboard as a point of communication, it can be replaced by a simple, password-protected forum. Sensitive information shared via the forum such as contact numbers would then be hidden from non-authorized users (eg. anyone who is not your classmate) and not be abused by weirdos on the Internet. Access will also be limited to those who are permitted to use the forums. Doesn't this solve both problems you have listed in your post?

aeskay SG

yes thanks latecomerx guess that is the lasting solution. we plan to do that soon.

but at the same time some of us also would want to see the culprits caught, if possible, after all the unhappiness they brought.

ndmmxiaomayi SG

I'm afraid that's not possible. The expletives are not aimed at anyone specifically (I assume, based on your first post), no racist comments yet (not too sure, your last post seems to suggest that it has happened).

The culprits possibly won't be caught... all we can suggest is to tighten the permissions. Let only registered users in. Or as Latecomer has suggested, set up a forum, which would allow you to manage it better.

Forums like phpBB, IPB and vBulletin allows you to set up user groups. Different users in different user groups give them different levels of access.

As they need to register... you don't have to worry about banning a whole group of innocent people. You ban them by their nicknames instead.