So, what other purpose do these hypothetical sockpuppets, straw men, meat puppets and SNERTs serve besides what has been already mentioned in my posts about each of them? Well, working together and/or alone they can “game a website.”
Gaming a web site means doing various things to achieve your goals, often in a sneaky, underhanded, unethical manner that violates the rules or terms of service of websites such as online-gaming sites , blogs and forums that have multiple outside users contributing content to a website. The phrase “gaming a website” is most commonly associated with on-line gaming websites.
Often this consists of creating multiple user accounts for a site, and using those accounts to boost the popularity of a "main" account or persona. On a website where multiple outside users contribute content, the same technique can be used to buttress an idea and/or opinion and to give the impression that the idea/opinion has more supporters than it actually does. For example, one might create multiple accounts and have all those accounts up-vote or thumbs up a single account or that single or “main" accounts postings, thereby artificially increasing the perceived value or reputation of that main account. This tactic is also used by cyberbullies to give the impression that a group of unrelated people are in opposition to another person or persons.
A person might create multiple accounts when they first establish a presence on a site, and then start using them over the course of time. Alternatively, a person might simply create new accounts as needed to do the same thing. It is also possible for a person to hack/crack into a website's system to search for dormant accounts and take those over.
Some sites will have measures in place to prevent this behavior. Most commonly, this involves limiting a user to only having one account or profile per email address. This is easily defeated, as there are many places you can get as many free email accounts as you want, such as Google, Hotmail, Yahoo etc.
More sophisticated sites try to prevent this behavior by limiting a user to one account per IP address.
This is not always effective, as a lot of Internet service providers give their users "dynamic" IP addresses which means that the IP address might be different every day or every time you restart your cable or dsl modem.
It's also pretty easy to come to a site with a different IP address using proxy servers or other means of spoofing your IP address. You might log on to one account from your home computer, another from your smart phone, and another from a coffee shop or open wifi access point. This method is easy and simple and doesn't call for any tech know-how.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaming_the_system
Could the LI perp be "gaming a website" to misdirect LE, investigators, influence public opinion or launch a defense strategy?
ullhair:
