A question about i.p. addresses

[black88coupe]

A friend of mine has a son who is in hockey. He’s about 11 years old and is a very sweet kid. Recently due to his mother and a coach butting heads he was kicked off his team. Unfortunately things have gotten very ugly on a local hockey forum and some anonymous people (presumably adults) have decided to make some shitty comments about the son- who is of course the innocent victim of this whole situation between the mom and the coach. I guess on this forum the i.p. addresses of the people commenting in the thread is hidden so therefore you have no idea who is making these comments. Is there a way to get an address to see who is making these negative comments? It sounds like anybody can jump on this forum without registering and comment on topics.

[Axis]

The forum admins and sometimes moderators can usually see IP addresses.

Michigan does have a cyber-bullying law, so tell your friend to tread lightly, no post any retaliatory messages, and to forward his concerns to his local police and/or DA's office.

[Killjoy]

The forum likely tracks IP address, and it's probably only viewable by the forum admins. However, if the people making the questionable comments have any tech savvy, they probably went through VPN/anonymizer/proxy to hide their true IP. But you never know. Even if you have a real IP, short of getting the ISP and law enforcement involved, you're not likely going to be able to track that back to person... just the ISP and maybe a city/neighborhood at best.

[black88coupe]

Thanks guys.

[wrath]

File a police report. Then that police report can be used to get the IP addresses from whoever the hosting solution is. You may need a lawyer to write it up fancy so the hosting solution doesn't send the request to the bitbucket, but it's worth the $50-75 to do it.

[black88coupe]

File a police report. Then that police report can be used to get the IP addresses from whoever the hosting solution is. You may need a lawyer to write it up fancy so the hosting solution doesn't send the request to the bitbucket, but it's worth the $50-75 to do it.

Thanks

[deputydog]

IP addresses are a good tool BUT if they didn't use a VPN and you do find out a specific place or business of the IP address you still need to prove who was behind the computer at the time the comment was posted. Again a great tool to narrow down a suspect pool but more is needed.