An anonymous publisher has started the new "Gannett Rumor" site, with a promise of "no annoying middle man. No obtrusive review. Just a simple place to put the most interesting rumors."
In a comment, one of my readers says they heard Corporate is "starting a rumor blog to capture the IP addresses of those that generate, and pass along rumors. Is this true?"
I know nothing about this new site. But I'm very concerned this could be a stealth site created by management. Therefore, please proceed at your own risk.
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Aha, I suspect that some management techie has devised a clever ploy.
ReplyDeleteQuestion from a curious visitor, but can you read our IP addresses:
1. if we just come and read this blog?
2. if we post to this blog?
This is not a management site. Besides, you can't track IPs to Google Blogspot to a specific blog.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know by now, Jim is clueless about technology. Either way, bring em on.
but you have no rumors :)
ReplyDeleteI suspected as much, so I've ignored the repeated posts linking to Gannett Rumors.
ReplyDeleteHowever, since I'm already laid off, I went there -- so you don't have to. It's not a new blog; it has one post, in July 2008. The site owner is fully anonymous, but profile has been hit 3 times, says he/she is based in North Carolina. Where have I seen North Carolina mentioned before ... ?
And the owner most certainly CAN track IPs with blogger. I have a Blogger site and I track IPs.
Anyway, here's the lone post there, in full, for the curious:
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Gannett announces minority investment in Mogulus.com
Gannett has made a minority investment in Mogulus, a New York-based Internet video platform. The investment extends and expands on Gannett’s three-month-old commercial agreement with Mogulus to provide broadcasting services on the company’s Web sites. Read
Gannett stock:
Closed Monday down 0.23 at 17.20 on a volume of 5,436,645 shares.
9:43 Spoken as a Ripple6 expert, I guess. Sure, we are not spying on our customers, and we really don't know who they are. Who are you kidding. We may not be sophisticated with this technology, but we know enough that it can be used easily to track people, especially when you set up your own site to monitor people.
ReplyDeleteHere's a test: Go to the gannettrumor blog, leave something explosive about Dubow or Martore, and see how long it akes before your phone rings and you are out the door.
You can download a program called JAP that scrambles your IP address, then you can freely discuss all of your rumors anonymously. Former accountant that found a new job just days before the axe came tumbling down.
ReplyDeleteAnd my widget tracks not only IPs, but also what keywords brought them there, if they come via a search engine, and a lot of other information.
ReplyDeleteThe average person, like me, can't track it to a person or an account by only an IP. The IP does show what town the computer is in and what company is their ISP, such as AOL, Verizon, etc. I know a techie could ID more than I can from the numbers in an IP.
However, if a corporate honcho were a member of InfraGuard, a "public private partnership" of a shell nonprofit in every state and the FBI, then it seems to me finding the person would be easy -- and entirely covert.
The head of my state's InfraGuard is a professional hacker, in fact.
Interesting thing about InfraGuard, too. After Progressive magazine ran a feature on it last year, it became a topic at my paper's online discussion forums. After the thread identified the leader of the state's InfraGuard, the forum disappeared, even though everyone with access to do that denied deleting the discussion. Another thread was started, and last I knew stayed up, but no one mentioned that guy's name again. If I remember right, and I could be wrong, I think there was a link showing the guy had tax liens and maybe some other dubious stuff.
The InfraGuard thing is sure worth a look, for anyone with time to explore a little.
Oh, and no one has posted a comment, ever, at Gannett Rumor blog, even though its only post was created in July 2008.
ReplyDeleteWanna take me on, Mr. Gannett Rumor? I know more than you think we all know.
What a joke. Why would anyone use that site to post rumors when we can post them all here!
ReplyDeleteThe advantage of this site is that I know Jim has severed his relationship with GCI. I have no idea who GannettRumor is.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't put it past this paranoid company to identify employees putting out these rumors
ReplyDeleteOK, so here's the entire, comment-free blog that is recast under gannettrumor, in the singular (and without even the N.C. reference in a completely anonymous profile):
ReplyDeleteThursday, February 12, 2009
Friday, February 13...Anyone got a juicy tidbit?
Have at it...
Posted by Gannett Rumor at 7:42 PM 0 comments
Welcome to Gannett Rumor Blog
This blog is dedicated to providing a space for Gannett rumors. No annoying middle man. No obtrusive review. Just a simple place to put the most interesting rumors.
Enjoy...
Posted by Gannett Rumor at 7:40 PM 0 comments
You're too easy an opponent. And just why has Jim's tracking been in your studies?
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention that both pages, rumors/rumor, use the same Blogger protype design. And although no widget logo is on the page showing tracking, I know not all softwares require their logo to be displayed.
Gannett Rumor, why another site? Got something against Jim?
ReplyDeleteIf moderation is your beef, do you think waiting a few hours (while Jim sleeps) before a post displays is really going to affect its value?
Jim blocks very, very few posts. Blogger notes when a post has been deleted by the administrator, so it's easy to know that.
I can tell you that you CAN track IPs on blogspot. I've been contacted by a blog leader before for more details on a post. Went right to my computer. HTH. I say proceed with caution.
ReplyDeleteYou can't Anonymously post to gannett rumor.
ReplyDeleteIt requires you be logged into blogger/atom/google/etc as a registered user, where you are indeed trackable.
Look at what GCI is doing with Ripple6 and tell me that you can't track visitors to Web sites. I have long maintained Ripple6 is going to explode on us with all sorts of privacy issues one day soon.
ReplyDeleteWTF!?!
ReplyDeleteDO check out Infraguard, alternately spelled Infragard.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfraGard
... The Progressive also reported the concerns of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that there "is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI".[1] ..,
Or, surrogate eyes and ears for themselves?
And then there's this thought: The FBI is the primary investigator for U.S. attorneys. In NJ, that USA now is running for governor, and everyone knows was running long before he resigned as USA. Oh, the possible misuses of this program in politics!
Non-techies:
ReplyDeleteTracking your IP is difficult since all internet traffic from your site comes from 1 IP address. This IP address is the IP address of your site's outside screening router. A device that connects your network to the internet. There is also a firewall between your site's network and the outside screening router.
Now, using this information, corporate would know that someone from say, Cherry Hill, is on the blog but not which computer at Cherry Hill.
Armed with that information, they could get your IT department to dig through their DHCP logs and firewall logs to figure out which computer was on the blog-website. This is a royal pain in the ass to do.
So, unless you're breaking the law in a post, I doubt corporate will waste man-power tracking postings.
Gannett Rumor:
ReplyDeleteTagline: Never before can you get so little for so little.
As I posted on another thread.
ReplyDeleteGoogle "anonymous proxy" if you really want to be anonymous.
:)
If there is going to be a spinoff blog, it should be New Jersey Gannett Rumor Blog.
ReplyDeleteThat place would ve jumping all the time!
10:53 AM
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about privacy issues and potential huge problems coming. I predict that alone will be the downfall of this company.
what a bunch of sycophants
ReplyDelete11:10 insider information is breaking the law. SO they nab you, who are you going to appeal to and what court is going to take your case and defend your rights? How much will that cost? Do a Google search on a Fox News producer Aaron Bruns, busted this week for kiddie porn. Looks to me they tracked his computer down in minutes if you read the police deposition.
ReplyDeleteNice try, Gannett corporate. This is one of the oldest tricks in the television playbook. Yawn.
ReplyDeleteSometimes in television, a highly successful program rises up very quickly. Apoplectic competitors, who have no way of competing, will then purposefully create similar, but less-successful, watered-down versions in an effort to confuse viewers. The idea is to saturate the market with weaker programs that have a similar style and feel, but of lesser production value.
Looks to me like Craig Dubow is up to his old television tricks in an effort to solve a more modern problem.
Yawn. Hey Craig. Why don't you focus on running a newspaper company rather than worrying about the one and only Gannett Blog?
Two employees at Asbury Park were let go for posting on the blog. Be very careful where, what and how you post.
ReplyDelete11:32: Please provide details in a comment or via e-mail to me at gannettblog@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI won't be able to send the details until tonight on another computer.
ReplyDelete11:29 AM - I'm just telling you how the internet works at most companies. Not how it works at your home.
ReplyDeleteIn the case you mentioned. He was using a peer-to-peer network to get the photos. I would assume the likes of Kazaa or Gnutella. Since these programs show who is connected by IP it was easy to get his IP. Once they had that, they just called up his internet provider and asked who had that IP at such and such time.
Not quite the same as if you are at work.
11:40 am: OK. I've now got feelers out.
ReplyDeletein the case of aaron bruns, they also had to have a subpoena
ReplyDelete11:29 AM - True, if you posted insider information, Gannett could ask/sue for the IP address from Google.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any insider information posted on this blog worth the effort.
11:47 AM - Yes, I skipped that part.
ReplyDelete11:50 am: Gannett would do that as a last resort, and only if the board of directors and management believed they fiduciary responsibilities had come into play.
ReplyDeleteThe public relations fallout would be devastating. It's a First Amendment/free speech company, after all.
Insider information is anything Corporate wants to name it as that. Why give these insane and paranoid managers any excuse, especially if they are putting together a new layoff list?
ReplyDeleteJim, do you think that profit-per-paper info you got a month ago was not insider information. It wasn't available to me.
ReplyDeleteJim, I agree. I was just trying to post that it's not that easy to track someone by IP to a large place of business.
ReplyDeleteInsider info!? Puleeeze. This is a newspaper company, and almost none are in competitive markets.
ReplyDeleteAt the APP, for example, only weekly compete for news, and they are just as advertorially corrupted as the APP. So, even in the extreme imagination someone leaked info from a developing news story or about a hot advertiser, there's no one likely to gain financial benefit to make it worthy of civil action.
We are talking "insider info" illegal as in civil violation, not as in criminal law. Big dif. And the employee has to be under specific secrecy contract even to reach that bar, I think.
Those of you who think the Ripple6 technology violates privacy should just stop talking and get off my interweb.
ReplyDeleteThen ask yourself if you think Ripple6 websites are the only ones that track you that closely. I have news for you - every website pretty much does it to some degree.
I actually welcome the day when a newspaper knows enough about me to tailor the home page to show content I'm actually interested in reading.
2:15 PM
ReplyDeleteAnd when that happens, you'll stagnate.
I would rather keep on thinking for myself and making my own choices.
jim, you can delete what you want. at least all of the posts were attributed to a specific source. why make a ban?
ReplyDeleteGannett Rumor, you are very funny, in a delusional way.
ReplyDeleteGannett Rumor said...
So what have we learned today. Jim is paranoid about a "rival". ... No one wants to post on the gannettrumor.blogspot.com site but it certainly prompted a lot of posts on Jim's and I still get smacked down. Now that's a nice way to say thank you.
2/13/2009 3:31 PM
How are you a "rival"? No one has posted, not even once, at either of your sites. Your ruse posts on your Rumor/Rumors sites have no substance to compete with Jim. What's there to thank you for?
You never answered what purpose another site served, since Jim is independent of Gannett already and isn't preventing anyone from sharing their rumors. Every post and every comment are nonactionable opinion, anyway.
Jim, I don't mind Rumor posting here. He digs his own grave, and no one Gannett-affiliated is stupid enough to post on his sites, and wasn't even before you flagged the ploy. He's amusing me, actually.
Blogger Jim Hopkins said...
ReplyDeleteI love competition -- from trustworthy rivals.
2/13/2009 1:01 PM
I'll say it again. Gannett Rumor doesn't have anything to do with the plural version. Never saw it before I put up the site. This was just for fun. But now it's simply amusing at how much knee jerk reaction there is to it. Well, this post will come and go but I guess you have to take a stand Jim.
ReplyDeleteI asked this person to identify themselves to me hours ago. S/he has not done so. Why?
ReplyDeleteWhy should I have to identify myself. At the very least, when I post I'm identifiable by the Gannett Rumor label. Most everyone else goes under the heading of anonymous coward. I haven't posted anything mean, libelous, harassing which is hardly true for many other com mentors. My stated purpose for the blog was a basic place for rumor. No one wants to go there - what do I care. It was just for fun. So, why should I have to identify myself beyond the label that I keep using? My biased opinion is that you over reacted a little... But, once again, this is your forum so as you will.
ReplyDeleteI think I know who you are now. Assuming I am correct, I banned you long ago.
ReplyDelete