Bots appear to be spamming FCC website over a proposed reversal of net neutrality rules, researchers have said. For those of you not in the loop, tomorrow the Federal Communications Commission will open a proceeding designed to kill net neutrality protections previously adopted by the Commission.
the bot comments for the most part are anti-net neutrality.
According to three separate analyses, a flood of automated comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was detected over the weekend.
More than 400,000 comments with remarkably similar wording have been detected in recent days.
Net neutrality proponents argue that all internet traffic should be equal. This means that no content provider should be able to, for example, charge more for faster access to certain data.
Net neutrality rules prevent internet providers from charging websites a fee to boost how fast their content gets to devices. The FCC could soon get rid of those rules.
Someone has gone out of their way to make these seem like real submissions,” wrote Chris Sinchok in a blog post about the apparently automated activity.
Having downloaded the comments and associated data, Mr Sinchok noticed that the names and email addresses associated with thousands of them also turned up in lists of personal data stolen from websites.
Other watchers, such as graduate student Nathaniel Fruchter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Jeff Fossettff at Harvard University, have also tracked the automated activity directed at the site in recent days.
Policy experts at The Greenlining Institute warned that the FCC under Trump-appointed Chairman Ajit Pai is handling the matter in a fundamentally dishonest way, and the result could be disastrous for Americans of color
“Destroying net neutrality means the less wealthy and less powerful will be consigned to internet slow lanes, and while that’s bad for the vast majority of Americans, it really paints a target on the back of people of color,” said Greenlining Institute Telecommunications Senior Legal Counsel Paul Goodman. “It’s clear from how Chairman Pai has framed these proceedings that he’s not looking for honest, fair input – he’s cherry-picking data to validate a decision he’s already made.”
ZDNet confirmed with several people that they did not submit the anti-net neutrality comments in the official and public FCC docket listed using their name and address.
Fox Station KDVR in Denver, Colorado has reported 7,000-plus Coloradans’ names, addresses used to post fake comments about government decision.
Fight for the Future launched an online tool to help internet users determine whether their name and address were used to file a comment without their permission.
