Gee Whiz, Cyveillance: Bit of an Update

Don’t You Have Any Real Terrorists to Catch?

So okay, I got out of bed this morning and first thing checked my logs to see who’d been on this site and my mfcooke.com site – yeah, okay, if that sounds a little compulsive, a tad obsessive, it probably is, but anyway: it is what it is.

Keeping an Eye Out

And, for reasons I won’t go into, checking the logs these days requires a great deal of effort. Not fun.

So anyway what I find is that IP 38.100.21.188 has been on the site.

Now, I have enough experience with Cyveillance to recognize a lot of their IP addresses, and this one looked familiar, but I looked it up anyway.

The thing is: I’ve blocked several IP addresses associated with Cyveillance already. In addition, I’ve attempted to block the entire company through my hosting plan. Guess that’s not working so well.

But the other thing is: This 38.100.21.188 IP address came in through a very odd referrer: http://obmil.com/ahalordedun.php.

So I looked up the link on March 29, when I first saw that Cyveillance had been on my site, and at that time, it seemed  - although I am not an IT expert, by any means – that this obmil.com thing enabled an IP address to access a site from which it’s been blocked.

But now – in April – when I check the link, it ties back to pictures of food on the Coppermine Photo Gallery.

Pretty weird. Pretty creepy. May or may not have anything to do with Cyveillance at all.

I have since resolved my issues with Cyveillance. Once I knew the right person to go to – Pete Nappi – I no longer had problems.

In September, I wrote Cyveillance back requesting that they stay off my site, but I didn’t know about Pete, so I kept blocking IP addresses I know that I knew belonged to Cyveillance.

So I on March 29 when I saw the company had once again been on my site – I got pretty ticked.

This time I called.

I talked to Pete, and I admit I was none too pleasant. I asked him what Cyveillance is doing on my sites, and he began to explain what kind of company Cyveillance is. I cut him off and reiterated I just wanted the company off my site.

To which, he responded,  ”Well, if you’re going to take that tone. I need the URLs.”

That was at 8:16. At 8:24, Cyveillance was at it again.

And at 10:32, the company attempted to get on the site but was blocked.

As I mentioned, I have since resolved my issues with Cyveillance primarily because Pete, once I apologized the next day and once I explained why I wanted the company off my site, was terrific.

Still, in my opinion and this is an opinion from a left-wing, former hippie/political activist, Cyveillance is pretty darn creepy. Way too stealthy. Way too invasive.

And, at this point in my life, I’ve got more than enough creeps invading my personal life.