Tracking down anonymous internet abusers: who is John Doe?

• Author: Placid, Raymond
• Position: Trial Lawyers Forum

In the past 10 years, Internet usage in the United States has doubled, with nearly 239 million Americans logging on. (1) This growth has led to a proliferation of legal infringements such as identity theft, copyright violations, and defamation by anonymous bloggers. As Internet usage continues to grow, so, too, will the demand for the legal profession to redress these infringements. Unfortunately for the legal profession, the Internet generates a new type of defendant. We shall call this defendant "John Doe."

Who is John Doe?

John Doe is the person who blogs anonymously on the Internet and infringes upon your client's legal rights. John Doe does not have to be a sophisticated blogger to remain anonymous because the technology that drives the Internet has evolved without accountability. Blogging from a hotspot or through a proxy server can obscure the true identity of the blogger. The mere delay in attempting to track down an anonymous blogger can lead to anonymity because the address logs may have been overwritten by the Internet service provider.

Tracking down Internet abuse can be challenging from a legal and technological perspective. For example, if a person has been defamed anonymously on a website, the website is not likely to release the name of the anonymous blogger without a court order. The costs of taking legal action to obtain a court order can be taxing from both an economic and personal perspective, and in some cases will serve as a road block for the injured party. (2) Assuming that the court grants the injured party an order to obtain the data from the website, there is a good chance that the anonymous blogger's website registration data will be fictitious. Many bloggers do not provide accurate registration data to a website. Even the email address given to a website by the blogger could be fictitious because email addresses can be easily obtained using false registration data.

This article will address some of the more common technological roadblocks (i.e., the IP address, hotspots, and proxy servers) that an attorney can run into when attempting to track down anonymous Internet abusers. We will begin our discussion with the IP address system.

The IP Address System

The IP address system allows computers to recognize one another and transfer data over the Internet. The original IP address system is referred to as Internet Protocol version 4 or IPv4. (3) IPv4 can generate approximately 4.3 billion IP addresses.4 In 1995, Internet Protocol version six, or IPv6, was developed to accommodate the growth of the Internet. (5) IPv6 can generate over 340 undecillion IP addresses. (6) Both systems, IPv4 and IPv6, are still in use today, although it is expected that the IPv4 address system will be exhausted within the next few years. (7)

As private computer networks developed and Internet usage grew, the IP address system began to use temporary address assignments. When the computer's IP address is temporary, it is referred to as dynamic. (8) In contrast, when a computer is configured to use a permanent IP address, it is known as a static IP address. (9) It should be noted that although residential customers are generally assigned dynamic IP addresses, in actuality, they change infrequently. (10)

Theoretically, it should be very easy to track down the IP address of an anonymous blogger because the address should be stored in IP address logs. (11) For example, as an anonymous blogger logs on to the Internet, his computer will be assigned an IP address by the Internet service provider (eg., AT&T, Comcast, etc.). The IP address assignment will be stored in a log that is maintained by the Internet service provider. This IP address...