Posted on 08/09/2016 5:41:31 AM PDT by Auntie Mame
WICHITA, Kan. (CN) — An Internet protocol company turned a Kansas family's idyllic farm life into a "digital hell," assigning 600 million IP addresses to their property, sending police there at all hours looking for runaway children, stolen cars and pornographers, a married couple claims in court.
James and Theresa Arnold sued MaxMind on Friday in Federal Court. Maxmind, based in Waltham, Mass., provides Internet protocol intelligence and online fraud detection tools, through its GeoIP brand, the Arnolds say in the complaint.
Unfortunately, they add, "for the last 14 years, every time Maxmind's database was queried about a location in the United States it could not identify, it sent the inquiry the plaintiffs' address. There are now over 600 million IP addresses associated with the plaintiffs' leasehold. Over 5,000 companies draw information from MaxMind's database."
The trouble began the week the Arnolds rented their home in May 2011, and they had no idea why police and sheriff's officers showed up "countless times over the next 5 years" until a tech magazine reporter figured it out.
"They loved the home as it was out in the country, and the landlord gave the Arnolds and their two boys permission to hunt and fish on the surrounding 623 acres," the family says.
But the week they moved in, two Butler County sheriff's deputies came to the house looking for a stolen truck.
"This scenario repeated itself countless times over the next 5 years. The plaintiffs were repeatedly awakened from their sleep or disturbed from their daily activities by local, state or federal officials looking for a runaway child or a missing person, or evidence of a computer fraud, or call of an attempted suicide. Law enforcement officials came to the residence all hours of the day or night.
"Private individuals also sought out the plaintiffs' address. Angry business owners claimed that someone at the residence was sending their businesses thousands of emails and clogging their computer systems."
In 2013, the Butler County Sheriff's Department ran a background check on the Arnolds "because of all the activity taking place at the residence," and told them an LDNS server (local domain name server) was on their property.
There was no such thing, the Arnolds say, but that didn't stop law enforcement agencies from getting "weekly reports about fraud, scams, stolen Facebook accounts, missing person reports, suicide threats from the VA [Veterans Administration] that appeared to come from the address and stolen vehicles all related to the residence. Each incident brought law enforcement to the residence — at all hours of the night and day."
"Threats began to be made against the plaintiffs by individuals who were convinced that the perpetrator of internet scamming lived at the residence. State investigators — convinced that the plaintiffs had been involved in an identity theft — came to the residence to take pictures of assets."
Angry people trespassed; law enforcement showed up "at all hours of the night and day: [looking for] stolen cars, fraud related to tax returns and Bitcoin, stolen credit cards, suicide calls, private investigators, stolen social media accounts, fundraising events, and numerous other events."
After five years of this digitally inspired hell, Fusion.net reporter Kashmir Hill figured it out, in an April 10 article, "How an Internet Mapping Glitch Turned a Random Kansas Farm into a Digital Hell."
She traced the problem to MaxMind and GeoIP.
Internet Protocol (IP) is a unique identifier assigned to a computer or computer network. It plays an essential role in computers communicating with each other. But IP mapping is not an exact science. At its most precise, it can be mapped to a house. Or, the Arnolds say, 600 million accounts can be dumped on an unsuspecting family.
A spokesman for MaxMind said the company policy does not comment on pending litigation.
Among the false reports the Arnolds say they suffered, were that they were forcing girls to make pornography at their home, "email and website hacking, stealing identities, property crimes and subjecting others to electronic or physical harassment and cyber crimes."
When the Arnolds finally figured it out and informed MaxMind, the company changed its default location to "the middle of a lake somewhere," their attorney Randall Rathbun told Courthouse News.
"The problem is, it's still on 600 million computers out there," Rathbun said. "Once you run an address and find all this horrible stuff, it's not like it's just going to disappear. Once you have a footprint on the Internet, you're stuck."
The Arnolds seek punitive damages for reckless and grossly negligent conduct, emotional distress, fear for their safety and humiliation.
Rathbun is with Depew, Gillen, Rathbun & McInteer, in Wichita.
In her article in Fusion.net, Hill wrote that the occupants of the property "have been treated like criminals for a decade. And until I called them this week, they had no idea why."
I hope this couple thanks their stars that no LEO’s used a swat team at 0 dark thirty, first killing any dogs then starting the house on fire withy flash bangs, pulling the family out in their under ware to be handcuffed and watch the house burn to the ground.
Seems like we used to get two or three reports of swat raids gone bad every week. Maybe it has been all the press resulting from BLM.
Thanks for posting that. Makes a lot more sense now.
I agree that it was a dumb idea, but it should have been addressed years ago.
I’ve worked in data for longer than that, and you don’t use real data for default values. Imagine some poor bastard whose SSN was the default for all the illegals with bogus numbers!
It’s not a matter of imagining some future problem; it’s pretty much standard methodology and good practice.
I wondered about that also. Seems law enforcement must have figured out early it was bogus but had to do their due diligence. Therefore, no swat. Plus, people in Kansas are generally pretty level headed, excluding the Clutter killers, BTK, the Carr brothers, Billy the Kid, etc. LOL
Agree about not using real data for default values.
I’ve been in companies where some department decided to use 9/9/99 as the default value for a date when there was no real date — like a perpetual contract that doesn’t have an expiration date, but the field must be filled in. Guess what happened when fall 1999 rolled around? Companies today are putting in ‘99 again as the expiration date, but that’s quite a ways away.
I lived in NYC for 57 years. I've lived in rural WV for the past 14 1/2 years. Given my life's experience, I find your statement not credible wrong.
Imagine the size of his SS retirement benefits check...LOL
“I hope this couple thanks their stars that no LEO’s used a swat team at 0 dark thirty, first killing any dogs then starting the house on fire withy flash bangs, pulling the family out in their under ware to be handcuffed and watch the house burn to the ground.”
Apparently that kind of progress hasn’t made it to rural Kansas yet.
Houseboat owners beware!
You’d be closer to solving crimes by assigning the defaults to the White House.
Note to self - never buy a house with simple whole number coordinates.
I don’t get it either but just wow, how horrible for them.
The cops now have signs posted at the house to such affect. You have to click on the link within the story to get to the original article that explains everything.
Thanks - this gives me something to read while I eat breakfast....printing it now...and eating late...
I’ll let you know what I think - you know you can count on that, right?
Hehe. Right. If you print out the replies, another Freeper(s) graciously went to the link in the article and posted information that makes how this happened more understandable.
Truly strange. And more so that it went on so long.
I’ll check out the replies because an explanation sure eluded me after I read the article....glad someone else did it so I can concentrate on other puzzles this afternoon!!
“”Plus, people in Kansas are generally pretty level headed, excluding the Clutter killers, BTK, the Carr brothers, Billy the Kid, etc. LOL “”
You sure have a good memory....I’ve never forgotten In Cold Blood. The Carr Brothers, I check up on that case occasionally to see if they have been executed yet. Can’t even tell you what I’ve found - speaking of memories.
We traveled from CA to OH years ago and “In Cold Blood” was going to be shown on TV but the area where we were spending the night blocked it out..too near to the actual area where it happened. I believe we went through OK and the route had to be close..Hwy 40 probably.
“”another Freeper(s) graciously went to the link in the article and posted information that makes how this happened more understandable.””
I see posts #10 and #18. Should I say it all makes sense to me now even tho’ it doesn’t? Well, in a round about way, I suppose it does but I have a headache so I’m quitting now.
It’s not the company’s address that should be there though, because there really shouldn’t be any “default address” when a search fails. Standard programming in that case is to return no results at all, a “null” result. That way the person searching knows that there is no match.
These idiots instead stuck in a default address, so if you search for a bad IP, you have no way of knowing that it couldn’t be found.
I didn’t catch that. Thank you.
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