Kelly McNeil nailed– and it’s not by a girl
January 5, 2006Anyone remember Kelly McNeil? The guy, subject of this long post? Well, he’s back. Or better yet, he was back.
As I was browsing OSNews, reading comments, I noticed this comment. I saw it go up from 0 points to +5 points in just a few minutes. I didn’t trust it, as comments rarely, if ever, reach the +5 status, let alone in a few minutes. I IM’d Adam, our site’s maintainer, and told him about it. Adam did some magic, and he dug up the user information of the readers who had modded that comment up so quickly. It turned out all of the accounts that had modded the comment up, came from one and the same IP address. And one of the accounts that modded the comment up, was account number 1116… Infamous number, because it’s the ‘kellym’ account.
So we nailed him.
But Adam wasn’t done. He then ran that IP address through the search engine of the database in the OSNews.com backend… And our jaws dropped. We found 21 accounts, all registred under that same, single IP address, so he had many more modpoints than other users! But that wasn’t all– they all used the same password: ‘kelly mcneil’! So, by accident, we had uncovered a major fraud on OSNews– the biggest to date! And as it turns out… Every single attack against my character on OSNews, and all flamewars that followed them, in the last few weeks, were instigated by one of Kelly’s accounts. I already felt that. More than often I had this itchy feeling that many of the readers who attacked me had a ‘Kelly-ish’ tone. All this proves I wasn’t crazy :D.
I’m astonished.
But I’m also, really, really happy. We have uncovered a major fraud. Adam has suspended all the accounts. He banned the entire subnet of the IP. Remember, this is already the 2nd time Kelly has created mutliple accounts in order to fcuk up OSNews. He did it earlier, but then openly (he had accounts named ‘kellym2, ‘kellym3′, etc.).
This is an advice to everyone in the online computer news business: place a ban on Kelly McNeil on your website. Secondly, never, never ever link to his website, OSViews.com. Never submit news to it. Don’t read it. Piss on it. By doing any of the just mentioned you are supporting this maniac, and multiple-offender of OSNews’ basic rules.
OSNews | 
Too funny. Glad you guys have sorted it all out now…
Comment by Trent Townsend — January 5, 2006 @ 10:58 pm
Wow, Kelly M needs a life.
Comment by Chris — January 6, 2006 @ 1:10 am
I’ve suspected stuff like that going on over at OSNews for a while now…I bet you would probably find dozens of other identical cases like this as well if you looked at accounts coming from the same IP and the posts they’ve been modding up. I won’t name names, but I have several folks I suspect as well.
I realize that the whole membership thing is new over at OSNews, but I feel some more safeguards need to be put in as mod points still aren’t as good an indicator as they could be.
Don’t stoop to his level by openly bashing him though.
Keep up the great work Thom!
Comment by jayson knight — January 7, 2006 @ 10:33 pm
Heh, one would assume he’d be a bit more creative when creating fake accounts, after going through all the work of registering them. I mean, all with the same passwords even … geez.
Glad you got that under control now.
Comment by Riddic — March 30, 2006 @ 9:58 am
These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.
Comment by Rosie — April 28, 2007 @ 5:37 pm