Mitch The Mayor. Remove the spaces between the letters and add a dot com to the end and you have the address of a fake website taking a satirical bash at the mayor’s race and contestants. MitchTheMayor.com, I’m not linking it because it is down. As is the twitter and the YouTube attached to it. The Gambit does an excellent job of describing the site and sharing the best quotes (and thanks to them for allowing me to use their screencap above) so rather than duplicate their efforts I advise you to read their post first. I’ll wait here, no problem. [Update: Gambit has posted an archive of the YouTude Video, it's hilarious see it here -Loki]
Now here is where it gets fun! Got your shrimp boots handy, we’re going to wade through the mud.
First take a look at the WhoIs info on the domain registration, note the company ComputerCC
purchased the domain. We’ll be getting back to them in a moment.
Now, if you Google the company name you get this on their contact page:
ComputerCC Corporate Offices
The Provincial Building
3439 Kabel Drive, Suite 12
New Orleans, Louisiana 70131
P: 504.581.6600 F: 504.581.6604
Now, if you go to the La. Secretary of State’s website and search for that address you get a company called IOKON, LLC. Wasn’t that easy? [Edit: It seems, from what a number of people on twitter are telling me, that ComputerCC is on public record as the financial backers of Iokon. Cozy. -Loki]
Now for the fun part. Go to Iokon’s website and scroll down to the middle of the page. The part where it says “The Latest Marketing Machine From Iokon Media”. The first one listed is the John Georges campaign. Things that make you go hmmm….
I invite Mr. Perry, Mr. Landrieu, Mr. Georges, and anyone at Iokon to weigh in on this. The whole affair looks very questionable (proving it’s New Orleans politics) and I’m sure that a lot of people besides me would like some answers. [Georges has now weighed in, after a fashion, by contacting The Gambit with a statement. I guess a lowly blog like our hasn't got the juice to rate one yet. Kevin Allman's recount of the phone conversation with Georges is available here. -Loki 10:30pm]
Anyone on the internet should know better than this, as I outlined above it is easy to dig out info once you get used to it. For that reason I am particularly interested in hearing from the Iokon people on this.
Have fun and share this around, the mayoral candidates this year need to know that we are watching. We will force transparency upon you.
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NSSPY.com lists mitchTHEmayor.com on their 12/10 report, but on worldnic.com, not domaincontrol.com. ( http://www.nsspy.org/archive/worldnic.com/2009-12-10/2.html ) worldnic.com is registered to Network Solutions, LLC but in Herndon, VA, not Drums, PA. I don’t get that.
Domain-Daily.com lists mitchTHEmayor.com on their Dec 10th report. ( http://domain-daily.com/new/2009-12-10/112.html ) Their main page offers a Whois search which returns slightly more info, specifically IP addresses:
Whois Record for Mitchthemayor.com
Domain Name: mitchthemayor.com
Domain Status: Registered
Created: 2009-12-08
Expires: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2009-12-17
ICANN Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Registrar Status: redemptionPeriod
Name Server: ns25.domaincontrol.com (216.69.185.13)
ns26.domaincontrol.com (208.109.255.13)
Now search for Iokon.com at DD:
Whois Record for Iokon.com
Domain Name: iokon.com
Domain Status: Registered
Created: 2009-10-22
Expires: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2009-10-22
ICANN Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Registrar Status: clientDeleteProhibited
clientRenewProhibited
clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited
Name Server: ns39.domaincontrol.com (216.69.185.20)
ns40.domaincontrol.com (208.109.255.20)
And then James Perry’s website comes in at:
ns51.domaincontrol.com (216.69.185.26)
ns52.domaincontrol.com (208.109.255.26)
The IP’s for Troy Henry and John Georges are not even close.
Mighty similar, yes? I don’t know how to read IP addresses and the similarities may simply be coincidence but aside from the NS# and the last 4-bit # they are the same. Searching the Name Servers at InterNIC returns Wild West Domains, Inc., a Scottsdale AZ domain name reseller. Wait… Scottsdale? I wonder if Arizona has a Secretary of State?
Of course they do! And I found the following:
Domestic Address
14455 N HAYDEN RD #219
SCOTTSDALE, AZ 85260
That address houses the offices of GoDaddy.com, Inc., The GoDaddy Group, Wild West Domains, Inc., and Domains By Proxy, Inc. We’re through the looking glass here, people! Clearly GoDaddy is trying to upset our fragile political apple-cart in some nefarious scheme to take over our fair city!!
OK, more frittering around shows that both ComputerCC and PollNOLA share the exact same IP numbers:
ns4.us.editdns.net (70.85.92.64)
ns5.us.editdns.net (72.249.105.102)
ns6.us.editdns.net (64.251.8.113)
So the other similarities are probably just coincidence after all. Oh well.
But don’t blame me this February when your catching beads from the Krewe of GoDaddy!
@mike:
Recheck the registrants address and phone number under technical contact for your research. That address, P.O. Box 459. Drums, PA 18222 570-708-8760 rolls back to a scam marketing firm. Doing some reverse searches you find that phone number attached to a couple dozen scam/spam/porn sites using that phone number and addresses in Herndon, VA, Tuscon, Az, Redmond, Washington and oddly one in Tokyo, JP.
Actually, that’s probably because Network Solutions manages over six-and-a-half-million registered domain names. I’m guessing at least one or two of those are scam sites, eh? While NS can be accused of shady practices, (check out their Wikipedia entry,) they are certainly not the scam/spam/porn guys you found in your search. In 1993 the National Science Foundation privatized the InterNIC domain registry and contracted NS to administer it. If you wanted web real estate, you went through NS to get it.
OK, so they really are scam artists. :)
Jokes aside, that phone number probably connects to a call center in Drums and the address is more than likely used for disputes between individuals and owners of sites registered with NS, hence the Attn: / c/o designations. Their offices are actually located in Herndon, VA. The other towns listed are probably satellite offices. Redmond and Tokyo make sense since Japan and Redmond are both hubs for computing technology. Tuscon I don’t get unless they want to be close to GoDaddy for some CorpEsp or an impending takeover bid.
Hey, I just searched for mitchTHEmayor and there’s a link to the site. Did you know Google caches websites? This is from Dec 17, 2009 19:04:16 GMT. The spiffy graphics are gone as is the video, but you can still check it out at:
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:nmYzYAAlSFUJ:www.mitchthemayor.com/+mitchthemayor&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
As the fake site is down, and as I’m not a Louisiana resident, it’s moot for me to add anything short of a tidbit from the Massachusetts Senate primary election this month that included a parody website/twitter account for Wack E. Robinson, trying to dissuade would-be voters for Jack E. Robinson. Ultimately, Jack opted to sue Wack. See http://www.kennedyseat.com/2009/12/jack-e-robinson-demands-that-attack.html
interesting: iokon’s pulled the blog from their mayoral race site: http://pollnola.com
it was there before the mitchthemayor mess. i wonder why they took it down?
Maybe because there hadn’t been any posts in the last three weeks?
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