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Who is Matt Parker?

2005-01-27

Matt Parker has linked to this page from here. He mentions that the disappearing thread in question is now back on line (confirmed). He also states that there is no connection between him and Stephen DeVoy, which is in all probability true (though a further curious coincidence is that they both appear to be keen chess players).

2004-12-09

The thread I referred to in which "jeff" worked out what was going on seems to have vanished. The link I gave now goes to a different page??

I have been noticing a few coincidences recently - probably just that but I will run them by you for the record. I put up this "Who is Matt Parker?" page just two days after putting up my KOBE Headquarters page. It never crossed my mind that the two subjects were related but they do have some similarities - for a start they are both cases where the very concept of identity on the Internet is called into serious question. So what are the coincidences I hear you ask? The first is a connection to DataPipe. Matt Parker and Stephen DeVoy play roughly equivalent roles in the two cases:

www.mattparker.org 66.70.45.36   DATAPIPE-BLK3
stephen-devoy.com  64.106.229.20 DATAPIPE-BLK4

Nothing too startling but it did strike me as odd. The second coincidence is even weaker and is based on the use of the word "diatribe" I don't think of it as a common word and was quite pleased with myself for using it (in the plural) in the first entry on this page. At that time I had not yet seen www.mattparker.org but Matt uses the word diatribe in the third paragraph of his statement. I had already noticed this when I did my little experiment in the KOBE case, so when I elicited a response from "KOBE SBM" my heart jumped as I read his comment:

Your foolish diatribes do nothing for the perception of intelligence of most Lefties. Look at the claims made by the Leftist trolls regarding the messages left here. BWAHAHAHAHA.

From my Apache logs it seems that KOBE SBM did not read any pages on my site before responding - except the one I linked to in my comment which did not include the word "diatribe" in either singular or plural. After noticing these two I started experiencing what felt like a flood of minor coincidences and felt that I might be rapidly succumbing to paranoia. So I think it is best for me to just walk away with my sanity and get on with something more useful.

2004-12-03

The three netblocks I mentioned in the first entry in this file are no longer registered to Matt Parker. Now whois.arin.net reports that all the addresses formerly in those netblocks only belong to the larger DATAPIPE-BLK3 netblock.

2004-12-02

If I knew how stressful this would be I might not have put this page up, but my curiosity is now satisfied and I have learned some valuable lessons! The Usenet spam attacking Matt Parker is all part of an elaborate fiction cooked up by someone called Erik van Lint and I have found no reason to doubt the essential truth of Matt's statement on the matter, which can be found at www.mattparker.org. By the way, Matt did not reveal his attacker's name to me - I found it myself in this bizarre thread where the person posting as "jeff" is the one who figured out what was going on.

I still think that anyone putting up a commercial website at eurobrides.com and creating an obvious but unexplained association with bear hunting sites is swimming in dangerous waters - but it in no way justifies the sort of persecution we are seeing. I apologise to Matt for any additional stress I have caused him by putting up this page.

For anyone who is concerned about the issue of trafficking in persons, I would recommend checking out the Counter-Trafficking section on the website of the International Organisation for Migration.

2004-11-29

I said I wasn't going to spend any more time on this but there are a couple more points I should mention. Firstly I have edited the text I posted on 2004-11-19, merging the first two paragraphs into one and then simplifying it. The other thing I want to comment on is my choice of the word "suspicious" to describe the domain names in question. Most of the domains fall into one of two distinct categories which Matt refers to as dating/personal and hunting/wilderness.

Starting with the hunting category, I have been educating myself by looking at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game Wildlife Conservation website. Well now I know that none of the species mentioned in the domain names are considered to be endangered, and that they can be legally hunted. On the other hand the idea of shooting a bear for sport is repugnant to me, and I am personally "suspicious" of anyone who would want to do such a thing.

Now moving on to the dating category and considering the eurobrides.com domain name - here I think I am on firmer ground. To start with, the name itself is obnoxious, implying that "brides" are some sort of commodity which can be traded like bananas or coal. Furthermore, given the sheer scale of human misery associated with the illegal trafficking of women from Eastern European cities, I think most reasonable people would agree that a website called www.eurobrides.com is hardly less "suspicious" than one called www.afghaniheroin.com for example.

2004-11-28

On 2004-11-27 Matt Parker used my contact form to send me a message expressing some legitimate concerns about this page. I responded and he replied with some further information.

The first thing I want to say is that Matt has put up a web page at www.mattparker.org to explain the situation from his point of view.

The second important thing to clarify is that there is no indication that the UNODC have ever concerned themselves with anyone by the name of Matt Parker - in which case the "report" I referred to is bogus. I never thought it was a real UNODC report but I did not make that sufficiently clear. The particular post I referred to seems to have been deleted from the archive but a Google search for "Matt Parker" plus "UNODC REPORT" brings up many more copies. Given the wide distribution I think it would be wise for Matt to request that the UNODC put out a brief (web searchable) press release stating that they had nothing to do with the "report".

To summarise a few points from Matt's defence:

The main thing that still troubles me is that the sites are all running on IP addresses in netblocks that are registered to Matt Parker. He claims that this is because someone has failed to update the whois database and that he no longer controls those netblocks. However, he does take responsibility for www.mattparker.org and www.ruguide.com which are running on IP addresses in DP-66-70-45-30, and when he used my contact form the connection came from 66.70.45.10 which is in DP-66-70-45-10. It happens that www.date2000.net resolves to 66.70.45.10!

So I still think there is something fishy about Matt's explanation but I wish to stress that the serious allegations made against him by person or persons unknown are unsubstantiated. Once again, if you want to read his side of the story then go to www.mattparker.org. Unless anyone else contacts me with anything dramatic I do not plan to spend any more time on this. I have done what I set out to do and have much bigger fish to fry:-)

2004-11-19

For some time now, person or persons unknown have been spamming Usenet with lengthy diatribes about the evils of someone called Matt Parker. Until now these have all been incoherent rants but today I came across Message-ID 5c238c13.0411190238.7ca75c2e posted via Google which also included what was claimed to be a UNODC REPORT. I could find no evidence that the UNODC have ever had anything to say about anyone called Matt Parker but nevertheless, the "report" does contain some quite detailed and verifiable information.

For starters, netblocks DP-66-70-45-10, DP-66-70-45-20 and DP-66-70-45-30 are all registered to a customer by the name of Matt Parker. Secondly, a number of websites were claimed to be running on machines with IP addresses in these netblocks. This I have confirmed (they have forward lookups but no reverse):

66.70.45.10 www.date2000.net
66.70.45.11 www.trueloves.com
66.70.45.12 www.eurobrides.com
66.70.45.16 www.alaskablacktaildeerhunt.com
66.70.45.17 www.vivalove.com
66.70.45.18 www.romanceaffiliates.com
66.70.45.20 www.rainypasslodge.com
66.70.45.24 www.alaskabrownbearhunt.com
66.70.45.26 www.antiscam.org
66.70.45.27 www.europeanguide.net
66.70.45.30 www.alaskablackbearhunt.com
66.70.45.38 www.call-russia.com
66.70.45.39 www.skydesigns.com

I have not visited any of these sites myself, but the domain names are suspicious and the allegation is that whoever is administering them is involved in criminal activities including credit card fraud, sexual exploitation of minors, arms trafficking and abuse of protected animals.

www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010