Sunny's latest ban...is it really warranted?

[Big Daddy Cool]

Can the Mods favor an agency and help out their favorites? Yes they can. A Mod or Mods might want to shoe favoritism towards an agency in exchange for better rates or even free time with the ladies thus the Mods motivation.

Is what I written above likely? No. The ownership of the board is here to make money from advertisers and if Mods were favoring certain agencies than this can potentially hurt the ownership as it would discourage unflavored agencies from advertising here creating lost in revenue. Keeping this in mind it's unlikely the Mods are biased towards certain agencies as some has suggested.

On another note I trust that Mod 7 and Mod 5 made the correct call and have all the evidence they need. Unfortunately they can't show their hand or techniques as this would be screaming "please circumvent our security system" and teach shills how to beat the system. Yes, I know some probably have beaten the system, but let's not make any easier for them.

Besides I've communicated with Mod 7 a few times and has always done a great job of ansering concerns and solving problems.

 

[Mod 7]

The identification of shilling members is sometimes very easy, sometimes more difficult. As Mod5 pointed out, we have different tools at our disposal and those tools give us information about what's going on with the board. Only information. We then have to analyze this information in order to conclude whether there is shilling or not. Please keep in mind that the technical information we have is about handles and how they access the board, not who is behind a keyboard using that handle.

The analysis of Sunny's shilling activities required a few days of investigation. One of us also spent countless hours looking at posts of other members as well who have not yet been mentioned here, many anomalies were identified, and the investigation is not completed yet. When we are not 100% sure about what's going on, we prefer to wait until the shiller shoots himself in the foot. It normally doesn't take too long. Then we hang him (or her).

For the same reasons Mod5 mentioned above, I also won't tell you what type of information we accumulated about Sunny/Jou/others, but I can still tell you some of the conclusions we got to:

- Sunny and Jou have been sharing the same PC on multiple occasions, repeatedly, from different IPs, on multiple days.
- From the style of the posts, Sunny's handle itself is being used by at least two different persons.
- Jou has been posting on multiple agencies, and he's allowed to do so. There is no way for us to verify whether the reviews about other agencies' girls are legit or not, that's not the point. But given that he's also posting from the same PC as Sunny, any review about one of Sunny's girls is in fact shilling.
- Sunny has been warned multiple times about this kind of activities, he's being caught in the past doing the exact same thing. He's also been previously suspended multiple times for other infractions: spamming by PM, advertising while not yet advertiser, etc. Let's just say he's fully aware of what he's doing wrong, and he's still doing it.

We have a whole thread devoted to this case in the Mods private section, with evidence, analysis, Mods discussions, etc. Bottom line is we have plenty of evidence to nail Jou and Sunny as working together one way or another. The Mods are working as a team on this, and there is more to come. Stay tuned.

M7

 

[General Gonad]

We have a whole thread devoted to this case in the Mods private section, with evidence, analysis, Mods discussions, etc. Bottom line is we have plenty of evidence to nail Jou and Sunny as working together one way or another. The Mods are working as a team on this, and there is more to come. Stay tuned.

M7,

I commend he Mods work. Sunny should never have allowed someone else to post from his computer and/or given his password to someone else. Ultimately, he is responsible for what transpired. Having said this, I think two months is too heavy a fine. Can't you allow him to continue posting in the advertiszing section? He made a mistake but he still needs to make money to feed his family. Surely you could allow him to post his ads...

GG

 

[Board Stiff]

Let's not forget that I was banned a while ago because Tony's IP address resembled mine. Thanks to Special K for helping moderate that situation. However, I am not typically inclined to give Sunny the benefit of the doubt....

 

[MG_mtl]

The analysis of Sunny's shilling activities required a few days of investigation. One of us also spent countless hours looking at posts of other members as well who have not yet been mentioned here, many anomalies were identified, and the investigation is not completed yet... The Mods are working as a team on this, and there is more to come. Stay tuned...

Wow... my hat's off to the Mods! I can't believe you spend all this time on Merb investigating shit like this...for free .

Thanks! Merci!

 

[ops_com]

The identification of shilling members is sometimes very easy, sometimes more difficult. As Mod5 pointed out, we have different tools at our disposal and those tools give us information about what's going on with the board. Only information ... Please keep in mind that the technical information we have is about handles and how they access the board, not who is behind a keyboard using that handle ...

- Sunny and Jou have been sharing the same PC on multiple occasions, repeatedly, from different IPs, on multiple days.
- From the style of the posts, Sunny's handle itself is being used by at least two different persons.
M7

Well as someone mentioned early, it's very easy to get the same IP address and the chance to get same IP of an other member is very low but not impossible. Also, it's possible that you think they used the same PC based on their MAC address (physical identification of a network card), because they are identical. It's very easy to clone or change this address, even Windows assign a fake address, when he cannot find it on the NIC. Even Videotron had this problem a couple of years ago, an old series of modem had all the same MAC addresses.

Also, as General Gonad told us before, Sunny told him that he did asked someone else to write his posts in English. So, based on that could it be Jou who wrote these posts in English for Sunny giving up the impression that they were the same person.

Is it possible to know since when the MODs are aware of this situation.

 

[EagerBeaver]

Maxima,

There is a bit of difference between the situation I described in which I used Doc Holliday's laptop and actually posted, and the situation Oliver describes, in which a member simply logs on from your computer, but doesn't post.

Since the Doc Holliday laptop episode, I have never posted from another member's computer. I did, however, within the past few months log on to another member's computer in Montreal in order to check my PMs and the new posts. I DID NOT affirmatively post as I had been warned not to do that. When in Montreal, I have only posted from Internet Cafes.

I did not receive a warning from the Mods for logging on to the other member's computer. Nor should I have, since I wasn't posting, I was just reading other posts and PMs that had already been sent. No harm, no foul, and certainly the Mods have better things to do than warn posters about just logging on to another member's computer.

If I misunderstood Oliver's post and he did in fact let his friend log on to his computer and also post from his computer, my attitude is he should have known better and he deserved what he got. This would be severe negligence by Oliver Kloseoff. I believe in the past the Mods did issue warnings on the Board not to do this, right around the time of my episode in which I was caught posting on Doc Holliday's computer.

By the ways, the posts I made on Holliday's computer were not made to promote Holliday, lol.

 

[EagerBeaver]

I can't help but think that Sunny's continual run-ins with the MERB authorities has everything to do with his poor English skills that require him to use others to properly communicate what he wants to say. Even Jou says this in his post. On a certain level I feel sorry for Sunny because I struggle with French as much or more than he does with English, and I am a well educated person.

However, my business is not at all dependent, to any extent, on French speaking clients, as Sunny's is to some extent on English speaking clients and a majority English speaking board. Perhaps Sunny should get a tutor and improve his command of the English language so that intermediaries like Jou, whatever their intentions, are not necessary. Maybe this will reduce his constant run-ins with the MERB police which is getting to be like Dennis Rodman used to be with the NBA.

 

[Mod 7]

Sunny should never have allowed someone else to post from his computer and/or given his password to someone else. Ultimately, he is responsible for what transpired. Having said this, I think two months is too heavy a fine. Can`t you allow him to continue posting in the advertiszing section?

Reminder - Some of Sunny`s past infractions:

Dec 9, 2005 (M5): Suspended 3 days for unpaid advertising.
Jan 10, 2005 (M5): Suspended 1 year for unpaid advertising. Was finally released upon becoming an advertiser.
Apr 6, 2006 (Sheik): Suspended 2 weeks for promoting on spchat.
Jun 18, 2006 (M5): Suspended 2 weeks for spamming through PMs
Jan 17, 2007 (M7): Suspended 2 weeks for shilling and duplicate handles.
Feb 1, 2007 (M5): Suspended 3 days for posting disrespectful comments and flaming of other members.
Feb 9, 2007 (M7): Suspended 2 months for shilling and duplicate handles.

There`s no way in hell he should be given less than what he`s got, after the number of infractions he`s made.

M7

 

[EagerBeaver]

Reminder - Some of Sunny`s past infractions:

Dec 9, 2005 (M5): Suspended 3 days for unpaid advertising.
Jan 10, 2005 (M5): Suspended 1 year for unpaid advertising. Was finally released upon becoming an advertiser.
Apr 6, 2006 (Sheik): Suspended 2 weeks for promoting on spchat.
Jun 18, 2006 (M5): Suspended 2 weeks for spamming through PMs
Jan 17, 2007 (M7): Suspended 2 weeks for shilling and duplicate handles.
Feb 1, 2007 (M5): Suspended 3 days for posting disrespectful comments and flaming of other members.
Jan 17, 2007 (M7): Suspended 2 months for shilling and duplicate handles.

M7

Sunny`s got a rap sheet on MERB like Al Capone!

 

[Mod 7]

i spoke to a few people
recently
who used anomonizer
to get on the baord with other handles
and they were banned saying it was tony when in fact it was not!!! 1 of the 2 does not use merb anymore--the otehr im nost sure.and there is probably more.

What are the odds that a new member, a real new one, registers from the exact same location as what Tony (since you singled him out) used right before, and this "new" and "legitimate" member tells you (and not the Mods) that he was mistakenly booted out as Tony? Com'on now!

If people want to use anonymizers, they face the risk of being mistaken with somebody else. Ask yourself the question why they needed to revert to anonymizers in the first place.

We will be adding a new rule shortly.

2) Forbidden Activities:
x) In order to eradicate shills and trolls as efficiently as possible, any member found to be using any technique to conceal or deceive moderators from tracing their posts may be suspended, in some cases after an initial warning.

M7

 

[z/m(Ret)]

Coming in as the runner who missed the start of the race and I'm not here to defend anyone nor challenge Mods decisions but I've known Sunny for quite a while, long enough to be thrown off by the numerous accusations of shill that have been made lately against him. Before the incidents, he and I have discussed the aspect of shill and its overall negative impact on the business. Sunny's opinion on the matter was that shill, though bringing sometimes short term gains, will sooner or later be hurtful to the business.

Given that he had expressed such opinion, him shilling for real would be in complete contradiction, hence my confusion.

 

[bumfie]

Two jobs I would never want:

1. Running an agency.

2. Being a moderator in this nutbin.

 

[YouVantOption]

Interesting paranoia

Well, every time my name comes up it just brings tears to my eyes - lol

... reason for mod not wanting you to use anonymizers is that "they" (meaning merb collective) can trace your personal info and sell it to agencies hungry for clients. The rest is just a bunch of bullshit fed to you over the years by people like mod who obviously think they can, and probably can, get away with this kind of bullshit talk plus look down on all of you and call you pathetic loosers behind you backs that you can't score pussy without paying for it. Wake up people.

Had that happen to you a lot then? Have 'agencies hungry for clients' contact you trying to drum up business? Any proof the 'MERB collective' is leaking data off their systems? Or are you just blowing trying to take a leak on the collective MERB ear here?

 

[metoo4]

Never had a "client hungry" agency contacting me! In fact, never had an agency contacting me unless I first requested it!

Only info Mods can get is our IP address and Internet Provider. Nothing else. Even if, somehow, they could get our "computer name", what will "OfficePC" or "LivingRoom" tell them?

Who's the biggest looser? Somebody who resort to call other loosers in order to get it's point across or the ones being called loosers?

Who's looking down on who? What about somebody who's calling others "pathetic loosers"? Is he looking down to others?

You don't like this board? Stop acting like this and stop visiting, or at least don't go tru the trouble of registering handles, and stop posting.

I forgot! Next accusation will be "PM aren't private". They are private as long as no "best-friend-who-would-never-double-cross-me-ever" decide to hit the "forward" or do a "cut-paste" to send the info somewhere else.

Grow up guys...