{"id":134,"date":"2008-04-03T20:04:21","date_gmt":"2008-04-04T01:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/2008\/04\/03\/brought-down-by-the-devils-horns-and-a-bunch-of-car-nerds\/"},"modified":"2008-04-03T20:04:21","modified_gmt":"2008-04-04T01:04:21","slug":"brought-down-by-the-devils-horns-and-a-bunch-of-car-nerds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/2008\/04\/03\/brought-down-by-the-devils-horns-and-a-bunch-of-car-nerds\/","title":{"rendered":"Brought down by the devil’s horns. And a bunch of car nerds."},"content":{"rendered":"

I love it when virtual communities act like real communities and come together to achieve a common purpose.\u00a0 The special joy I have from this phenomenon is enhanced when the virtual community uses the everyday technology tools at their disposal to achieve their ends.\u00a0 For that very reason, I spent some time a couple of years ago scambaiting<\/a>;\u00a0 it was fun using teh Intarwebs to interfere with fraudsters, and I’d like to take the practice up again some time.\u00a0 I kept a diary<\/a> for a short while about my scambaiting adventures;\u00a0 sadly, I kept getting some momentum going in a scambait and then running into work-related madness that kept me away from my victims.\u00a0 It was a fun little pastime, and there were a couple of bad guys who ended up getting arrested as a result of the work my fellow scambaiters did at www.419eater.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s another great example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, though:\u00a0 in Calgary, an online car enthusiasts’ community has located a vehicle stolen from one of its members<\/a>. \u00a0 As reported in Wired, the thief in question swiped a rather distinctive Nissan Skyline GT-R – the vehicle in question is a right-hand drive model imported from Japan.\u00a0 The owner of the vehicle thought the car was gone, but posted a description of the unique vehicle in the car-buff forum he frequented, along with a description of the (also) distinctive looking thief, who was missing the middle two fingers on his left hand.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, a moderator from the forum by the name of James Lynch spotted the car a day later and then did some awesome detective work:<\/p>\n

“I pulled out my camera, but I wanted to see his hand, so I did the rock out sign,” Lynch, 22, told Wired.com, referring to the splayed finger gesture that’s ubiquitous at heavy metal concerts. “He did it back and I saw his hand. I rolled down my window and yelled, ‘Nice stolen car!’ He’s like, ‘It’s not stolen,’ ”<\/p>\n

The suspect sped off in the turbocharged 400-horsepower car at more than 100 mph, almost running off the road in the process. “He’s a lousy driver,” said Lynch, who decided chasing him wouldn’t be wise. Instead, he called the police and posted the suspect’s picture at Beyond.ca.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two days later, using tools like Facebook and Google maps, along with some old-fashioned gumshoe work, the community had found the car and local police soon arrested their man.\u00a0 Bonus:\u00a0 there’s video<\/a> of the thief (dubbed “The Claw” by forum habituees) posted on youtube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love it when virtual communities act like real communities and come together to achieve a common purpose. The special joy I have from this phenomenon is enhanced when the virtual community uses the everyday technology tools at their disposal to achieve their ends. For that very reason, I spent some time a couple of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[175,173,172,171,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}