Today, I saw my very first death threat – jeez, some people really need the attention of a specialist. The post in question is this one:
Blogwar: Sumpfblueten oder “mother contra FON” – Babelfish translation
Basically I am pictured with a gun pointing at my head, as can be seen here:
Threat by Gerhard Mosbach, a Fonero
This is a serious threat, and can carry heavy legal consequences in most countries. I have posted a comment on this blog, and sent a message to Google, in order for the material to be removed, and an apology posted. Failing this, I may take legal action against this individual.
However, being a curious person, I decided to investigate a bit further. Many interesting things have turned up – first and foremost, the owner of this blog is none other than a Dr. Gerhard Mosbach, with ties to at least three members of FON staff and/or advisory board (Florian Forster, Robert Lang, and Nina Wiegand).
First, I looked up the URL foneros.blogspot.com in Google, which turned up this post in Martin Varsavsky’s blog, where “german fonerofan” claims to have the first german blog about FON. The del.icio.us link in the same comment leads us to a bookmarks page by foneros.de, which is also in the title of the foneros.blogspot.com blog.
A quick WHOIS check on foneros.de revealed this:
Domain: foneros.de
Domain-Ace: foneros.de
Descr: Gerhard Mosbach
Descr: Frankenwald 27
Descr: 95138 Bad Steben
Descr: DE
Nserver: ns1.kundencontroller.de
Nserver: ns2.kundencontroller.de
Status: connect
Changed: 2006-01-27T17:54:33+01:00
[Admin-C]
Type: PERSON
Name: Gerhard Mosbach
Address: Frankenwald 27
Pcode: 95138
City: Bad Steben
Country: DE
Remarks: [11178/4505]
Changed: 2005-01-30T19:36:05+01:00
Who is this Gerhard Mosbach? The picture he posts of me is only found online at OpenBC, and then, only if you have an account and thus can browse people’s profiles, including mine. A search on OpenBC reveals the profile of none other than a Dr. Gerhard Mosbach (registration required), of Bad Steben in Germany. In his confirmed contacts, we find the three members of FON mentioned above. For those of you who don’t have or don’t want to have an account at OpenBC, here is a screenshot of Gerhard’s profile, with Robert Lang, who leads the European Business Development for FON, in the contacts list.
Mosbach’s OpenBC profile
This individual has been a constant pain in the FON public forums, if you don’t believe me, check this out and judge by yourself – there are a number of people who even called for his banning. I am in no way saying this is representative of FON or the FON community, but honestly, Gerhard Mosbach is not helping the ‘movement’ too much.
The internet is so much fun sometimes – but less so when one’s life is threatened.
[Update: about ten minutes after posting my comment on his blog, he has removed the pictures. This is why I took the screenshots!]