Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

EXCLUSIVE: A consultant working for the US broadband industry sent over 1 million comments to the FCC opposing net neutrality

Many of the names and email addresses in these comments are tied to a single data breach. Here's how we figured out this happened
buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine…

Anticipating a huge number of public submissions, the FCC allowed people to upload comments in bulk. BuzzFeed News obtained data that made it possible in many cases to trace who posted them. We were able to analyze details of those comments.

We ran large samples of the email addresses in the uploads through @haveibeenpwned, which identifies whether an address has been exposed in any of hundreds of major data breaches.

What we found was shocking: In one group of 1.9 million comments, 94% of the email addresses also appeared in the “Modern Business Solutions” data breach, which a hacker had posted to Twitter in 2016.

All these comments were uploaded by Shane Cory, the founder of political consulting firm Media Bridge. Cory has claimed credit for "20 or 30" major public advocacy campaigns in recent years, and Media Bridge has called its approach of marshaling comments "the Big Hammer"

The comments included two from Democratic members of Congress — which would have flown against their party's position — and fictional characters like Boba Fett and Luke Skywalker.

The email addresses attributed to them were in the Modern Business Solutions data breach.

But what was *really* shocking is the names and street addresses were exactly the same as those in the data breach. A spot-check of 100 randomly selected Media Bridge comments revealed a similar pattern — even down to an address that used underscores instead of spaces.

It's possible a real person could have their real information in a breached database and continue to use it as they move around the internet.

But the odds of so many people doing so, including "Luke Skywalker," seems impossible.

Media Bridge contested the idea that email addresses showing up in breached databases were a sign of improprieties, and disputed BuzzFeed News’ findings.

This isn't an isolated incident. We found similar allegations of impersonation across the country.

This technique threatens an important part of the democratic process — and there’s no easy answer on how to fix it.

buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine…

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