Internet Mapping Turned a Remote Kansas Farm Into a Digital Hell

Kashmir Hill, reporting for Fusion:

For the last decade, Taylor and her renters have been visited by all kinds of mysterious trouble. They’ve been accused of being identity thieves, spammers, scammers and fraudsters. They’ve gotten visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children. They’ve found people scrounging around in their barn. The renters have been doxxed, their names and addresses posted on the internet by vigilantes. Once, someone left a broken toilet in the driveway as a strange, indefinite threat.

All in all, the residents of the Taylor property have been treated like criminals for a decade. And until I called them this week, they had no idea why.

If this sounds reminiscent of the story about the house in Atlanta that keeps getting reported as the location of missing cell phones, that’s because Hill was the reporter on that story too.

★ Monday, 11 April 2016