The so-called Forces of Change...

An interesting piece on the Mail and Guardian website last night touched on the impact of a website called the Forces of Change – www.forcesofchange.co.za – a website that was recently established to propagate reasons for a change in leadership at the 53^rd national conference of the ANC. The website is clearly against Zuma and its preferred candidates are Kgalema Motlanthe for president, with Matthews Phosa as his deputy. Despite its best efforts to derail the presidency through distribution of its propaganda, it looks as though the movement has been quashed by the announcement of Zuma’s victory over Motlanthe.

Interestingly at the same time as the article’s publication, I was contacted by a concerned reader of my blog who it appears has done some fascinating research around the website, detailed below.

The IP address is owned by a US-registered internet service provider - Linode LLC - and belongs to their London hosting centre. This domain is the only domain hosted on this IP address indicating that a specific hosting package was purchased for this domain. The only piece of legitimate information in the registration details for the domain www.forcesofchange.co.za is the email address theforcesofchange@gmail.com.

The email address theforcesofchange@gmail.com is also associated with the registration details of one other domain, namely www.saveanc.co.za. This domain was registered on 9 November 2012 and the other registration details are also clearly invalid.

The domain www.saveanc.co.za points to the IP address 72.8.150.24, which is owned by the US internet service provider Staminus Communications. The IP address belongs to their hosting centre in Fullerton, California, United States. There are 316 unrelated domains also hosted on this IP address. This suggests that the IP address is part of a shared website hosting provider and no further identifiable information is available.

The parties behind the two domains have made a concerted effort to hide their true identities by entering invalid registration details and both domains are supported by an anonymising service, Afraid (www.afraid.org).

Mail and Guardian article: http://mg.co.za/article/2012-12-17-why-you-shouldnt-vote-for-jz