In late 2005, I spent over four hours interviewing Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne as part of a podcast series on entrepreneurship I created.

After I published the audio of the interview, somebody posted a link to it on the Yahoo Finance message board dedicated to Overstock.com.

Seeking the origin of the resulting surge in downloads led to my first stock message board visit.

It was really strange.

What first struck me was the flurry of responses to the original posts in which users with foul mouths and bad attitudes warned that the linked mp3s contained computer viruses.

Of course, no mp3 has ever carried a virus, as I’m fairly certain the posters knew.

These were followed up by all manner of lies meant to discourage others from listening to any of the three Byrne interviews I would eventually publish.

Worse, they posted all manner of lies about Patrick Byrne personally – something I was in a unique position to recognize having just interviewed him at length.

Intrigued, I started examining the posting histories of the most prolific sources of this disinformation, trying to identify patterns that might in turn reveal their underlying motives and, often enough, their real identities.

Well over two years later, I remain engaged in the same pursuit. And, to be frank, I suspect that by now, I understand it better than anybody else, largely because of a few methods I’ve developed and the great amounts of information I’ve received from others.

What follows is a little bit about what I’ve learned.