'Pretty ridiculous': thousands of names stolen to attack net neutrality rules

• Letter says 450,000 comments may have been spam from net neutrality enemies
• New FCC head wants to roll back Obama-era rules that govern open internet

Last Tuesday, Joel Mullaney, a software engineer from Watertown, Massachusetts, was browsing Reddit when he spotted a thread about people whose names and postal addresses had been falsely used to post comments on a government website attacking Obama-era open internet regulation.

Mullaney, 43, popped his address into the search bar on the Federal Communications Commission's website and found his name attached to a comment that started: "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation."