Millions of net neutrality comments were faked. Turns out mine was one.

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Of the record 23 million comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission on the contentious issue of net neutrality — or whether to repeal rules that prevent Internet providers from blocking or throttling Websites — millions were faked or used stolen identities.

One of those was USA TODAY columnist Edward Baig's.

Baig, who co-wrote this piece, discovered that his name was among those used to submit such fake comments when reporting on Democratic lawmakers' efforts to stall the vote on net neutrality. He looked it up on a site established by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is seeking to delay a Dec. 14 FCC vote on repealing the regulations, citing a "deeply corrupted" comment process.

The comments were not Baig's — he never submitted an opinion for or against the Obama-era Internet regulations, in keeping with USA TODAY's journalistic guidelines on refraining from political activity.

But there was his name, as well as his address. .

How could that have happened?

For a start, comment-stuffing is cheap and technologically easy, said Benjamin Dean, a technology fellow at the non-partisan Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington D.C.

The first task for any group that wanted to file comments would be getting a list of names, email address and postal addresses. Such lists are readily available for sale on the Dark Web, the underground, hidden portion of the Internet that’s only available through specialized browsers. It’s not really a single entity but instead thousands of sites where it’s possible to find stolen information and illegal items sold and traded.

Such data sets are cheap, especially because to comment on the FCC site all that was necessary was a name, email address and postal address.

“If a credit card is attached to that information it is more expensive,” but that’s not required on the FCC site, Dean says.

Dean adds that it might also be possible to generate names randomly and use them to fill in the comment pages.

“Some of them have got email addresses without the @ sign, and there are a lot of John Johnsons, for example,” he said.

Another possibility would be to go to other FCC comment pages or another public page and write a simple program that would collect names and addresses and then create a database with them and use that to generate new comments on the net neutrality comment page.

A perusal of some of the comments that have been identified as fake make it appear as if several different databases and methods were used to gather or create the information needed to fill in the comment page. Whether the work was done by one individual or group or multiple people isn’t known.

Bogus comments have been submitted on behalf of people on both sides of the debate.

A study funded by the telecom industry found 7 million of the comments came from temporary (fake) e-mail addresses. Among the small portion that were unique, non-form letters, more (1.77 million) were against the repeal than for il (24,000), the study found.

Schneiderman’s office told USA TODAY that an assistant press secretary for the New York Attorney General also turned up as having made false comments. Another submission was apparently made by a person who passed away prior to having supposedly made the comments.

Meanwhile a sister of a USA TODAY editor also turned up as having submitted a comment that she didn’t make.

If your identify has been stolen for the purposes of making a false comment, you can report it on the site Schneiderman set up as part of his investigation.

The FCC encourages individuals who find comments falsely posted under their names to submit their actual comments, and information about the false comments, to the FCC site to ensure the record reflects their views. It is not possible for the FCC to remove comments, the agency said.

Since Schneiderman's office announced the website where people could search to see if their identities were misused, and report if that is the case, some 4,000 submissions have been made, from people all over country.

More: FCC rebuffs calls from senators, NY AG to delay net neutrality vote over fake comments

More: Fake net neutrality comments need FCC action, group says

Beyond the stolen identities, other false submissions used fake email addresses or names such as Homer Simpson or Superman.

It isn’t clear whether such falsified comments are coming from individuals, organizations, bots or some combination. The Attorney General is also looking into reports that there is an overlap between various data breaches and the names used to make fake comments.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist on Twitter @edbaig

Follow Elizabeth Weise on Twitter @eweise