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Osint Amateur Hour

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Re: Osint Amateur Hour

#21

Post by kortilla »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #13
thepangolino wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea on why the address is not provided? I just find this practice really annoying and I don't see how it helps sell a property.

It prevents people from showing up randomly and ringing doorbells. The realtor can control the process, inexperienced and stressed sellers are not confronted with strangers 'negotiating'. Mostly it's in the interest of the realtor that their position as a middleman is accepted.

So why isn’t that an issue in the US where addresses are openly listed and homeowners aren’t harassed?

Re: Osint Amateur Hour

#22

Post by dmurray »

executesorder66 wrote: post #16
jiofih wrote: post #14

How do you go about completing the challenge? Identifying its SA is extremely easy with the Dutch text and newspaper names. There is no real hint this is Pretoria and not somewhere else. The satellite photos don’t have enough resolution to help find the stop lights (which appear not too common looking at street view). You can kind of see a double roof in the building in the background, and the road arrangement, but i…

There is no Dutch text. It is Afrikaans. And as a South African, I would immediately know it was SA just by the look of the traffic lights and street signs. I agree that there is no way to know which city it is in the first photo. In the article there is the line: "Some quick Googling revealed several universities in Pretoria, and I decided to wing it and take a closer look at the Pretoria skyline." That's glossing o…

There are only 4 or 5 large cities in SA, though, so even if you didn't get lucky guessing Pretoria first time round it wouldn't take that long to check all their skylines for that distinctive building.

Re: Osint Amateur Hour

#23

Post by mywacaday »

polytely wrote: post #7
phreeza wrote: post #2

If you enjoy this kind of thing, you may like the Geoguessr game ( https://www.geoguessr.com/ ), and this guy on youtube who is really good at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xApbqwtnSzs&list=PL_japiE6QK...

That guy (GeoWizard) has an amazing video series where he attempts to cross the whole country of Wales while walking in a straight line [0], it is honestly one of the best things I've ever seen on the internet. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7w986ni7_g&list=PL_japiE6QK...

Thanks for that, enjoyable watch over a coffee. I'm currently looking into planning a kayak trip with some friends. Nice to see with a bit of imagination there is still some adventure to be had.

Re: Osint Amateur Hour

#24

Post by justacog »

kortilla wrote: post #21
UweSchmidt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It prevents people from showing up randomly and ringing doorbells. The realtor can control the process, inexperienced and stressed sellers are not confronted with strangers 'negotiating'. Mostly it's in the interest of the realtor that their position as a middleman is accepted.

So why isn’t that an issue in the US where addresses are openly listed and homeowners aren’t harassed?

Realtors in the US typically have an exclusive contract with the seller and the seller must pay the commission however the house is sold. Without a contract like that (seems common in Europe), a buyer can bypass the realtor and work directly with the seller. The listing agents hide the address to try to prevent that from happening.

Re: Osint Amateur Hour

#25

Post by Hackbraten »

executesorder66 wrote: post #16
jiofih wrote: post #14

How do you go about completing the challenge? Identifying its SA is extremely easy with the Dutch text and newspaper names. There is no real hint this is Pretoria and not somewhere else. The satellite photos don’t have enough resolution to help find the stop lights (which appear not too common looking at street view). You can kind of see a double roof in the building in the background, and the road arrangement, but i…

There is no Dutch text. It is Afrikaans. And as a South African, I would immediately know it was SA just by the look of the traffic lights and street signs. I agree that there is no way to know which city it is in the first photo. In the article there is the line: "Some quick Googling revealed several universities in Pretoria, and I decided to wing it and take a closer look at the Pretoria skyline." That's glossing o…

> I agree that there is no way to know which city it is in the first photo.

If you look closely, you can see stenciled markings on the yellow poles. These felt like official markings to me so I tried to figure out how to use the markings to narrow down the list of candidate cities.

According to Wikipedia, the _Burger_ newspaper is distributed only in three regions: Western, Eastern, and Northern Cape. There are not too many large-ish towns in these district.

So I made a list of all towns with >50k inhabitants. Looking at those cities on Street View one by one, I found there are only two towns where the yellow poles have the exact same typeface of stencil numbers on them: East London and Uitenhage.

So I took a closer look at either town. (After a few misses, you quickly get a feeling where to find the parts of towns where the roads actually have traffic lights). With a bit of luck, I actually managed to locate the first picture just by randomly clicking on corners. Its coordinates are 33.7648S/25.4012E.

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