Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most password managers will already do this, right? Like the iOS and Firefox built in ones will remember a username/password pair.
they mean generator
[deleted]
Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
71–80 of 203 posts
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an extremely common (for German-speaking countries) first-last name combination and I have firstlast@gmail.com (not used anymore, but I check it around once a week). I get so many confidential documents or personal photos. The most hilarious/sad was the insurance provider domcura which advertised how they got some kind of award for their great processes, yet writing to 2 or 3 different service emails that they…
Hello Hans Maier!
Maier is only #34 in Germany, Meyer is #6, and mine, Wagner, is at #7 ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_surnam...
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#73Actually pretty useful if you input your email address. It crawls through some kind of knowledge graph I'm seeing stuff I probably need to go clean up from like 10 years ago that's no longer relevant
No post body was provided.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#74This is technologically impressive, but I was disappointed (but not particularly surprised) to see no mention of the ethics involved in using this sort of project - in either the GitHub issues or the README/docs. This seems like a great tool for stalking people; particularly the recursive functionality (for tying identifiers together). I'm not saying the world is worse-off due to the release of software like this - i…
Software like this _already_ exists. Credit bureaus, advertising firms, data brokers, skip trace databases, three-letter agencies across the globe, and nearly all of the Big Tech companies do their business building centralized profiles of basically everyone and that certainly includes correlating online identities. The only difference here is that one is more limited and open source. "Privacy is dead, get over it."
Sure, but none of them are readily available to someone you argued with on /r/politics who has taken agin you.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#75Seems incredibly prone to false positives. For example, I can guarantee that I'm not the AdmiralAsshat on Reddit, Gmail, or Twitter, because that username was already taken by the time I tried to sign up for them.
I intentionally steal nicknames I've seen. I'm an asshole as well, so sometimes it works out. I have 13 different nicknames so far that I use/have used since 1997, though I tend to rotate between all of them regularly. I DO hope they try to use "AI" to track me. That will be fun.
What's the benefit? It sounds like you might have to explain yourself one day if someone posts something racist/horrible.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#76Well, that is creepy as hell, but I guess it is obvious that such a tool could exist, and it is better not to have it exclusively in the hands of data-brokers, etc. I wonder how hard it would be to add the functionality: go back to the email address that has registered these accounts, find any other names they've registered, and search off those. (EDIT: err, wait, I bet that's the "recursive" functionality they menti…
You have probably already clicked ”accept”[1] on one of those ”cookie notices” which actually make you give your consent to having your data processed and all your profiles and devices linked by hundreds, if not thousands of companies all over the world.
[1]: more accurately, you didn’t go through the list of all vendors and didn’t object to their ”legitimate interests”, if that was even an option.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I intentionally steal nicknames I've seen. I'm an asshole as well, so sometimes it works out. I have 13 different nicknames so far that I use/have used since 1997, though I tend to rotate between all of them regularly. I DO hope they try to use "AI" to track me. That will be fun.
What's the benefit? It sounds like you might have to explain yourself one day if someone posts something racist/horrible.
I look at it differently, even if someone isn’t going around posting racist/horrible things, people and tastes change over time. I’ve been a part of fandoms that are now seen as cringey or toxic. I’ve also grown up more as a person and I look back at a lot of my old comments as sophomoric. I write differently, and my opinions on things have changed as well. I’ve had people dig through my post history on sites like Reddit to try and find a “gotcha” based on some remark I made years ago.
All in all, I personally feel like it is a good thing to cycle through usernames throughout life.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello Hans Maier!
Maier is only #34 in Germany, Meyer is #6, and mine, Wagner, is at #7 ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_surnam...
Here in the United States we choose “John Smith” as the most generic and common name for a man. What name would a German pick?
Curiously, for a supposedly common name I have never once met a John Smith.
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I think this publication is a net-loss for the world, for sure. People will find and use this code--people who could/would never create it themselves. It will be used for many reasons, but the stalking is the most obvious. Not all of my usernames are as resistant as this one, unfortunately.
Is it better for only malicious actors to have access to this tooling? If both teams don’t have the same tools, there isn’t a level playing field. If this wasn’t on GitHub, we wouldn’t be aware of it. However, it would certainly be circulating on underground forums. Is blissful ignorance better?
I feel this is similar to Firesheep[1], a browser extension from a decade ago that put cookie session hijacking into the hands of everyday users and became wildly popular until its removal. Pre-Snowden it pushed various major sites to implement HTTPS encryption, including Facebook[2].
Granted there the solution was a rather simple one but I feel it's at least worthwhile for more to be conscientious of singular identities online and what info is disclosed publicly with them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep [2] https://threatpost.com/facebook-kills-firesheep-new-secure-b...
Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maier is only #34 in Germany, Meyer is #6, and mine, Wagner, is at #7 ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_surnam...
Here in the United States we choose “John Smith” as the most generic and common name for a man. What name would a German pick? Curiously, for a supposedly common name I have never once met a John Smith.
It depends, probably Max Müller or Hans Müller, just anything Müller. Unlike the US, we don’t normally use a real name as placeholder name [0], the options there would be Max or Erika Mustermann (literally example or pattern man), for an average person it’s Otto Normalverbraucher (Otto Average-Consumer) and Lieschen Müller.