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Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

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Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#141

Post by baxtr »

faeriechangling wrote: post #117

This is why I use many different usernames, I must have used maybe three dozen different ones by now. The only time I use the same username is for games because I want people to know what other games I play. My opsec is pretty awful but I at least try to not be "simply type in the username I always use into google or some tool on GitHub" bad. I at least want somebody to have to use a few hours or pay a data broker to…

Thai won’t be helpful going forward. The next gen of tools will analyze your writing style and make the connection through that.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#142

Post by hnbad »

bityard wrote: post #55
lol768 wrote: post #9

This 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."

There's a difference between being able to buy a gun at the gun store where your gun is registered to your name and you can only pick it up after a multi-day waiting period, and being able to pick up a gun at the free gun dispensary at the push of a button in a back alley with no supervision.

I realize this may be a failure to communicate because of a difference in shared values but I come from the perspective that harm reduction is worthwhile even if you can't fully eliminate the problem. That you can't prevent all crimes doesn't mean you shouldn't try to prevent crime.

Not to mention that the risk profile of having three-letter agencies come after you or having a random obsessive weirdo "collect a dossier" and share it with other obsessive weirdos who get a kick out of making your life miserable because they project their life failures on you is very different. Namely, if you're prominent enough to have an entire state agency try to destroy you, it's probably over an active decision you made (e.g. focusing your life on political activism) whereas for random weirdos to harass you and attempt to drive you into suicide you just need to show up on their radar long enough for them to start making up reasons to hate you.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#143

Post by hnbad »

vintermann wrote: post #93
EdwardDiego wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but none of them are readily available to someone you argued with on /r/politics who has taken agin you.

So, the question is: are you more afraid of random nobodies online, or are you more afraid of already organized, already powerful people who had similar capability already?

Unless you're actively plotting to overthrow the government, commit violence against politicians or public property, or participate in major civil rights movements, you should be more worried about a random nobody funnelling all their built up hate and frustration into making your life miserable than a three letter agency, yes.

The difference is that the three letter agency has a budget, process and middle management so at the end of the day someone needs to justify why they're expending resources on making your life miserable whereas the random obsessive weirdo just needs to convince a bunch of other obsessive weirdos that you're a garbage person they can turn into their "lolcow" of the day/week/month/year.

The three letter agency is more likely to inconvenience you out of apathy than to actually try to destroy you intentionally. The random nobody is more likely to try to drive you into suicide for a thrill.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#144

Post by codingdave »

vintermann wrote: post #93
EdwardDiego wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but none of them are readily available to someone you argued with on /r/politics who has taken agin you.

So, the question is: are you more afraid of random nobodies online, or are you more afraid of already organized, already powerful people who had similar capability already?

Absolutely more worried about the "nobodies". I'm boring to big scary organizations. But individuals have a wide potential for varying levels of instability and vengeance. Especially online.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#145

Post by hnbad »

jbm wrote: post #41

I took a look at my own user names and it's pretty obvious that the results here are mostly worthless. So many people with empty blogs and the same user name. Unless the blog is auto-created, I don't see the point. I do find all the .ru tags to be concerning. I can imagine out-of-touch security types at Paypal deciding to sanction me based on it without any recourse.

It's mostly worthless but the recursive search via aliases can give some interesting insights. I ran it on my GitHub username and while the result ended up linking me to countries I have never been to (probably via a yandex account as the username is very common and a lot of the profiles were of other people) it did include my full name and cities I've lived in. It seems the most "dangerous" link in my case was Gravatar.

Interestingly, searching by e-mail gave the most garbage results, likely because most services don't expose the e-mail address directly. I guess it's an advantage that neither my usernames nor my legal name are particularly unique.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#146

Post by hifikuno »

nvr219 wrote: post #2

I'm a big use-different-username-for-every-website enthusiast. It makes some things difficult but for me it's worth it.

I've started doing this too. I use DuckDuckGo's email forwarder and they provide random email addresses to hide your real one. Every service I sign up with now has a random email address and what ever the email address is that becomes my username. Couple this with a password manager it works well. If I ever lose access to the password manager I am screwed.

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#147

Post by aunetx »

baxtr wrote: post #141
faeriechangling wrote: post #117

This is why I use many different usernames, I must have used maybe three dozen different ones by now. The only time I use the same username is for games because I want people to know what other games I play. My opsec is pretty awful but I at least try to not be "simply type in the username I always use into google or some tool on GitHub" bad. I at least want somebody to have to use a few hours or pay a data broker to…

Thai won’t be helpful going forward. The next gen of tools will analyze your writing style and make the connection through that.

I guess to analyse your writing style from thousands of billions of messages on Internet in order to simply link two of your accounts together is... overcomplicated?

I mean of course it could work, but except if there is a very special interest for an account, we may need to wait some decades before a list of "linked accounts" containing it in particular could emerge, right?

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#148

Post by what_the_h321 »

romeoblade wrote: post #31
bee_rider wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some annoying people seem to have used my gmail to sign up for things like Twitch. I have all the three factor authentication stuff set up, so I don't think they can get in to click the "verify" links, but I wonder if this sort of tool would be able to verified that the account was... verified. Probably not.

My Gmail is first.last name. I get very sensitive documents for a lawyer with my same name who resides in Texas. We've actually had some decent conversations over the years.

This reminds me of gail.com: https://discu.eu/q/https://gail.com

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#149

Post by [deleted] »

baxtr wrote: post #141
faeriechangling wrote: post #117

This is why I use many different usernames, I must have used maybe three dozen different ones by now. The only time I use the same username is for games because I want people to know what other games I play. My opsec is pretty awful but I at least try to not be "simply type in the username I always use into google or some tool on GitHub" bad. I at least want somebody to have to use a few hours or pay a data broker to…

Thai won’t be helpful going forward. The next gen of tools will analyze your writing style and make the connection through that.

[deleted]

Re: Maigret: Collect a dossier on a person by username from thousands of sites

#150

Post by rightbyte »

dhosek wrote: post #27
bee_rider wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some annoying people seem to have used my gmail to sign up for things like Twitch. I have all the three factor authentication stuff set up, so I don't think they can get in to click the "verify" links, but I wonder if this sort of tool would be able to verified that the account was... verified. Probably not.

My wife has a firstname@gmail.com account and she gets a lot of other peoples’ emails including some rather sensitive stuff (bank statements, employment info, etc.)

Me too. It is the same guy each time though. He has a dot in his addres and I think it is dropped in many hand written signups.
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