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Show HN: I built an app that scans every social media network for your username

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Re: Show HN: I built an app that scans every social media network for your username

#91

Post by dtgriscom »

I tried this with my usual username (which is unusual; not many Griscoms out there), and found some false positives.

The following sites gave me errors with my username, and if I changed the username to something unlikely I got the same error. I take this to mean that there's no evidence that username exists on that system. (And, I'm dubious that I'd have signed up at these sites.) * quizlet.com * www.enjin.com * apps.runescape.com * smule.com * livelib.ru

And, fiverr.com's URL for my username just bounces to the homepage, as did any username. (Again, I wouldn't have signed up there.)

Other than that, very cool.

Re: Show HN: I built an app that scans every social media network for your username

#93

Post by nokya »

brobinson wrote: post #83
mcqueenjordan wrote: post #78

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I'll just add my unsolicited opinion... Functionality like this, and more acutely, any kind of cross-service, cross-account stylometrics correlation or de-anonymizing service gives me great concerns for its abuse and the groups that it likely endangers (and the groups it likely empowers).

Bad actors have had the ability to do this for a long time. If anything, this raises awareness among normal people.

Well, not sure I am a bad actor but reading the comment gave me the idea of typing my ex's nickname and I now discover she has an account on a quite unusual platform of which I am a member, too.

For sure, I would never have the time to build such a tool. So, yes, some bad actors may have the "ability" as you mention, but I don't think that is the best justification to make querying this tool that easy.

Re: Show HN: I built an app that scans every social media network for your username

#94

Post by bradknowles »

Ostatnigrosh wrote: post #21
nop_slide wrote: post #18

You should also mention you are using Sherlock as the underlying backend which does that actual searching as you did in this post. https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/z1ts1n/i_built_an_a... S̵h̵e̵r̵l̵o̵c̵k̵ ̵u̵s̵e̵s̵ ̵M̵I̵T̵ ̵l̵i̵c̵e̵n̵s̵e̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵y̵o̵u̵ ̵s̵t̵i̵l̵l̵ ̵h̵a̵v̵e̵n̵'̵t̵ ̵a̵d̵d̵e̵d̵ ̵M̵I̵T̵ ̵l̵i̵c̵e̵n̵s̵e̵ ̵t̵o̵ ̵y̵o̵u̵r̵ ̵r̵e̵p̵o̵.̵ https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock https://github.com/bn…

Hey! Just added the MIT license.

So, you should cache hits. If someone asks the same question again five minutes later, then you shouldn't need to look them up again.

Also, it would be nice to show misses -- where the account name hasn't been used.

I have found a few other people out there with the same name, and it would be nice to know what systems I can go to and grab the name I want to use.

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