When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number • Hacker News Board

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#101

Post by lysp » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #26

Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…

> I personally recommend blacking out (add a black rectangle) instead of blurring, and if it is a PDF, convert to an image afterwards because too many PDF editors use non-destructive operations to add a new object instead of changing what's underneath.

We had a similar issue in Australia as well.

Politicians phone bills are published on the government website in summary form.

Someone in 2017 decided to blank out their phone numbers by changing the phone number text colour to white (same as background).

End result - hundreds of politicians and former prime ministers had their phone numbers leaked.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/phone-numbers-of-fede...

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#102

Post by zamfi » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

I am very impressed by this piece. Something about how “Alex” manages to blend the kind of humor not typically associated with compassion or competence, with a story that is most spectacular because of the very compassionate and competent actions of its protagonist...I literally couldn’t stop reading.

So well done.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#103

Post by kabacha » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

Real question here is: should the passport number have any expectations of privacy? It seems like such an easy thing to expose as you literally put it down on every document like hotel check ins etc. AFAIK it's not even a random number and instead it's generated from basic info like birth year/place/gender.

That being said it was a really good blog!

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#104

Post by vishnugupta » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

I accidentally discovered a way to get hold of passport details of random people by applying for Visa on arrival to Vietnam. There are these online portals which do some document pre processing which is legit. And on landing in Vietnam we are expected to show that we have already applied for Visa. It so happens that these portals do batch processing. Which means my application is processed along with a half a dozen or so other random applicants.

And so I applied for one. And when I received the confirmation document I received the entire batch file. It included passport number, expiry date and other PII of ten random people which would be super valuable in the hands of criminals and such.

And conversely ten random people know my PII

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#105

Post by squibbles » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #87

jtchang wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That answer is absurd yet awe inspiring what Mathematica can do.

Yeah, TIL Mathematica knows what a goat is, and can recognize one on sight.

That statement really intrigued me. Since I like goats, I had to know how to do this.

Use ImageInstanceQ[image, object], where image is the image and object is "caprine animal". [0] [1]

[0] https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageInstanceQ.ht...

[1] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/71631/upgoat-or...

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#106

Post by rswail » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #27

aahortwwy wrote: post #6

> “You could drop me in the bush and I’d feel perfectly confident navigating my way out, looking at the sun and direction of rivers and figuring out where to go, but this! Hah!” I mean not to call him out but this did happen and he didn't navigate his way out (although that says nothing about his confidence). https://www.smh.com.au/national/tony-abbott-lost-in-the-outb... EDIT: To be fair, it's been a decade. Maybe h…

Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect? Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.

I wouldn't say he was our Trump. Our Trump is Clive Palmer, down to the grifting and ripping off subcontractors and employees and suing people.

Abbott was more our McConnell, happy to tear down political norms and standard parliamentary practice while claiming to defend it. He was a "good" opposition leader in that he basically was in opposition to everything proposed by the government, not for good reason, just because.

He didn't last long as an actual leader, because that requires positive actions, not just oppositional or destructive ones.

He won't be missed from our political domain.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#107

Post by bjoli » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #25

rvz wrote: post #19

We blame these social networks for collecting vast amounts of our private data (yes we should), yet these folk have no problem of posting already sensitive information under a hashtag - creating an Aladdin's cave of identities waiting to be stolen for fraud as this blog-post has demonstrated. 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place' - Eric Schmidt…

The problem is people have no idea what is sensitive. Until just now I would have thought a boarding pass was safe to share. Its more the airlines fault for making this info so easy to access with what looks like unsensitive info.

I have told people at airports to not friggin post their boarding passes or documents containing their booking refeeence on Instagram. Back when I was 20 I didn't lot of stupid things. One was to change tine obnoxious details about their reservations. When they were in air (and presumably had their phones off) I sent them a text message. "Never put booking information on asocial media".

I could probably have gotten in a lot of trouble.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#108

Post by rswail » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #103

Real question here is: should the passport number have any expectations of privacy? It seems like such an easy thing to expose as you literally put it down on every document like hotel check ins etc. AFAIK it's not even a random number and instead it's generated from basic info like birth year/place/gender. That being said it was a really good blog!

It depends where you are from. Our (Australian) passports have a "series" letter at the start and then a set of numbers. Not sure whether they are random or incremental or derived.

YMMV based on nation that issues yours.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#109

Post by nikanj » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #26

Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…

My all-time favourite recommendation is "print, cut out the sensitive parts with an exacto knife, rescan".

Firstly because it's a nice mix of analog and digital, and secondly because it's short enough to fit in a tweet - yet extremely secure.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#110

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #26

Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…

I once had to provide my employer copies of court documents proving something or other in order to qualify for the benefits plan I was attempting to enroll. The part of the document that contained the info they required also contained other information I did not want them to have, and I was more than irked at having to do this in the first place. I used Photoshop to draw a 99% black box as the redaction, but then using a 100% black font color typed in a nasty little message. Nobody was ever going to see it, but just knowing that if they did it would be a shock. I qualified for the package.