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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

#101

Post by wruza »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #59
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.

Your current username at geronnimo mail dot kazooie? Fun fact: at email dot com is a functional AOL address, still recognized by all corporate services, even with completely made up user part. e.g. birdperson @ email dotcom

Side question: do people still believe that email scrapers are unable parse “username at email dotcom” or “my username at gmail”? Or is it just a cultural thing?

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

#102

Post by motoxpro »

JustHiThere wrote: post #91
motoxpro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a commentary on the conundrum, not so much your post. I always think it’s strange when people make the argument that it’s good for harmful tools to be out in the open because people can/will change their behavior because of them. 99.999999% of people will never see this repo, never know things like this exist, and don’t visit sites like HN but can, and probably will be, affected by it in some way.

Wrong approach imho. This means, all the tools developed for ethical hacking are "bad" because they can used for "bad". This is like saying we shouldn't sell knifes because knifes can be used to kill someone. It's just silly. This tool could be used to teach people, e.g. in OSINT challenges, it could be used to gather information for a pentesting job, it can be used to teach people about best practices online etc ...

We could debate where they are but surely there are limits? I wouldn't want everyone to have access to things like Pegasus (https://citizenlab.ca/2022/10/new-pegasus-spyware-abuses-ide...). You could argue Pegasus could be used to hack a phone of a child predator to save a life, just as you could argue this tool could be used to educate. Maybe for you this username tool falls outside of yours, but it looks more like a switchblade than a butter knife to me.

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

#103

Post by GoblinSlayer »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #15

Seems 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.

Sometimes I used other people's usernames too for this reason.

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

#104

Post by firefoxkekw »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #74
bityard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LOL

Similar tool for phones -> https://github.com/sundowndev/phoneinfoga Collection of OSINT Tools- > https://osintframework.com/

And if you want to pay you can just use https://www.maltego.com/ and https://pimeyes.com/en

It is readily available.

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

#105

Post by 60Vhipx7b4JL »

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."

It makes a difference if you make it available to the average joe with limited technical understanding or not.

You can't change the NSA, but you can resuce the amount of abuse.

It's the same with guns, USA vs Europe for example.

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

#106

Post by concordDance »

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?

The answer is often the first because the latter don't have it out for you.

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

#108

Post by mtrycz2 »

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."

> "Privacy is dead, get over it."

I am NOT getting over it.

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

#109

Post by xena »

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 is a difference between public and publicized information.

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

#110

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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.

Paypal is a private company, it can sanction you for lulz too.
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