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Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

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Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#51
post #10

I think the key is knowing what high school she went to. From there, you could possibly get yearbook pictures and student lists. Knowing an approximate age would narrow the possibilities significantly as well.

I would probably take a social engineering approach to this problem- if you knew her high school and approximate age you could probably find someone who was in that class who would know her pretty easily. At that point it's just a matter of either tricking them into identifying the photo or just straight-up asking them.

Or scrolling thru a classmates friends list on Facebook.

And then scrolling thru all the friends lists of all their friends on Facebook.

(Especially if they have nicely sorted their friends into "High School" friends.)

Twitter lets you do the same thing.

I've seen entire classes all "Friend" and "Follow" each other.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#52
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously knew something about her that made it possible, which you even admit Justin doesn't know you had. People are getting bored with your shenanigans, spill it!

I don't feel bad about letting the discussion continue as-is because of the fact that we completely expected to get the answer with only the information mentioned here. I still haven't heard this method mentioned yet directly. The "extra" information we got came later after we already started working on it, and came as surprise. It just happened to bring the result back sooner than the other approach.

that the extra information brought the result back "sooner" is intriguing.

If you don't mind me asking, would other approaches discussed here have brought the result nonetheless? or did they?

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#53

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actual photo but looks similar, except that she was alone. Justin was afraid of reposting the same photo after the results of handing over a photo last time :) - There was no useful exif data in the image. - We knew her high school and approximate age in Austin, bu…

[deleted]

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#54
I wonder what the resolution of the original image was?

The inside of her thumb is visible through the glass, so with enough detail it might be possible to record her thumb print. Even if you could do that, though, odds are against her print being present in any publicly-available database.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#55
post #40
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, geek blog effect. Reddit et al have created some very bad habits of dialogue, such as assuming the subject of a link isn't reading it. And being nasty with candor. I still remember the time I said something impolite about David Brin. Brin took offense and replied. I'm actually a huge fan of David Brin. That sucked.

@asymetric - I am not an engineer, I don't know how a lot of these things work. Rather than critique, I would appreciate a better analogy that I can use in the future

HN tries to avoid that kind of rudeness, but it happens. Like I said, geeks can get bad habits from the locker-room culture online. You'll notice that your critic's posts are gradually fading to grey thanks to all the downvotes he's accumulating (established users get a downvote button).

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#56
post #34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resent the fact that you think I'm an idiot. I have had two engineers check for EXIF data and there is 'nothing interesting in there'

The same two engineers who found out who she was? :-) Seriously: given your story, if, say, they are colleagues, too, they may be in on it, and lie to you about the EXIF data (if they _are_ engineers, they certainly lied; how can there ever be 'nothing interesting' in EXIF data :-)?) Most of the time, the simple answer is the likely one. My money is on the high school-yearbook line, but it might have been anything (d…

> how can there ever be 'nothing interesting' in EXIF data :-)?)

If one strips all of the metadata a photo, or replaces it with metadata from another photo, or makes up some bogus metadata.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#57
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin's own phone leaked his location (through some google-lattitude, or Yelp like service or perhaps gps directly) while Justin drove (or rode with her in a taxi) to her home.

How would they have gotten my GPS location? And how would they have figured out which one was her house. I was in her neighborhood and stopped multiple places that were 'significant' to her as a kid. Any of them could have been her house. And I wasn't at anyone for more than 60 seconds

so... another reason to be scared of engineers?

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#58
One of the things that looks like a clue to me is that this the lead engineer of close.io. Browsing through their site, it looks like they do "telecom in an API"; it reminds me of Twilio and OneBox.

So, here's a thought. Let's say the Engineer has access to the SMS logs (NSA-style) for Justin's phone. (Maybe his phone goes through their system. But even if not, maybe it's company-provided, so there's an admin interface provided by the telecom that lists this information.)

Justin probably doesn't regularly text people in Texas, since the team is based out of Palo Alto. So look through his logs for a number in a Texas area code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Texas_area_codes) that he's been texting more often than usual.

That gets you the girl's phone number; probably a cell phone. Now, you need to go from the cell phone number to a last name. Reverse Phone Lookup probably won't work for this, although it's certainly worth a first try. More likely candidates: looking through the users table at close.io for a matching phone number, or doing a google search for the phone number. Or, try calling in the middle of the night and seeing what the voicemail says. Any of these approaches might work.

Once you've got a last name, grab a copy of the white pages. Most public schools publish their district boundaries, so go grab a copy of that. Look through all entries that match the last name, and see how many of them fall within (or close to, in the case politics made the boundary change) the district boundary. You probably will get a handful (maybe three or four). If you only get one, bingo!

If you get more than one, I'd call the cell phone to see if I can get a first name somehow. Then, I'd go through the landlines in the White Pages and call them one at a time, "Hello, may I speak to X? Sorry, wrong number." until one matches.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#60
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, geek blog effect. Reddit et al have created some very bad habits of dialogue, such as assuming the subject of a link isn't reading it. And being nasty with candor. I still remember the time I said something impolite about David Brin. Brin took offense and replied. I'm actually a huge fan of David Brin. That sucked.

I'm not sure where you go the idea that pseudo-celebs and IT managers are immune to stupidity or posting stupid articles. There's always an element of "who cares if my content sucks, lets just get it done" when posting bloggy stuff, and it's pretty apparent here. Calling EXIF "back end stuff" is pretty stupid, I don't care if the author's ego is bigger than that statement, it's still true. The article might as well b…

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/37048520.jpg

edit: I'm aware of the irony in criticizing online geek culture and then bringing out a foul-mouthed meme pic.

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