Get Your Free Personal Info Here!
by The Barbarian of Yesteryear
Disclaimer: Please do not use anything from this article to stalk or harass anybody. It is for informational purposes only.
The sheer amount of people voluntarily posting every little thing about their existence is staggering. How much attention do you actually need?
We currently live in a world of instant gratification and a lot of "look at me!" attention seeking. Look at social media - at any given time, I could tell you what somebody ate for lunch on a certain day and where they took the kids for a birthday party. And I'm not talking about celebrities or influencers. Everyday people just love to post anything and everything about themselves!
From soccer moms posting their child's picture and name to the public, to the small-time teenage drug dealer posing with guns and money on Instagram, this type of clout-seeking is a great way for people to get a lot of free information on somebody and/or their family and friends. Criminal activity or not, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's not too smart to incriminate yourself so easily or pass out personal information like it's Halloween candy. From political party affiliations to favorite foods, sports teams, and places to shop, all of your self-provided information can possibly be used to crack a password based on security questions or open the door to nosey nellies looking to either do you harm or simply harass and annoy.
The following example is nothing new, but you may not want to make social media posts of how long you'll be on your overseas trip and hope your empty house is okay in your absence. First of all, nobody cares! Bragging about your five-star trip to Italy could be enough to make a jealous person want to take your things, even just to teach you a lesson. Please stop making it so easy for people to target you. The only people who should know your whereabouts in a situation like this are people checking up on your dwelling and/or personal items to be sure they're still there while you're away. You have no need to post your every move. Why not just get yourself a government issued ankle monitor instead? Or even easier, turn on your phone's GPS. If anything, you could share your vacation photos after you've returned from your excursion. Otherwise, be sure and just send those selfies to trusted friends and family. Thank you.
And you young people, oh don't get me started. Posting pictures of your latest crime with your face and voice fully exposed? Real smart! Could it be that lack of criminal punishment in these current times has emboldened ne'er-dowells to the point of not caring due to lack of any consequences? Possibly. While street credibility might be important in some circles, it sure isn't a bright idea to let people know you've broken the law. Congratulations! You've just put the digital handcuffs on yourself. It could just be that you're young and stupid. Sadly, this applies to adults as well. I don't mean to pick on just you whippersnappers. Calm down!
This idea of now providing one's actual identity seems to be a far cry from the early days of hacking, which I would hazard to state was mostly of the black hat variety. Phreaking and social engineering activities revolved around a code of anonymity we don't see much outside of today's 2600 circle. Come on, even bank robbers in the old west covered their face with a bandanna to help cloak their identity. It seems that nowadays if crime isn't caught on CCTV, it's posted by the criminals themselves - in full HD at that! Granted, we're talking more about vandalism, caught-on-camera theft, illegal gun possession, and maybe some weed smoke, not grand Catch Me If You Can schemes. Still, I believe this all ties together with the sharing of too much information on social media as a subconscious "that's just what one does" act.
Since you gave me some of your info, let me talk about what I can do with it! Simple free tools like Google Maps can be an amazing way to find out an actual location in a simple photo post. Let's say a person of interest posts a picture of themselves in their front yard along with a caption stating just that. Hey, look at that - there's a sign in the background! With today's 40+ megapixel shots, zoom-in details can get street sign names of an intersection or other points of interest. A quick search of this area in Google Maps can yield multiple street views of a person's house (front and back) along with a bird's eye satellite view! Add to this a county property tax search of public record, and you've now got the homeowner's full name. This won't list a possible renter, so be mindful. Another quick Google address or name search easily provides you a phone number or two.
As always, social engineering calls can open the door to many possibilities. Any point of reference can be used as a tool. They have a swimming pool? A pecan tree? Everyday things can and will be used against you! I've even found people's Venmo information, family pictures with ages, and personal relationship dramas since they put it all out there. Finding this was all done using one search engine and no logins for any social media or app account. It's all out there, if you know where to look. It does make me wonder though (using a VPN or not) that if all of our searches online are logged to a certain IP address, is seeking personal information on a subject based on an X post actually making yourself a person of interest if something were to happen to your subject? Double-edged sword there.
Recently, online sleuths were on the hunt for somebody who assaulted a personal pet (the dog ended up okay, luckily). Rightly so! But you still have to be very careful of identifying the wrong person using public info because a partial car description matched a satellite view of a similar auto parked at a house near where a crime happened. It seems that in most media in this day and age, once something is reported it's taken as gospel - even if said information is incorrect! A later retraction of any false accusation will most certainly be buried underneath the next hot crime headline in this instant information age, leaving the innocently accused branded guilty without any chance at redemption. Social justice pile-on is still real, people. Make sure your facts are as straight as can be before you point the finger, or you're just as bad as a news site publishing false information with no fact check just to be "first." Innocent lives can be and have been ruined this way.
On top of all this, proverbial "data mining" still exists today. This can include things like companies forcing a user to sign up with personal information to make an online purchase or a simple optional newsletter email sign-up. I suppose if you want anonymous buying, you can use bitcoin and an alias with a P.O. box mailing address, but not all of us have that. It seems we can't do anything without identifying ourselves first. Add this to all the uninteresting musings you spewed online, and your personal data file is getting more and more stuffed. Where is all of this personal information going, though? Hopefully not somewhere that becomes a victim of the latest of many data breaches at your expense. Let's face it - the only secure information out there are the nuclear launch codes and the KFC original recipe. Once those get posted online, look out!
Frankly speaking, the death of privacy these days is definitely more than a bit disheartening. Scary, actually. Gone are the days of "no pictures, no comments." Now it's basically, "Here's a picture and my comment on it!" This leads to the age old adage of, "They already have all my information already, so what's the big deal?" The big deal is you gave it to them! With visuals! Is it really too late? If we knew exactly where all this information was stored we might have that answer. But I don't think we ever will.
Bottom line, human error isn't just inadvertently giving out a password over the phone. It can be as simple as your innocent social media post. Protect yourself - stay private. Be careful out there...