Information on the Internet

[Scruit]

gdowkpc - that is a good idea.

One time I was tracking a hacker who defaced one of my websites and I found he'd posted under his hacker name in a fatherhood web board asking how his wife and he could both have O blood, but his baby was born with type A.

I so should have posted "Because I was with your wife while you were hacking into my website." but that would have given the game away. Pity that dude was in Brazil so I couldn't be bothered to follow it through.

[zander_zye]

I have run my name several times - I come up with a guy back east who owns a very profitable business - we were born the same month and year as well.

but alas.. I am not him

[GMan26]

I use different names for different forums - I thought some of the firewalls / routers were supposed to hide what IP you're coming from?

Again, don't post info about yourself that you will regret later. My cousin is 19 and posted on various "music" forums and she had her picture up, etc... she had a cyberstalker harass her constantly. She told too much info. The guy was saying, "I know you broke up with your BF 9 months ago and haven't had sex in a while...I bet you look hot in that outfit you bought at Nordstroms..." I mean the stuff people post about themselves is insane. In this day and age you got to watch your back. Not from the common criminal but the cyberscum! haha.

Its just good practice not to explain too much - everyone is reading. Who knows who is good and who is bad...

[Orleander]

Originally posted by txinvestigator1
Would you call that "stalking"?

I don't think so. I did it one time with no harm intended. I was just showing the person that I knew more about them than they thought because they were all over the web. This person immediately let me know how they felt and I apologized.

As for knowing who the 300M person is, well, let's just say I also lurk. :p

Of course I still track people. I like to know who my kids are talkign to. I like to know something about who I am talking to. What is the harm in tracking if you do nothing with it? Is it stalking to track?

[Scruit]

I thought some of the firewalls / routers were supposed to hide what IP you're coming from?


They do, but for different reasons. I have 37 servers and 25 users at this office and they do not all have a uniqie internet IP. Instead they have an IP in a reserved range (192.168.0.x is most common) My ip address here could be 192.168.0.47, but when it goes out on the internet my traffic is given the source IP of the firewall, which could be 208.45.300.234 (invalid, I know). 192.168.0.x cannot be routed on the public internet (because it's reserved for private networks).

If I traced a user back to a 192.168.0.x address then that info is useful for me trying to hack into their network because it gives me a headstart on getting into their network. depending on what kind of firewall they have I may be able to get through.

But because the firewall actually stamps the traffic with it's own public internet IP address (or NATs an IP from an external range) that means I can still trace you back to a physcial location (if you're using a static IP or a t1/t3) or at least to a city/county (if youre ISP is a dsl/cable/dialup that uses DHCP to assign random addresses).

In this case, a firewall hurts you. There is no current was around that unless you want to route through an anonymizing proxy. Public anonymizers are unreliable and change often, plus that funnels all your traffic through an untrusted net and puts an unknown person close enough to your end fo the connection that the anonymizer admin can sniff your traffic.

[Scruit]

Orleander,

Tracking someone is like carrying a baseball bat in your car. Whether or not it's illegal is all about intent.


If you are going to track someone who is offering to do business with you in order to determine that they are who they say they are... Or if you're tracking the person your kids are talking to in orde to ensure they are safe... Then that is acceptable as long as you only use public information sources.

If you are going to track a person for the purposes to preparing to commit a crime (stalking, rob them, fraud etc) then suddenly it becomes a whole different ball game.

Most of my tracking is of people who try to hack into any of my networks, whether it be malicious and wind up with thier ISP dropping them or the police knocking on their door, or they are just innocently infected with the latest virus and one quick call to the admin will fix them up.

[GMan26]

Cyberspace is a grey area. I don't know because how do you prove it is stalking? Depends.

I had a problem back in 1999-2000 with some crazy girl who tracked me all over the internet. She went to thousands of forums and posted "rumors" about me and my cell phone number, email, address, etc...

Finally I had enough and called the Police to see what I could do. They said there was nothing they can do because I had no proof it was her that was slandering my name and causing the harassing phone calls, emails, etc... I called my cell phone provider and they said they would do a trap and trace BUT they could not tell me who was making the phone calls (every call was "blocked" or "private" so my ID was useless). Well they told me it was coming from three phone numbers on a regular basis. I filed a complaint with them and in turn they must have contacted the local authorities. I had my cell number changed after that but it was a pain since that number was a business phone. Also one time a septic company showed up at my parent's house. They told them I ordered their services to dig up our septic tank.

Anyway as you can see, people who want retribution/revenge can do it quite easily with the 'net. Its a pain but it happens. That's why I "try" not to give out to much info but hey, we're only human. My cousin takes a ton of precautions - one time she even met someone at a mall from AOL - STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She was 16 and this guy was 32. She was lucky that her jealous ex-BF ratted her out to my other cousin and he in turn told my uncle. You never know...

[Orleander]

Originally posted by Scruit
Orleander,

Tracking someone is like carrying a baseball bat in your car. Whether or not it's illegal is all about intent.

If you are going to track someone who is offering to do business with you in order to determine that they are who they say they are... Or if you're tracking the person your kids are talking to in orde to ensure they are safe... Then that is acceptable as long as you only use public information sources.

If you are going to track a person for the purposes to preparing to commit a crime (stalking, rob them, fraud etc) then suddenly it becomes a whole different ball game.

I don't think it is stalking to track. I think once you do something not so nice with your tracking info, then it can be considered stalking. Its like a phone number. I can look a phone number up and do nothing with it. If I call you repeatedly and say not so nice things, its stalking. Like you said, its all about the intent. I think more of us are trackers than we like to admit. Its just a smart way to look out for your family and yourself on the internet.

[Orleander]

Originally posted by GMan26
Cyberspace is a grey area. I don't know because how do you prove it is stalking? Depends.

I had a problem back in 1999-2000 with some crazy girl who tracked me all over the internet. She went to thousands of forums and posted "rumors" about me and my cell phone number, email, address, etc...

I tell you waht, she's better than me. How on earth would she get your cell phone number?! I can't imagine you would actually put that out there on the internet. Unless she was a hacker and got it somewhere.

[GMan26]

This girl knew my cell number - she didn't have to do any research on it. She just posted it everywhere, I got weirdos leave threating VM's. I remember the one that made me mad (the rest were just annoying hang-ups or people who thought it was a sex line). It was a male whispering, "Better watch your back because we're going to F---kin' kill you hahahaa"

That was the last straw. I never found out who said that... she was a crazy girl. We were friends at one point.... can you believe she was going to college to become a LEO? I hope she did not make it.

[Scruit]

I'd have changed my cell# more quickly. I changed it once because i kept getting voicemails and calls for the pervious owner of the number every day. My wife doesn't answer the cellphone unless she recognises the number.

[GMan26]

Trust me I wanted to but since it was a business line I couldn't right away and besides, I really wanted to catch the scumbags that were calling and saying "We're gonna kill you" but it never happened. I have since changed my cell number and i only give it to people I know. Some people right?

[gdowkpc]

Where I live had a tremendous problem with a lack of available phone numbers. The phone company said they usually like to let phone numbers lie dormant for a year to reduce the amount of people calling for the previous holder of the number.

When I got hired, they kept giving me numbers that had layed dormant for no more than 3 months. We keot getting weird calls, like poeople breathing into the phone. We could also tell some of the people that were calling were rought types.

I did a check on the number through the police computer to see who the previous holder of the phone was and saw he wasn't a nice guy. The number is tracked by calls for service. Everytime a person has a report filed and his phone number is included, it links up.

So I called the phone company and got lucky. I got an operator whose dad was a police officer and understood the dilemna I was in. She spent a lot of time on the phone with me digging up a phone number that was dormant for over a year. She waited while I ran the number through the police computer and through the internet directories. There were no hits. The number has been great. She even waived the fee to change the number.

I protect that number with my life. Many stores want the number as part of a tracking process, including video stores. Grocery stores like to write them on your checks. We refuse to everyone and find that they all have policies that respect that.

DMV here allows their residential information about you to show any government building of your choosing. That helps protect from some weirdos, since people can buy access to the DMV system here.

But the best advice I ever heard was to get a PO Box. The problem was car loan companies won't allow your address to show at a po box. They want to know where their car is garaged in case they want to repo it.

When I worked repo, I found people were able to get away with using one of those 'mailboxes, etc', type of places. Some of them allow you to address your mail like an apartment number so that you can't tell it's a po box.

Does anyone have a solution on property records. I think someone once mentioned to me to use your child's name. How would you do this and what are the problems encountered when doing this?

[txinvestigator1]

You can always create a business and deed the home to the business, making it more difficult, but not impossible, to trace you.

I have conducted some asset searches on people who were very clever, but there is always a trail.