14-05-2005 02:46									#1
	It is absolutely scary what you can find on google. Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

At another web site I visit one of the posters created a thread about how to use google's Operators in order to fine tune searches and ferret out things like MP3s, computer programs, and video files. There is also obvious uses for hackers but I'm not really interested in that.

In any event I just decided to try this out by typing in the names of people I used to know and in no time I was coming up with resumes, phone numbers, addresses, family pictures, and all sorts of other personal information. It is really scary the amount of information each and everyone of us has on the net. Even with just a user name to go on I'd bet it would be possible to ferret out real names, work addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and other stuff I really wouldn't want some internet freak getting a hold of.

Now, I'm scared.

	14-05-2005 02:47									#2
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Fine, show me what you can find with just my username (This name is used by millions of geeks all over the planet). And even with my real name you couldn't find much.

	14-05-2005 02:51									#3
	Remove this text

I've done this before with my name, but couldn't find anything except what everybody already knows (with information I gave to those sites, knowing that everybody could find that info)

	14-05-2005 02:52									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

that is all public domain information anyway, if you can read about it in a phone book they delivered to you why is it bad that its on the internet?

	14-05-2005 02:54									#5
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Yup. some people are just overly paranoid.

	14-05-2005 02:57									#6
	Put an end to popups!

To find someone's real name you'd have to go through all the posts they used their user name on and hope they gave it away some where. With real names you just cross refrence the real name with the town their from (in your case Sterglitz).

You are right that there are a lot of nerds using Ecthelion though.

	14-05-2005 02:58									#7
	Increase Your PM Length

http://jn0x00.com/A_Google_Hacking_Primer.243.0.html

an interesting link about Operators.

	14-05-2005 03:06									#8
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Ecthelion Yup. some people are just overly paranoid.

I guess it is public but it was weird seeing names, adresses, phone numbers, work history, family photos, and lots of other things. By doing an index search you can also search people's hard drives who don't have fire walls so you can check out what's in "my documents" or "my music". I wouldn't want people reading my personal documents and that's why I have a fire wall but lots of people have always on connections but haven't bothered to set up a firewall.

	14-05-2005 03:06									#9
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you certainly wouldn't find MY machine's content, would you?

	14-05-2005 03:11									#10
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Take for instance the command intitle:”index of /” "my music" which can be used to search for open indexes of people with the directory "my music" which google's bots have run across. That's kind of invasive.

Of course if you were looking for mp3s then you could type intitle:index of mp3 + *snoop*.mp3 fpr an index of mp3s of snoop doggy dog. It's all on google and it is utterly amazing. I wonder how it can be so easy to break the law. Surely, the RIAA has lobbied for some sort of regulation on search engines like google because lord knows they've lobbied for everything else.

	14-05-2005 03:14									#11
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could you find anything special with the info I sent you?

I've put in my name before, nothing of value turned up. the question is can you produce more than a normal google search result?

	14-05-2005 03:17									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

I'm just learning this stuff now but I'm sure an expert could ferret out the right information if it was on the net.

	14-05-2005 03:18									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

The point is, I'm sure there's no info about me on the net apart from that which you'd inf via a normal google search. Footy league at my old school, maybe soem newspaper archive from the year I high school graduated. Beyond that, naught.

	14-05-2005 03:26									#14
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by Oerdin http://jn0x00.com/A_Google_Hacking_Primer.243.0.html an interesting link about Operators.

yes if you don't configure your stuff correctly you will get screwed.

	14-05-2005 03:42									#15
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by Ecthelion you certainly wouldn't find MY machine's content, would you?

There might be things you forgot about. Ever send a resume in to one of those job search places? Ever been a member of a club which has a web site or got a website after you left? There is stuff floating around all over the net.

	14-05-2005 03:44									#16
	Inflate your Upload Space

Audiogalaxy

	14-05-2005 03:47									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I understand that certain types of web cams and networkable security cameras have built in web servers. It turns out a lot of people set these up but did not secure them behind firewalls.

I'm sure the peeping toms are enjoying that one.

	14-05-2005 04:19									#18
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Only the imprudent can be found through their nickname (Speaking of which, I made one imprudence, which would allow a stalker to find me - I have just corrected it, but Google will take time to update)

	14-05-2005 04:41									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Well of course. If this gets you scared, I have a Hell to sell you . This is just the beginning what's possible and even easy to do. It's just a matter of who really wants to. And then of course, a lot of people do .

	14-05-2005 05:11									#20
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by Spiffor Only the imprudent can be found through their nickname (Speaking of which, I made one imprudence, which would allow a stalker to find me - I have just corrected it, but Google will take time to update)

archive.org knows all.

	14-05-2005 05:15									#21
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

* Immortal Wombat wonders whether or not to phone Oerdin *

	14-05-2005 05:32									#22
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Here's a fun use for google:

I'm the admin for another board and we recently had some trouble with a bunch of trolls coming in and trying to invade our board.

We eventually traced it back to some crappy proboards site, where they were plotting to invade and disrupt our board.

Turned out their main admin was one of the people that signed up for our boards. Since I had access to our database, I got his password on our forums out of there (which was MD5 encrypted). Rather than trying to decrypt his password hash, I simply plugged it into google, where it gave me a site that had decrypted md5 hashes, and one of the decrypted ones was his. I then had his password, which as it turned out, was used on all sorts of email and other private accounts.

Fun stuff, though a bit scary. I suppose the moral of the story is "Don't use password that you use elsewhere when you try and go invade another website"

	14-05-2005 05:43									#23
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

There are a lot of people with the same name as me living in the same area. Google searches turn up lots of things about them, but nothing about me.

	14-05-2005 05:45									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

ixnay, you just admitted abusing your admin privilidges?

nasty man!

but I guess the bugger deserved it.

	14-05-2005 06:29									#25
	Support Apolyton

Hey now, I never said I actually did anything with the info...

	14-05-2005 08:05									#26
	Got spare money?

I'm a corporate entity. All the information you may find about me on the web has been constructed and secretly planted there to create the illusion of my identity.

	14-05-2005 08:11									#27
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I used to post personal info online but stopped that a long time ago. Too many weirdos.

	14-05-2005 09:17									#28
	Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by ixnay Hey now, I never said I actually did anything with the info...

quote: Originally posted by ixnay I then had his password, which as it turned out, was used on all sorts of email and other private accounts.

I can only think of one way to determine if the same password was used on email and other private accounts.

	14-05-2005 11:05									#29
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by Ecthelion Fine, show me what you can find with just my username (This name is used by millions of geeks all over the planet). And even with my real name you couldn't find much.

That's true... I was already wondering what you had to do with getting married in the Dominican Republic .

	14-05-2005 19:41									#30
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: Originally posted by Oerdin By doing an index search you can also search people's hard drives who don't have fire walls so you can check out what's in "my documents" or "my music". I wouldn't want people reading my personal documents and that's why I have a fire wall but lots of people have always on connections but haven't bothered to set up a firewall.

Paranoid bullshit. Just for the heck of it, disable your firewall and then try to access you're own pc in a webbrowser (you can do this from your own pc by using 127.0.0.1 as address). You'll only get a 'connection refused' error. The only way to make your harddisk accessible from the Internet is by installing a web server, and all web servers have at least basic security measures and only allow outsiders to access those directories which you expicitly allow to be accessed.

Of course, firewalls have their uses, but stopping Google from 'invading' your PC isn't one of them, that's just not necessary...

However, it *is* true that for many people there's more personal info online than they realise. Basically one should assume that anything you've ever done online can be traced back to you, and sometimes a good portion of your offline life as well (though in my experience this is more true for Americans than for Europeans). If there's anything you don't want the entire world to know (now or in the future), you shouldn't be posting it where the entire world can read it...