Online anonymity...

gurramok · 21-04-2012 10:14PM

fergalr wrote: »

I'll delete any of this post if you want; but its just repeating stuff you posted yourself (and if you were being misleading then, its wrong now; of course).

Some of it is indeed right but I give you a pat on the back for finding it out so fast in about 12,000 odd posts on this site over about 12 years.

This part is defo correct

Well, like, based on some of your old posts - and again, I just had a quick look - it seems like you are a 37 year old male, from finglas (probably). Probably lapsed catholic/catholic family background. Your mother was 36 when you were born.

You're very close on the driving test part so well done there. Oh, I never gave Meteor(my previous mobile company) any info on myself back then on my previous phone, N95

You were quite fast doing the homework so doubly well done, it doesn't faze my the least though as a persons circumstances change over time.

All based on myself volunteering info. Just goes to show that people should be careful on what they post about their personal stuff no matter how long ago it has been. I forget half the crap I have posted...LOL

fergalr · 21-04-2012 10:15PM

I think I uncovered gurramoks actual identity, actually.

I'm going to PM about this, and probably not say anything further here, unless I hear back.

While I think its good that we all realise that we are hardly ever anonymous, I'm not in the business of IDing people publicly to make that point. Its a bit like the start of this thread, with the cat artist, otherwise.

shopaholic01 · 21-04-2012 10:15PM

gurramok wrote: »

Some of it is indeed right but I give you a pat on the back for finding it out so fast in about 12,000 odd posts on this site over about 12 years.

This part is defo correct

You're very close on the driving test part so well done there. Oh, I never gave Meteor(my previous mobile company) any info on myself back then on my previous phone, N95 You were quite fast doing the homework so doubly well done, it doesn't faze my the least though as a persons circumstances change over time.

All based on myself volunteering info. Just goes to show that people should be careful on what they post about their personal stuff no matter how long ago it has been. I forget half the crap I have posted...LOL

Actually he just changed it and reposted.
Did you see the post he deleted saying he knew your real name, facebook a/c etc????

gurramok · 21-04-2012 10:26PM

shopaholic01 wrote: »

Actually he just changed it and reposted.
Did you see the post he deleted saying he knew your real name, facebook a/c etc????

Didn't see it other than what's here now. Watch this space

Captain Havoc · 21-04-2012 10:30PM

philstar wrote: »

how anonymous are we on boards.ie?

..........how much do the mods know about us?

You're as anonymous as you want to be really. The more you tell the more you reveal. I've had three posters threaten me and I've been able to find out who they are in real life through being mildly resourceful. I used to be pretty open about who I am in real life as I'm not a bad person but then one day a poster came and threatened me at work. He tried to have me fired, which he didn't succeed in doing. Mods don't really know a whole lot more than posters about who you are in real life.

philstar · 21-04-2012 11:23PM

Captain Havoc wrote: »

You're as anonymous as you want to be really. The more you tell the more you reveal. I've had three posters threaten me and I've been able to find out who they are in real life through being mildly resourceful.

oh ya, how ?

Captain Havoc wrote: »

I used to be pretty open about who I am in real life as I'm not a bad person but then one day a poster came and threatened me at work. He tried to have me fired, which he didn't succeed in doing.

fired as a mod or fired from your daytime job?

Grayson · 21-04-2012 11:29PM

Fart wrote: »

Are you Paul Grayson, OP? Gillians "Father".

No. But my nick is from a computer game. Kinda.

Grayson · 21-04-2012 11:35PM

Whatever about tracking someone down online, I'm amazed at how many people use the exact same passwords for everything. I have 5 different variants of the same password with strange characters in each one. That way it's easier to remember them. I also finish different passwords differently. For example my boards password might be passwordBOR

I say this because if I knew someone email address, even without knowing too much about them. It would be easy enough to out their password hint clue if that was linked to a facebook account (That was how celebrities email accounts get hacked) and at that point, if their amazon, ebay, paypal passwords were the same, I'd be able to rip them off.

I work for an internet company. And if a users account gets hacked the first thing we tell them is to change all their other passwords. People never think of it themselves

Doc Ruby · 21-04-2012 11:36PM

Captain Havoc wrote: »

one day a poster came and threatened me at work. He tried to have me fired, which he didn't succeed in doing.

Seriously? Wow. What happened?

fergalr · 21-04-2012 11:39PM

Grayson wrote: »

Whatever about tracking someone down online, I'm amazed at how many people use the exact same passwords for everything. I have 5 different variants of the same password with strange characters in each one. That way it's easier to remember them. I also finish different passwords differently. For example my boards password might be passwordBOR

I say this because if I knew someone email address, even without knowing too much about them. It would be easy enough to out their password hint clue if that was linked to a facebook account (That was how celebrities email accounts get hacked) and at that point, if their amazon, ebay, paypal passwords were the same, I'd be able to rip them off.

I work for an internet company. And if a users account gets hacked the first thing we tell them is to change all their other passwords. People never think of it themselves

Why are you telling people, on a public internet forum, how you generate variants of your password?

Captain Havoc · 21-04-2012 11:43PM

philstar wrote: »

oh ya, how ?

fired as a mod or fired from your daytime job?

Not very hard, some people use the same name across a variety of forums so one guy I found this way and eventually I found a photo of him, I didn't know who he was so I wasn't overly concerned. Another one I searched his username followed by at hotmail on facebook and he came up. The third one actually gave his real name in a reported post.

He wrote to my employers about me. Modding isn't a job we do this voluntarily so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Grayson · 21-04-2012 11:53PM

fergalr wrote: »

Why are you telling people, on a public internet forum, how you generate variants of your password?

Yep. But there's no way you could guess it. And if you did guess one, trying to work out a spelling that's 10+ digits long with strange characters, in multiple variants with different suffixes on the same variant would be hard.

fergalr · 22-04-2012 12:03AM

Grayson wrote: »

Yep. But there's no way you could guess it. And if you did guess one, trying to work out a spelling that's 10+ digits long with strange characters, in multiple variants with different suffixes on the same variant would be hard.

Well, fair enough - you understand your own security needs best.

I guess if you were worried about some possibly targeted attack, where someone got one of your passwords, and wanted to break some other security (maybe if you had an encrypted file on your work laptop; which gets stolen next week; and the thief is reading this boards.ie post from it; and has got your boards.ie password, and some other on-line passwords, from your browser), then you wouldn't say anything publicly that would allow someone to narrow down the space of possible passwords you could have.

Thats an important point about security; you shouldn't ever leak anything you don't have to, because it all adds up.

But yeah, it depends on how cautious you want to be; and your main point - that users shouldn't use the same password everything, and that even simple variants of the passwords are a good start - is a good one.

Online anonymity...

Comments