I can find out so much about you

[struggle4progress]

Tuesday, Jan 18, 2011 20:30 ET
After I got a job tracking down information about people on the Web, I learned just how vulnerable we really are
By Ada Calhoun

When I first heard about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, I jumped on a computer. Within minutes, I had the link to Jared Loughner's MySpace page. I had a probable photo of Loughner at a rally from a local newspaper. And I had a YouTube manifesto, which still had very few page views ...

I'd left my job at a tabloid newsroom just days earlier, and I was still white-knuckling withdrawals from the adrenaline rush of breaking-news reporting. For months, I would show up at work, get a name -- often of someone who had died the night before -- and go online, putting searches into various search engines like coins into a slot machine, until something potentially valuable popped out that I could hand over to the writer or editor on the story.

I learned that it takes less than a minute to find 20 people in Brooklyn, N.Y., talking in real time about a tornado going past their windows. I had a savant-like -- or, perhaps more accurately, creepy -- instinct for what people of interest might be writing online at any given moment, allowing me to find them via Twitter or Facebook's "Posts by Everyone" search option, a function I came to believe only exists for people with jobs like mine. It lets you essentially read walls set to private, just because you were able to guess what's on them. (No surprise that Facebook recently, and not all that contritely, conceded it has shared our addresses and phone numbers.) ...

It scared me how much someone like me -- with no private-investigation experience or training, really nothing more than an Internet connection and a few hours left alone with the admonition to "find out whatever you can about this dead guy" -- could discover ...

http://www.salon.com/life/internet_culture/?story=/mwt/feature/2011/01/18/what_i_can_find_online

[Demeter]

1. But can you understand it?

And can you tell truth from fiction?

[struggle4progress]

2. ?

[Skittles]

3. but - how do you know it's TRUE?

[femmocrat]

4. Interesting.... but what if?

What if the person doesn't have/use MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc....? Can they still be easily found?

Just wondering.

[riverwalker]

5. doing genealogy

research made me aware of how easy it is to find things about people. Birth records, who the parents are, addresses, yearbooks etc. All online. Be careful with what you post on the internet.

[handmade34]

6. probably...

my job involves research also and I am amazed at how much I know/can find out...

[grasswire]

7. same here

I sometimes do research on potential clients for our family LLC. Without any help from commercial entities such as "background" checks or credit reports, I find an immense amount of info. One guy comes to mind -- an executive in the food and beverage industry. Within half an hour I knew where he goes for his morning coffee, what he orders, his wedding anniversary, the charities he and his wife support, the names of his children and where they go to school, their favorite restaurants, where they've been on vacation........etc.

And that was without any info from facebook, myspace, twitter.

[femmocrat]

8. Wow... I can't even find an old boyfriend!

Where do you start? Thanks.

[grasswire]

9. well it helps if the person has been profiled by magazines...

...and trade publications.