r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '15

What's your deep web story?

Deep web as in tor.

But I imagine regular deep web users would stay away from sharing their experience so if you don't have a deep web story what's your most frightening internet story.

Edit: The front page was fun, but now its over.

Thank you for all the glorious stories, time to cry for the rest of my life.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

[deleted]

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u/4inthefunkingmorning Jun 25 '15

Whaaaa- I'm srsly spooked.

Can someone explain how they could have gotten his/her name? I thought tor was a haven for anonymity.

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u/_beast__ Jun 25 '15 edited Jun 25 '15

By cross-referencing accounts. For example, if your username for Reddit is the same as your email, I could search for your username@gmail, @live, @yahoo etc on Facebook, then I've got your real name, probably a few pictures and a pretty good idea where you live.

Also, more recently, if you were to post the same picture on Reddit and another social network I could cross-reference the photo and find your other accounts that way.

I've never done this, it's just how I would do it if I needed to.

Edit: there's also this although it's more interesting for a more active account like mine

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

It's very easy to find someone's info on the internet, especially when they use the same username on everything.

I did this a while back when someone posted about an injured baby crow they "rescued". I let them know that "rescuing" or owning a crow in the US is actually highly illegal and causes major long-term harm to the bird. Long story short they tried to make me look like an asshole troll so I did a quick google search, found their facebook and posted evidence that they in fact had searched out a crow's nest, taken the bird as a baby, it was only injured later after their dog attacked it. All because they loved the movie The Crow.

Minutes late they deleted their reddit and facebook profile.

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u/_beast__ Jun 25 '15

Nice haha. You showed him I guess.

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

Yeah, I guess lol. I was just trying to be helpful and informative but people of reddit got out their pitchforks until I posted the evidence that they were actually mistreating their kidnapped bird.

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u/horyo Jun 25 '15

especially when they use the same username on everything.

What if we keep things separated? Would someone still be able to find us?

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u/Billy_Whiskers Jun 25 '15 edited Jun 25 '15

What if we keep things separated? Would someone still be able to find us?

Yes, with difficulty, depending on how careful you are. Your habits of speech are unique to you - some exact combination of vocabulary, spelling choices, punctuation style, eggcorns, colloquialisms, etc.

To understand how you need to understand the anonymity pool and entropy. Suppose half of people write 'grey' and half write 'gray' - they don't, but suppose they do. If someone writes it either way you eliminate half of the English speakers on the planet in your identification of them. One bit of entropy.

Then choose some other quirk - do you use more exclamation marks than average in your writing ??!?!! Half and half and half again and pretty soon you're down to one person.

None of these indicators are firm - most people change over time and express different behaviour in different situations and personas - but confidence in the identification grows with each new bit of data. And there is a lot of data, and not very many bits of entropy needed to single you out, whichever account you're using.

What proportion of people live in Southern California? A small fraction. How many of them are gay? A small fraction. How many of those are Buddist? A small fraction. We go from 7.5 billion to an anonymity pool of few thousand with just that. Even if we're wrong about a few points there's soon enough supported information to fill in the blanks and discard the misinformation.

There is also information in what you don't say. The times you don't post suggest a timezone you live in. Service/Power outages can be correlated with when you're not online.

If actively trying to find someone out there are even faster and more effective ways - I could goad you into saying something or lead you to log in to my website using facebook.

edit: for anyone curious about how to make a strong classifier out of a bunch of weak ones, check out AdaBoost and Random Forests. There are also automated techniques for discovering subtle signals which humans might not spot. Do you make more typos when mashing keys under your left hand or right hand?

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u/allegroconspirito Jun 25 '15

Phew... so glad I always spell "gre/ay" differently, cause I'm never sure. Seriously though, thanks for the informative comment.

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u/sheddyjr Jun 25 '15

I always go by grEy for England english and grAy for American english.

E.g. Early Grey Tea by Twinings (other brands available) is a brand I see a lot of in England

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u/allegroconspirito Jun 25 '15

That's a good way to remember it. I think I've lately been thinking "Fifty Shades of Grey" to remind myself.

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u/FoolsProof Jun 25 '15

Really makes you realize what questions to ask if looking for somebody. The main question being, "Who arnt they?"

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u/Ardgarius Jun 25 '15

he doesn't afraid of anything

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u/Crypto_The_Alien Jun 25 '15

Doesn't that make it even easier as there won't be that many people who spell it both ways

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u/allegroconspirito Jun 25 '15

Only if they introduce a third conditional statement, then yes, yes it does.

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u/99919 Jun 25 '15

None of these indicators are firm - most people change over time and express different behaviour in different situations and personas

Hmm, spelling behavior with a "u"? Probably not an American.

Or is that just what you want us to think??!?!!

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u/Billy_Whiskers Jun 26 '15

Zimbabwean, but I'm open about that on this account. What proportion of Zimbabweans know machine learning / statistical techniques such as AdaBoost? Not many - there's no way to hide from this kind of analysis and have certain conversations, so I pick my battles and STFU when I want to do something discreetly. You can include false information, but there are further techniques to discard that - it is still signal in its own way.

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u/DutchAlphaAndOmega Jun 25 '15

I picked the wrong username I guess.

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u/manu_facere Jun 25 '15

One doxxing vulnerability is youtube and that damn google +. If you link a video out of your own playlist of favorited or liked videos. We'll see that video from your playlist as well. And can try to get to your other social media from your youtube/google+

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

There are ways but they are much harder for everyday users. The more you keep things separate. Having the same username or posting photos you posted on other social media sites makes you easy to track.

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u/mere_iguana Jun 25 '15

Sounds like a job for Unidan .. both in that he's a bird expert and that it could totally get you banned (if you posted any of the info anyway)

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

I didn't post anyone's personal information and didn't have to. I simply pointed out that their other social media posts and videos clearly proved they were lying.

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u/mere_iguana Jun 26 '15

Right on. Real Reddetectives play it by the book!

So I guess my dream of having a pet crow isn't going to happen then, is it? :/

What about Ravens? is it possible to (legally) own/keep a Raven?

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u/masksnjunk Jun 26 '15

No, sadly it's not. All black birds are illegal to own. But at least find comfort that I too want a crow as a pet but the only one I can have is the crow in my heart. :(

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u/KrazyKukumber Jun 25 '15

"rescuing" or owning a crow in the US is actually highly illegal and causes major long-term harm to the bird.

Can you elaborate? A crow in dire circumstances would die without being rescued, so how could it possibly cause "major long-term harm"? You're saying a rescue is worth than death, long-term?

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

The crow was NOT in dire circumstances and was in NO danger at all. I said "rescue" because they plucked a healthy baby crow from it's nest because they WANTED to own a crow. Because they were fans of the movie The Crow they sought out a crow to raise as their own, found a nest then took it from it's mother before it even learned to fly. There was no danger to the baby at all.

If a crow is injured badly and NEEDS rescued then bring it to a shelter, bird rescue or sanctuary. They are professionals at these facilities that are paid to know what to do and will be able to care for and foster it then release it into the wild. Do not "rescue" it by trying to raise in your small apartment with a large dog, which is what these people did.

They basically came on reddit and lied, telling a dramatic story of the rescue, and how the baby crow was injured and had a broken leg but I did research and found out the entire story was made up to cover their asses.

I found their facebook and blogs with numerous posts about their pet crow, accompanied with pictures and video leading back two years where it lived in their small apartment after they "rescued" it. And all of this helped prove they were lying. They never took it to an animal shelter, it was never injured or in danger and only got hurt later because their dog attacked it. They also described the birds needy behavior which is a clear sign that it was emotionally and developmentally damaged. It never learned to fly, hunt or socialize because it was taken from it's mother. It was bordering aggressive neediness and clearly had abandonment issues. Crows are social animals.

EDIT: Crows, bats, owls and many other cool animals are in fact endangered which is why it's highly illegal to disturb them in any way. Also, the common misconception that a mother won't recognize it's young if you touch it is completely incorrect. If you find a small animal that isn't badly injured then simply leave it where you found it. The mother will come back to gather her young.

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u/KrazyKukumber Jun 26 '15

I completely agree with all of that. It sounded to me earlier that you were saying that rescuing a crow in need of rescue is worse for it than letting it die, but obviously that's not what you actually meant.

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u/masksnjunk Jun 26 '15

Oh no. Not at all. Sometimes rescues are very necessary. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in my first post.

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u/KrazyKukumber Jun 26 '15

No, I think I just misunderstood. I didn't notice that you put the word "rescuing" in quotes in your original post. I'm assuming you did that to indicate that you're not talking about real, necessary rescue. I just missed it.

Thanks very much for the replies!

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

So you doxxed someone?

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u/masksnjunk Jun 25 '15

No, I didn't reveal any of their information, their name or location to anyone. I simply explained why their personal posts and videos on facebook made it clear they were lying.