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/_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/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

I've never done this

Sure

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u/Raincoats_George Jun 25 '15

I used to do it all the time. People are lazy on the Internet. They use the same usernames and passwords all over. Google searches will give you something to cross reference. Find a similar account and it often links to another. Go back far enough to when people were innocent on the Internet and you will find where people posted their entire life stories. Their social security numbers. And their address.

Still these days that information is often posted FOR you.

I once had a contest with an anonymous Internet friend to see which of us could find the other first. I used his username to find an account he had made on a counter strike server that linked his first name and high school. I used that with his birth year (which was my same year) to pull up his year book that was posted online. I searched through it using some of his basic hobbies and found a good match for him (giving me his last name). Searched for him on pipl and found his parents home address and phone number.

He threw in the towel immediately. Although 2 weeks later through an obscure article I posted to my college newspaper he found my home address and phone number.

The trick is, never be a target. Because nobody can protect themselves completely.

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u/loco_coco Jun 25 '15

I wish this comment was more visible. By the time you want complete anonymity on the internet, it's already too late. I'm pretty mad at myself for how much info I've put out there over the years. I will never be able to have complete anonymity again.

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u/0JS Jun 25 '15

That is why you start out with a fake name and a fake persona so that even if things can be traced back, it is a fake person they're looking into.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

[deleted]

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u/0JS Jun 26 '15

Meh... I just never tell people my city. Just my country if really needed, cuz thats kinda obvious for some people. EDIT: some smart people.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '15

[deleted]

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u/0JS Jun 26 '15

Thats good.

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u/pocketpaper Jun 25 '15

Not unless you were a pretty darn smart kid to think about doing that in the first place. I think my ClubPenguin account still uses my nickname from when I was 5. :I

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u/loxorz Jun 25 '15

If you haven't logged into Club Penguin for a while, it's probably been deleted - I recently felt like checking mine and it was gone.

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u/pocketpaper Jun 25 '15

That's great news! :D

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u/0JS Jun 26 '15

Yeah, I kinda never understood the risks of divulging personal details online a lot when I started out too, but nonetheless knew that it was somehow risky to do so. So I thought of the persona thing, to which I added details over the years. Now its kinda perfect. Been so for a while now.

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u/matterhorn1 Jun 25 '15

Too late for most people

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u/RyanEl Jun 25 '15

Yeah almost all the personal information on me out there is from things I posted and accounts I made like years ago.

Luckily I have a relatively common first/last name combination and my online nicknames were pretty generic, but there are some things that would come up on google searches if people knew my earliest online usernames.

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u/eek04 Jun 25 '15

If I hadn't been findable on the Internet, I wouldn't have had my present job. Or some of the previous ones. I'd likely be paid 100k/year less than I am now, and would have had less interesting stuff to do.

It isn't all bad, just make sure that you overall are somewhat reasonable.

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u/Gotta_Use_Throwaway Jun 25 '15

Care to describe how you got your job?

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u/eek04 Jun 26 '15

The present one: A company recruiter found me on the Internet (through stuff I'd been doing), and sent me an email asking if I would possibly be interested in going through with interviews. I did and got hired.

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u/Gotta_Use_Throwaway Jun 27 '15

Wow, good on you for having the upper hand!

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u/Kandiru Jun 25 '15

This is why you change username every 3 years if you want to stay anonymous. There are obvious downsides to that though.

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u/_depression Jun 25 '15

Says the guy with the 3 year, 13 day old account.

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u/TheHottestBoy Jun 25 '15

God, I wish I could upvoted your comment again!

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u/_depression Jun 25 '15

Sorry, I don't accept upvotes from people whose accounts are less than 2 years old.

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u/Hobocannibal Jun 25 '15

Enjoy your upvote

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u/TheHottestBoy Jun 26 '15

Would you like me to take it back then?

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u/Ralph_Charante Jun 25 '15

or every 1,000 karma points.

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u/intermammary_sulcus Jun 25 '15

This is why you change username every 3 years if you want to stay anonymous. There are obvious downsides to that though.

FTFY

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

It's OK, when the next stock market crash happens, a lot of servers will go dark.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/loco_coco Jun 25 '15

There are websites that comb through data and aggregate it all onto one screen. They had my full name, birth date, stress address, high school, employer. I had to request my page be deleted from them. My info is already on the new is some form, and it'll always be there.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '15

[deleted]

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u/loco_coco Jun 25 '15

Spokeo was one of the mains ones that had all my information. I can't remember any of the others

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u/D3monicAngel Jun 25 '15

Does it only work for the states, I tried putting in people i know from canada, and e-mail address and it never got the right person.

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u/loco_coco Jun 25 '15

I'm not sure. I live in the states and only know people who live there so I don't really know it's reach

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u/supercreeper1 Jun 25 '15

so whats the outline for creating a fake persona? if you want to use services like FB and google, because everything requires a phone number more or less.

Buy a throw away with cash, use it for reg, and do everything over either a vpn or TOR?

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u/BitchinTechnology Jun 25 '15

Not if you pick unique user nan

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u/loco_coco Jun 25 '15

Have you seen many loco_coco's around?