A friend of mine was contacted by some prankster last night who said he was a private investigator looking for him on allegations of online fraud or some such thing. Excitable nitwit that my friend is he played right along and gave this guy everything he wanted, he even let this person call him that night to threaten him over the phone, warning him that if he went online again he'd go to the authorities with his information (this "information" of course was complete bunk, I read the logs and this guy didn't know anything, he just asked a few key questions to that my brainless friend gave answers too, the rest he could look up to make it seem as if he already has a lot of information about this person).
Anyway he did an odd thing at the end of the phone conversation, he gave my friend two phone numbers to contact him at if he needed to get in touch (unfortunately I don't have a log of the phone conversation so I can't tell you exactly what the numbers were given for, or what the mood of the call was). Anyway I promised that I'd look into this for him, and so I've spent the last hour and a half doing my own research online.
From just those two phone numbers I was able to find names addresses ages, and several places on the internet willing to do full investigative background checks for pretty damned cheap. The information is a little spooky because some of it makes since. The first number he gave, for a voice mailbox is for a "Paul Nickolayev Mandrykin" who works for some company I haven’t been able to determine yet in the "American Projects" department (Or maybe the company is called American Projects, if it is I can't find it online). I've traced the other number as well, but that just seems to be a private residence of an elderly lady in Iowa, so I'm guessing that these numbers don't really have anything to do with the person. (Paul has a very distinct Accent when you call his voice mailbox, I'm going to have my friend listen to it to tell me if its the same voice he heard over the phone, he'd mentioned a strange accent).
In both instances I was able to find maps to the actual locations of the phones, access to basic public records, and even links to perform professional background checks and investigations on these people ALL completely online!
Is it right to have so much information out there for just anyone to look at? Anyone at all with so much as your name, or phone number could find out so much about your history, not to mention where you live and all that, it's kind of scary! These sights seem to cater to internet stalkers, is this right? Should anybody at all be able to learn all of this information about anyone else just with a few clicks of a button?
Heh, and at the same time, does anyone have a history of doing some internet stalking? I could use a hand. I've got some other information like a hostmask from a server he connected to, and allegations of this somehow being characteristic of a rather notorious hacker type named Sibe who is quite infamous in certain circles, and plenty is already known about him, which could be helpful if there's a link. But then I think that's mostly just people wanting to gossip and relate the events to other rumors they've heard about a near legendary figure.
Anyway he did an odd thing at the end of the phone conversation, he gave my friend two phone numbers to contact him at if he needed to get in touch (unfortunately I don't have a log of the phone conversation so I can't tell you exactly what the numbers were given for, or what the mood of the call was). Anyway I promised that I'd look into this for him, and so I've spent the last hour and a half doing my own research online.
From just those two phone numbers I was able to find names addresses ages, and several places on the internet willing to do full investigative background checks for pretty damned cheap. The information is a little spooky because some of it makes since. The first number he gave, for a voice mailbox is for a "Paul Nickolayev Mandrykin" who works for some company I haven’t been able to determine yet in the "American Projects" department (Or maybe the company is called American Projects, if it is I can't find it online). I've traced the other number as well, but that just seems to be a private residence of an elderly lady in Iowa, so I'm guessing that these numbers don't really have anything to do with the person. (Paul has a very distinct Accent when you call his voice mailbox, I'm going to have my friend listen to it to tell me if its the same voice he heard over the phone, he'd mentioned a strange accent).
In both instances I was able to find maps to the actual locations of the phones, access to basic public records, and even links to perform professional background checks and investigations on these people ALL completely online!
Is it right to have so much information out there for just anyone to look at? Anyone at all with so much as your name, or phone number could find out so much about your history, not to mention where you live and all that, it's kind of scary! These sights seem to cater to internet stalkers, is this right? Should anybody at all be able to learn all of this information about anyone else just with a few clicks of a button?
Heh, and at the same time, does anyone have a history of doing some internet stalking? I could use a hand. I've got some other information like a hostmask from a server he connected to, and allegations of this somehow being characteristic of a rather notorious hacker type named Sibe who is quite infamous in certain circles, and plenty is already known about him, which could be helpful if there's a link. But then I think that's mostly just people wanting to gossip and relate the events to other rumors they've heard about a near legendary figure.