I am deeply suspicious of the number of threads asking for personal details.

[KickAssAngel]

Over the last few weeks I've noticed several threads asking people for information which does it in a kind of 'just getting to know you' sort of way, but does mean that people are giving out personal information.

A while ago there was one asking people if their friends' names were typical of the dates they grew up - so people were inadvertently giving out enough info to narrow down date of birth to within a year or two, and potentially their best friend's name, a common security question.

there have been ones about middle names, and just various ones along the lines of 'AIBU to ask you what your favorite TV programme was as a child?"

In fact - all the kind of info that people use for their security questions for banks etc.

Yes, I could alert MNHQ to each of them, but that wouldn't get the word across to everyone that there seems to be a lot of digging going on right now, so be careful what info you share online.

MN is NOT a cosy little club full of trusted members who know each other. The questions may be a genuine person wanting to chat, or they could be a cunning plot to get info about people and start working out the answers to their security questions.

And if any/all of them are from genuine people just wanting to chat and get to know others - I apologize for my cynical stance, but even if the OP is genuine, people reading the answers may not be.

I think the same OP.

I also think we have a lot of researchers/journalist/writers etc. posting questions to gain certain info for statistics/background etc.

This is why I name change regularly and drliberately alter details such as where I live, how old I am, what I do etc.

You can never be too careful.

Everyone should just use a password keeper eg 1Password. But soon passwords aren't even going to be necessary

A good friend of mine has recently announced that both her DDs are expecting their first babies a few months apart, I know both the DDs quite well, know what they do for a living etc and have seen the scan pics posted on fb with expected due dates etc. They aboth fall into a pretty typical MN demographic and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that either of these women are on MN posting in the birth countdown threads. A few choice searches would potentially throw them up. So what if I found either of them and looked at their other threads to find one of them bitching about their MIL or SIL? I don't give a stuff personally, but if their SIL had it in mind to do the same thing if might be another matter altogether.

MN reached a critical mass a couple of years ago where it stRted being really big business and stopped being our cosy private club where were bared our soul to our MN mates thinking we were in our protected invisible bubble. We are not and we could all do well t remember that.

kitkat1968

^So just to play devil's advocate, I post my birth year is 1968 , I live in Lancashire and I have £50,000 in my bank account- what are you going
to do with that infomation? You don't know my name, email, address, bank ID , bank , password^

Well OK... since you asked. By just searching your previous posts on here (and this is the work of 5 mins not a proper "how far can I go") I now also know that

• you actually live in Yorkshire
• you have a 14 year old DD (nearly 15) who in May 2016 was studying the History Boys at school, is about a size 8 and in mid-may did work experience in a local business.
• you have a DB who has a a degree and career in Engineering is now a teacher,head of department in a grammar school
• you have a son who is 18 years old who had an offer from Cambridge and did physics/chemistry/maths AS levels.
• your children go to a maintained/grammar school which has a uniform with ar navy skirts and boys wear grey trousers
• you went to Rippon Grammar Schoool (I can also work out what year you probably left given your birth year & if I could be bothered accessing Friends Reunited even via cached copies or alumini sites would probably lead me to your former classmates or some of them. Then it's short work to search them on Facebook and their friends see if any of them match up with details here)
• your parents are both still alive, elderly and your father has serious health issues

Just from that there will be people who could identify you I'm sure - and not just your friends - but people who wish you ill will.

So one way to go about this would be to (From alumni sites) work out the name of someone you were at school with, post on the "famous people at school" thread) then send you a private message saying "Hi there. this is [Jane Johnsons] how funny finding someone from my year at school here do you remember when [teacher] did [funny anecdote gleaned from alumni site]? with the aim of duping you in to thinking you know me - to get your name. At this point probably your first name would do unless there were a pile of people in your year with the same first name.

Once I have your name then wider googling for more information becomes possible.

People really don't have a proper grasp of how easy it is to information combine on the internet.

You may not care if people know who you are in general terms but working out who someone is and even when they are on holiday/house is empty puts you at risk.

I once went to a cybercrime police live demonstration where they did something like this. They asked the audience for a volunteer who thought there wasn't much information about them on the internet.

And then off they went - live. It was amazing what they found out in a very short space of time. If you are a criminal and have all the time in the world you will find out a lot more.

YeahThat - that is quite terrifying .

Yeahthatwasme, yep, that's exactly how I did the MN Cyberstalking a few years back.

(People volunteered, and I tracked them down from their MN posts and other public sites. I worked out full name, address, date of birth, workplace and lots of other details for them and many of their family members in each case.)

It's getting easier as time goes on, because the online trail a person leaves accumulates over the years.

Yy yeah.

Carrying on with my imaginary poster Sara - she writes on one thread that she's very relieved her DD got into the local one form entry school, they were last with a distance of 453m, and now her DS should be fine in 2 years.

On another thread, Sara has a snigger about how the headmistress at her school is Mrs Cockspur.

On an earlier thread, Sara has posted about moving from Merseyside to Dorset.

Et voila - Sara lives 452m from a small school in Dorset headed by Mrs Cockspur and bought her house between 3 and 4 years ago. Bit of googling to get the school then work with publically available mapping tools and land registry info and you have Sara's address.

Of course, not every poster will have information that can be combined into something useful and it's likely to be gleaned from tens or hundreds of posts, not 3 or 4, but there are thousands of folks registered on MN. Many will have info that can be combined without being attention seeking.

Tianc, that was an awesome thread you ran.

Tianc

It's getting easier as time goes on, because the online trail a person leaves accumulates over the years.

Agree. I know someone who does this kind of thing professionally for legitimate reasons. I've learnt alot of scarey stuff. Oddly I'm told that a common thing is for people who choose an anonymous handle (eg. Tianc) will then use the same handle on lots of other sites - so say Mumsnet/Twitter/dating sites and so on. The same is true for an anonymous email address -people set up one for their dating etc and use it everywhere.

Though I didn't do any RL phishing as Yeahthat describes. Didn't need to.

Capricorn76 could be an excellent choice of name for privacy if you are actually a Gemini from 1964 though

OMG I am a Gemini from 1964!!!!! Rumbled 😀

And by seeing this and checking on two other threads on mn, it would be reasonably easy for anyone who knows me to work out who I am!

Yy that's so true about the same handle on multiple sites. For one thing, when I was doing it lots of MNers followed each other on Twitter with similar handles.

Some had used slight variations which would fool a machine (good), but not a human (doh).

So if I'm stalking your imaginary Sara and find her Twitter account in her real name, and she's retweeting something by Scarb1es, and I know there's a MN poster NN Scarbrickfacebum, or Scarbles to her mates, then bingo. Pretty easy to confirm once you've got the lead. Especially because as pointed out, people tell the same stories in multiple places.

That's a good point. I will be more careful in future.

Can you name change on a mobile (not on the app)?

Very silly video showing one of the reasons you shouldn't put your personal info on Facebook

Until a couple of days ago I would have said that I was reasonably security conscious - I can tell phishing emails, I never click on dodgy links, change passwords etc. My security answers are usually made up.

Now I'm a bit paranoid - someone I know had their bank account hacked, a friend of a friend has been caught up in a loan scam and I've had my PayPal account (linked to bank account and credit card) used fraudulently three times in one day.

The PayPal payments were infuriating as I'd always thought that they would be extra secure. Not so. After the first one I changed my password and security questions and was sent a reassuring email telling me that my account was now 'secure'. Next thing I know I've been sent another payment confirmation !
I've asked for my account to be suspended now as I don't trust their security.

Yes you can Bolingbroke. Just done it. I'll keep an eye out for Falstaff or Worcester

Thanks for this thread, I've just searched my own user name out of curiosity and realised that I'd NC'd to this one specifically to discuss my local area, where I also mention my husbands profession and forgotten to change back.
Also made a tot of myself on another thread under this name, so it's time for it to go!

boling I NC on my mobile yes, (non app)

*tit not tot
The irony

I'm getting suspicious about the number of E.U.threads How many of these are out of interest and how many are for lazy newspaper journalists doing quick polls
People post a lot of info on those threads.

I once got accused in RL of being a particular mumsnetter when I wasn't! I wasn't even a regular mumsnetter at that time. I can see why, I posted something on a closed fb parenting group which sparked a lot of replies. A few days later an almost identical post appeared on MN very similar wording, identical in parts. A member of the fb group messaged me the link in a 'knowing look' kind of way. I obviously denied, but I'm sure she didn't believe me. Can only assume someone from that group decided to borrow the post for MN, or it was just a very big coincidence.

Wish I'd known about advance searches then could have done some stalking research.

EU threads would be no good as polls but would be good for getting an idea of what people are thinking.

The % saying In/Out would mean nothing but you could get someone saying "I say Out because..." and it might be a new angle to explore.