On Sunday February 4 2007, Peter wrote: > On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Ira Abramov wrote: > > Quoting Michael Vasiliev, from the post of Thu, 01 Feb: > >>>> What reason do you have to believe that your identity is worth > >>>> stealing? > > If you are truly paranoid I suggest two things:
Ok, I am, after all, only human. So I will take the glove and play the dusty blackhat card today. > 1. Change your online id to single-letter strings of just one letter, > Like: > > zzz zzzzzzz > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] I suggest you take a look at advanced search syntax of google for a start. "Google Hacks" and book and j0hnny's website may be an interesting reading for you. > This makes searching by your name futile. Or do what I do and sign all > your messages with 'Peter' or 'John'. There are about 100 million Johns > out there and in case of identity theft they will likely take another > John's identity. After wiping off my tears, I did this naive query: http://www.google.com/search?q=peter+plp+actcom&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 hitting paydirt at the very first obvious link: http://www.actcom.co.il/~plp Stealthy online presence indeed. The rest of the results look relevant as well. Having your not very common name, should I continue on what would an identity thief do next? > 2. Encode your birthday and snail mail address using a riddle that only > a patient human can solve. Example: > > http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/harry/address.htm > > (I solved that but it took a while) How's that going to protect your identity? > 3. Digitally sign your email. Not like the peasants do by adding four > lines of gpg crud, put it in a custom header instead. Yum! Give me another tracking vector, your web of trust. I will be able to pinpoint your location, interests, friends, business contacts...and measure the pet paranoia level in bits, while I'm at it. Do yourself a favor and next time you are going to distribute security advice, don't insult the blackhats' intelligence while you're doing it. They have a swollen ego, the very least, you'll be laughed at. They are smart enough to do what they do and not get caught, what makes you think they are stupid enough to not master the art of Google search? -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev Let me have men about me that are fat Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. -- William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
