Moron Enterprises

While I don’t believe in true anonymity on the Internet, I do my best to hide certain things about myself in the online world. Some people think it’s ridiculous that I do this, but I have a story to show how the idea of remaining unidentified online is far fetched. I will also do my best to tell this story to hide anyone involved.

Back in college, there was this girl in one of my classes. The only thing I knew about her was her name was ______. I thought she was cute, but because of my work schedule, I was always late to class, sat in the back, and I left class early to get back to work, so there was little time for me to approach her. Well there was that and the fact that I am a coward.

One day I was telling my boss about this. He wasn’t about to give me time off from work to go chasing girls, but as soon as I told him what class this was, he picked up the phone to call someone and said, “Hey, _____, can you give me the class roster for _________ 132 for this quarter?” Two minutes later he had an Excel sheet in his email that he forwarded to me. It was the class roster with everyone’s name and student ID number. After a little bit of browsing I told him, “This is probably her.”

He called out again and said to someone else, “Can you get me the records for a ______ ______, student ID number _________?” My boss and I had adjoining offices and we left the door open all the time. Five minutes later my boss started saying, “She’s from northern California. It’s a nice city. Her parents probably have money. It lists two home addresses. That probably means her parents are divorced.”

I was shocked that our records were so easily accessed. Even though we found out the school’s databases were never secure, all it took was a little social engineering with the right people to access anything and everything. You may keep your information spread out in two places, but two and two can be put together, and people can find you.

So the next time you want to post pictures of yourself drinking beer on Facebook, just remember. I can find out where you live and that your parents are divorced.