Googling For Prospective Date Unmasks Fugitive
pgrote writes "So you're a guy on the run - you decide to switch towns, put down some roots and start dating again. But if your special new friend happens to be someone who checks her potential dates by searching on Google, you're in trouble. Seems that LaShawn Pettus-Brown was caught by his date's discovery of him on an FBI site of fugitives, even after local Cincinnati news media couldn't find him. Score one for the Internet."
Wow. That's even worse than finding your wifes picture on a dating site!!!
...that I post to slashdot. Oh dear.
owned by a geek-chick
www.necroticobsession.com
1980: Do you have Herpes?
1986: Do you have AIDS?
1995: I have pepper spray.
2004: I have Google.
Oh well.. at least RealDolls can't use search engines.. yet..
Trolling is a art,
Man, I bet this guy is wishing his parents had given him a more common name than "LaShawn Pettus-Brown"...
OK -- now how stupid is a fugitive for giving his real name to anyone?
If your potential date discovers you sell penis enlargement items on the internet for a living, will that help or hurt your chances?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That's why you know it's best not to date.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I would think getting your name changed would help quite a bit. Seems kind of silly to post your real name in the google personals if you're wanted by the FBI.
Buckethead
That's just someone with my name... and my picture... and my fingerprints.
- c -
When I was in the market for my first house (9 months ago), I thought I had found the perfect house.
Then I searched Google for the address and learned that the previous owner had died in the house.
He was in the attic working on the electrical when a small fire broke out. He got the fire out but died from the smoke.
His father was selling the house.
It was all a little too much for me.
-Jackson
The internet has great power, indeed. But this power is not without detriment, namely to privacy. While I may sleep a little better knowing a fugative has been brought to justice, I am also worried about how my own personal information may be widely available to those who would use it maliciously. Not trying to make any conclusions here; just food for thought.
At least enough to not use it once it's been soiled .
Infuriate left and right
Only a moron would use his real name when he's on the lam. I can go to several locations in my city and come away with an authentic-looking drivers's license, social security card, whatever. Hell, I can even get a Mexican Matricula Consular card, even though you can read in the dark by my skin color. This woman deserves a reward for removing this guy's genes from the pool, even if temporarily.
I used to be the top result from google, but now it's some tennis player. I'm on the first page, but it's not my homepage, just something I posted to a PHP mailing list a thousand years ago.
Seriously tho, anybody who dates somebody off the internet without at least having a go at googling their name, is nearly as stupid as anybody who's got an outstanding arrest warrant and gives out their real name.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Porn? It's not porn! It's just a website where lonely geeks can find a friend who is rather...easy to burst into flames if too close to a fire. That's discrimination, brother!
Oh, damn. Here I was, thinking google was starting a new dating service - called Fugitive. :)
It'd probably be immensely popular. "Check to see if this man is a fugitive? Yes | No"
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
So the guy steals about 100K and invites a date to freaking Applebee?! EIther he's really a cheap bastard or he already spent it all.
Men these days. You cannot even get a French restaurant date out of a rich thief anymore.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
If the Cincinatti media had googled him, they'd have found exactly what they already knew: that there was a warrant out for his arrest. The only sort of person who could have found both halves of the story by googling is the sort of person who did: someone who knew him and his whereabouts personally, but needed Google to tell her that he was a fugitive.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Hmmm... could be interesting... lemesee...
+blonde +thirtysomething +"blue eyes" -kids +"36 24 36" -smoker +5'11" +model +"into geeky guys"
Wha? Zero results?
This is a little offtopic, and a trifle condescending, but do we care enough about children not to give them asinine names?
How many Trawandas, DeLeroys, and Yasomethins do we need?
When you're thinking about naming your twins Orangello and Lemonjello , you should first consider whether or not sharing your genetic information is wise.
True, sex feels great, but consider the ascetic pleasure of knowing that you chose not to pass on a taste for absurd names to your progeny. Europe is clearly leading in this area.
I don't know if this is becasue the women are just too chic to consider motherhood, the men are too busy planting their seed where it cannot grow, or they are simply given to better taste.
Regardless, please do us all a favor and get a proper book of names, and don't give a child a name that is going to raise hackles for their whole life.
There are far better ways to express individuality than naming a poor infant LeDeZeppelin.
Thank you for your attention.
FINEX RANTEX
If they're launching a dating service, they should call it "Go ogle". Dating services are already known to be meat markets...
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
If you are going to commit a serious crime these days, you'd better make darn sure that you know your way around a computer before using one on the Internet. The trails that we leave are beyond most people's comprehensions, and I would hate to think what could be done to me or any other ordinary person if someone set their mind to mischief.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
No, it's a sex toy site. The sex toys just happen to look like naked women.
Yes, some might well consider that pornographic. Others might simply consider it a display of wares.
Yeah, it's not safe for work so your warning is valid. No, I'm not just being pedantic. I really thought your post might need a little clarifying.
Yes, I've looked. Big deal.
KFG
suggests that you not use your real name when you are on the run from the FBI. It might also be a good idea to steal more than $180k--that won't let you live it up for long in NYC.
heh same here. Remember what Mark Twain said about Cincy...
"When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
Hmmm, so if girls check google on their guys... Say, how does one go about getting their webpage put in the top of Google? I was thinking of trying to register http://www.heisthebest.com/ and of course, put my name all over it. I see no flaws in my plan.
The newpaper editor Googling skills might have improved, but not their proofreading skills.
Neither have yours... ;-)
who the hell would look at naked dolls
Ken?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
If they would have done a google search on him, they just would have found news articles.
His new home address didn't show up, nothing about his new home was there. This was pretty much left for anyone who had just met him to give 'em the google to find out he's in trouble.
What this article demonstrates is quite easily summed up in one phrase: ignorant sensationalism
If you have a common enough name and **aren't** on the lam you might be okay. Just make sure she doesn't know your l337 /. name or you're dead!
...Oh shit, you're all heading for Google now...
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Woops, I mean did you search the Internet using a popular engine for that?
They are dumb. Seriously. If all criminals were highly intelligent, we'd be in real trouble. Fortunately, most are pretty stupid. Hence, they make stupid mistakes, and those mistakes lead to their arrest and conviction. Real life is usually not like Law and Order where the cops have to untangle a complecated web to get at the truth, usually the criminals do something really dumb that leads right too them.
That's not to say there haven't been some really smart crooks, the smartest of which we likely know nothing of, but 99.99% of them are dumb.
So no, this is not at all supprising.
D00D gO+ pWnED 8y @ Ch1Ck!!!
I do a Google for my real name, and it comes up with nothing even close - of course there are 21,300 hits when I use quotes!
db
Cig:
ôô
you'll see him at http://www.writeaprisoner.com/
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Not even the editors
After having some suspicions about a neighbor, I too decided to run her though Google. The search brought up this Article http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Katherine+Saddle r&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=199808 1213325800.JAA00250%40ladder01.news.aol.com&rnum=1 (Her name is Katherine Sadler), the relevent part being
"Another accused hooker, Katherine Saddler, 35, answered the phone at Sunnymede.
"When we have something to say, we'll say it," said Saddler, who was also
charged with possession of nine bags of heroin. "
Yep, that was my neighbor. A few more searches resulted in two open arrest warrents for her in NJ, time spent in prison, and several other convictions of assult and death threats. So the moral of the story is, if you have suspicions, it doesn't hurt to take 1 minute to run a quick google search.
My girlfriend did a search on my name on google, and on the first 3 hits she found some page out of a BBS where some of my co-workers were slagging me off. Needless to say I will be calling them by their internet handles at work from now on.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Look I'm in the google engine! -I'm finally somebody! I'm somebody! I'm in the google engine!
halfy-"I Would."
"oh shut up halfy you don't have any legs you coulden't screw anything."
Halfie
note, link is a clip from a different episode, but it has the same point.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
Just don't post the results to Slashdot using your real name in case your neighbours are also using Google to check you out.
Maybe seed Google with your own bogus details, "John is Amish and does not own any consumer electronics worth stealing, he has a black belt in Karate and breeds rattlesnakes as a hobby..."
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Wife's picture on dating site = free pass.
paintball
CEO
paintball
Seriously - in the online dating world, if you can write a complete sentence and don't look like a complete letter, you can find a date with a moderately attractive woman, assuming you target the age when they're finally sick of dating assholes. It's not that hard, really.
paintball
Once WKRP left the airwaves, baby, you'd just have to wonder, wonder what ever became of Pettus-Brown...
-- SYS 64738 --
I was relieved to see that it was just the same name, not the same person. Now when :-)
I look back however, I think of all the things that could have been.....
The problem with the search is it's way too spec.
All a girl has to be is an inch off and the search fails.
Also if she says "I'm into brainy guys", "I'm into nerdy guys" or "Geeks make me hot" the search fails... Not that I'd expect anyone to say "geeks make me hot" just giving an example...
As for the "Into geek guys" forget it she's gone by now... Every Slashdot geek had sent her a preposal.... well ok I'm more a tweek thow.. (Diffrence between me and a geek? I've got less brains and I'm insain...).
+blonde +thirtysomething +"blue eyes" -kids +"36 24 36" -smoker +5'11" +model +"into geeky guys"
Ok let's try remaking this to be a more realistic search ok?
+blonde This is fine.. Every "yellow" haired woman calls herself blonde.
+thirtysomething Changes are you'll get her exact age why should she even bother with the term "thirtysomething" strike it..
+"blue eyes" ok... A bit exssesive but the search would work...
-kids This is vage enough it will block all "with kids" it will also knock out "Not ready for kids" or "can't stand kids"... But it's a reasonable filter we can knock it out later.. if needed.
"36 24 36" Are we searching for a date or giving specs for a fembot? Human beings aren't going to fit an exact mold. Strike it...
-smoker Like kids this filters "I am a smoker" and "I am not a smoker"... This is probably not the kind of thing you want to filter... Leave it in for first search.
+5'11" Ahem.. So if she's 5'10" or 6'" your not intrested?
+5' This will give you everyone who is 5 foot...
+model Ahem.. are we searching for dates or phone sex? If she says she's a model she is eather lying or to busy to actually date.
Strike it...
+"into geeky guys" Way to detailed... She'd have to actually use that exact phrase.
Try just +geek.. This will scoop up "I'm a geek girl looking for a geek guy"
Now we have: +blonde +"blue eyes" -kids +5' +geek
1,630 results.... Exelent...
Now I can screen them by hand for... dear god no Huston we have a problem.
+woman
1,060 results... Good.
Let's trim this down a tad +female. The search results still had to many guys "looking for a woman"... Just need to imprint on the search the importance of finding a FEMALE date..
Ok to many unrelated results... Oh sure I like "Buffy the vampire slayer" but reading about how much fans like Spike dose not get me anywhere.
+dating
Well.. I'll ferther refine this but that will be to my personal tasts...
Damn it thow.. I find a post on Japanise intrested in western and it's Japanise MEN looking for western wemen.
Oh the +blond thing kinda makes that not happen anyway.
I'm srapping "blue eyes" becouse I don't care about eye color.. Then add +California becouse that is where I live.
424 results... I'll be refining this all freaking night...
Well I found this nifty link and I can finish my search that way.
And that is how you ue google to find a date.
Oh dear god I'm pathetic... Finding dates by computer... I'm affrade I need to bash my self senseless now.
I don't actually exist.
Hey sounds like a great business to start, give IT/businesplans to criminals and such.
;-)
Define their goal/problem and solve it with a powerpoint slide presentation define their solution and step by step guide on what to do and not to do so they can succeed.
add in the papar
"Are you a dumb crook, too stupid, left highschool at 15 and now are looking for quick bucks but dont want to be caught by FBI who left school at 18? Then call us , CRIMEDOESPAY(for 10% fee) , tell us what you dont or plan to do, and we will define a business plan to make sure you will succeed and not get 'trapped'. All details are highly confidential and all data will be destroyed after consultation and fees paid. Call 555-CRIME. or check us out online www.defeat-the-fbi-mmmkay.com "
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If you really want to get freaked out here's where you can check out what kind of neighbors you have.
Dude, I'm never double-dating with you.
"(not that I looked ...)"
I think your pants are on fire.
"Derp de derp."
When I met my wife (via the internet, although we met IRL within a week), and realized that it would be a serious relationship I got a bit worried...you see one time one of my friends (and I think I might know who...) thought it'd be funny to post in my name on some pot growing site....okay so it would've been funny - but one day while googling for my own name - well let's just say that's how I discovered their joke!
So I told my wife-to-be right away, and she thought it was funny also....still I have to wonder who else I know that might just google my name! >:(
I often google problematic eBayers and scammers email addresses - I would say 1/2 the time I get good results and 1 in 10 I get VERY interesting results.
For instance - one time I had an eBayer email me telling me I should be ashamed for selling a Bang & Olufsen turntable at the price I was selling it at. Turns out - it was HIS that he sold to someone in Charlotte (nearby) - they in turn sold it to a Pawn Shop - I bought it for a deal (under $100) - come to find out - he only got $35 for it on eBay - he had left negative feedback for the buyer because the buyer made him sell it to him (he didn't have a reserve. To make a long story longer - It turns out he starts harassing my bidders, telling them not to buy from me. I google and find something similar to this with his email address attached.
Gay male looking in Colorado (Denver Area) for discreet meetings - no kinky stuff but very adventurous. Since he had bid in my auction (fraudulently) I instantly ended the auction and made him the winner by cancelling other bids. I threatened to post the information to several websites and his feedback. I never heard from him again.
I have ALWAYS googled anyone's email address before I met them from match.com - although usually a girl's email address won't show up with any results.
I occasionally google my email address and always get new stuff - usually 4-5 of my slashdot replies show up.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
just brainless male bushido
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Perhaps, you meant machismo instead of bushido?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").