Wired Writer Disappears, Find Him and Make $5k

carp3_noct3m writes "A freelance Wired magazine journalist has decided to see what it is like to disappear from normal life, all while staying on the grid. The catch, is that he is challenging anyone and everyone to find him, take a picture, and speak a special codeword to him. If you can do that, you can make 5000 dollars, which happens to come out of his paycheck for the article he'll be writing. Oh, and to top it all off, whoever finds him gets pictures and interviews in Wired. He has been posting to his Twitter, using TOR for internet, and the Wired website will be posting his credit card transactions."

Comments

Re:Taking all the fun out of it

[sgauss]

Well, if I believe my television, you should still be able to waterboard him!

Privacy illusion.

[girlintraining]

I knew a friend once that did skip-tracing. He tracked a guy down who changed his name, flew to the middle-east under an assumed identity and fake passport, dyed his hair, and more. His big downfall? He used a credit card once he landed -- which was under his old name. And this was using just information available to the credit bureaus to find him. Also... witness protection program? Yup... he found a few of them too. I bet I could have this guy nailed in about four hours if I called the police up and said I was a famous celebrity and he was defaming me on Twitter. Game over.

All he's proving is that Joe Average doesn't have much power. Big deal. Your neighbor isn't the one you should be worried about finding you anyway -- they lack the technical resources, skills, and moral flexibility to do so. Now, if he wants to do a REAL test of his privacy -- photoshop some photos of a male politician in a pink tutu and make disparaging comments about his sexual orientation. I bet you get a knock on your door within a day. -_-

Why this fails

[popo]

The problem, as any Wired writer should know -- is that information wants to be free.

As the writer himself has observed: Contacting his family or breaking the law are easy ways to retrieve the information.

Those activities may disqualify the offending "player", but they do not disqualify the underlying data -- which wants to be free -- and can easily be passed on to any party in order to claim the prize.

So like most "hacks", social-engineering will trump using the "grid".

And the take-away here is this: There are no rules. There is only data, and it will be free.

The poor writer is going to find much of his personal life violated, I'm afraid. But the blame falls to him. He should have known better.

Re:Off the grid AND using credit cards? WTF?

[LordKronos]

How can you be "off the grid" if you are using credit cards?

How can you be commenting on the article when you didn't read the summary?