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Man Creates "Creepy" Stalking App
An anonymous reader writes "Creepy, a package described as a 'geolocation information aggregator,' is turning heads in privacy circles, but should people be worried? Yiannis Kakavas explains why he developed his scary stalking application. Creepy is a software package for Linux or Windows — with a Mac OS X port in the works — that aims to gather public information on a targeted individual via social networking services in order to pinpoint their location. It's remarkably efficient at its job, even in its current early form, and certainly lives up to its name when you see it in use for the first time."
I don't know that this really does much you can't do fairly easily already. So if you have someone's name and city, there is a good chance you can locate them. Why? All kinds of things in the public record you could look up. Own a house? Then there's a record of that publicly available. Phone numbers are normally listed (though with the increase in cell phones that is less common).
What it comes down to is that in a modern society, we are going back to how it was in older, smaller societies: You can have privacy, but you cannot have anonymity, at least not without a good deal of trouble and sacrifice.
So back in the day, with much smaller communities and so on you had an "everyone knows everyone" situation. Not literally, but people were known to a substantial part of the town. As such it was just not possible to be anonymous. Your comings and goings were noticed. Where you lived was known, that kind of thing. If you moved to a new place, again you've be noticed. Short of going and living a very solitary life, you couldn't be anonymous.
Now privacy you could have, easily. If you wanted a private conversation, just walk out in a field where nobody was within earshot. In your house you had almost complete certainty nobody could spy since there was no advanced technology. What you did you could keep private to a large degree. That you were around doing things you could not.
As things grew anonymity became more and more possible. You could just disappear in a large city, go about your business but be unknown and invisible to most everyone.
Well, that is changing back again. Technology is making it such that anonymity is going away. It is just very difficult to make yourself unknowable. Privacy is certainly possible, and the Supreme Court has ruled it is a right and thus the government is required to respect it. However anonymity is pretty hard.
So that an app can find where you live fairly easily isn't surprising at all to me. There's just a lot of public documents on you, and the Internet makes it easy to search them. The information you choose to provide on social network sites makes it even easier.
It is just kinda something we have to accept, unless we want to radically alter how society works.
Also we need to understand that anonymity and privacy are not the same thing. Too many people conflate the two. They think a right to privacy means the right to be totally unknown. Not the case. It means the right to have the specifics of your life secret, not that you are living your life a secret.
What you do in your house is your private business. That you are in your house it not private. You neighbours can watch you come home and leave, and know when you are there. That is 100% legal and ethical. You will not be anonymous. However they can't go and spy on you and see what you are doing. You can still be private.
As opposed to just going "Welp, someone ELSE better look through that code!", I decided to. I'm not going to claim I'm a security or python expert, but I know the latter decently enough to feel safe in saying... ain't nothing there but what it says on the tin.
Location information retieval from : : :
Twitter's tweet location
Coordinates when tweet was posted from mobile device
Place (geographical name) derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface. Place gets translated into coordinates using geonames.com
Bounding Box derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface.The less accurate source , a corner of the bounding box is selected randomly.
Geolocation information accessible through image hosting services API
EXIF tags from the photos posted.
Social networking platforms currently supported
Twitter
Foursquare (only checkins that are posted to twitter)
Image hosting services currently supported
flickr - information retrieved from API
twitpic.com - information retrieved from API and photo exif tags
yfrog.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
img.ly - information retrieved from photo exif tags
plixi.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
twitrpix.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
foleext.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
shozu.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
pickhur.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
moby.to - information retrieved from API and photo exif tags
twitsnaps.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
twitgoo.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
I'm not worried, because anyone that stalks me is bound to find out that I'm creepier than they are.
This space available.
We're punishing the tool maker for its misuse again? Someone should warn Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I like the idea that it's okay for government and corporations to data mine you and stalk you, but the individual data mining against the individual is "creepy" and evil and blah blah blah.