
Dave The Incredible Mindreader – How Does He Do It? - olalonde
http://singularityhub.com/2012/09/28/dave-the-uncannily-accurate-mindreader-how-does-he-do-it/
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shalmanese
Back in college, when Facebook was still pretty new, I met this fairly
attractive girl who told me she put horseback riding as one of her interests,
even though she doesn't ride.

When guys would approach her out of the blue and casually move the
conversation into horseback riding, she knew that had been pre-stalking her on
Facebook.

I always thought that was a rather clever social hack.

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muyuu
If a classmate or a coworker checked me in FB or something of the sort (not
possible really since I keep my online identities fairly secret) I would
consider it being attentive and interested, not a stalker. Stalking is not a
word to be throwing around willy-nilly.

~~~
majormajor
The weird/stalkery part of it is checking them out extensively on Facebook
first instead of just _talking to them_.

If I was a girl in college and a classmate did that first I think I'd be a bit
weirded out that he felt the need to try to come up with interests to talk
about in advance instead of just starting up a conversation and finding out
stuff about me.

But there's a lot of social conditioning in this—like, if I was a guy in
college, and a girl did that to me, I'd be more understanding because girls in
the US generally aren't encouraged to cold-approach guys in the first place,
and so it would be cool for it to happen, period.

You can pretend to have shared interests at first regardless of how you find
out about the other person's interests, so it's not restricted solely to that
sort of creepiness, but it still feels like an awfully roundabout way of
talking to someone you want to talk to compared to just talking to them.

~~~
nancyhua
Doesn't everyone invite everyone to stalk everyone now by putting their
information everywhere online? Stalking your crush is the original purpose of
Facebook according to that movie.

The main thing e-stalking reveals is how interested the guy is, and maybe how
smooth he is (smooth guys don't do as much research, or they know how to hide
it better). So if he brings up the horses, she knows he's into her and maybe a
little awkward, but it doesn't tell her he's definitely a psycho- she'll
probably judge his weirdness from his appearance and manner.

The creepiness of normal stalking depends on how attractive the target finds
the stalker. If you're a hot, rich, 100 year old vampire, you can watch a girl
sleep every night for months and she'll think it's awesome (but the vampire
didn't admit he was doing it until after they were dating).

If he realized "horseback riding" was the key she'd used to encrypt all her
passwords, then that'd be a serious red flag. So there's certainly a point
where stalking becomes creepy no matter how hot you are, but looking at
someone's Facebook profile isn't it.

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fruchtose
This link nothing but blogspam. Just go here for the video that the link pads
with meaningless text: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I>

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aw3c2
I guess it is just that hysteric advertisement of a bank?

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praptak
Real (ok, "real") mindreaders also have some tricks up their sleeves, low-tech
but still useful. Some of the tricks work so well that the "mindreaders"
unconsciously trick themselves into believing in their own powers.

The art of "cold reading" is a fascinating read:

<http://www.randi.org/library/coldreading/>

Btw, I see your facebook profile in my crystal ball:
<http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?=7432645066541>

~~~
anjc
AHhhh ya fooled me

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xk_id
This looks like and Ad, and nothing but. It doesn't look like a real
experiment.

~~~
rplnt
It is an ad. No idea what it does on HN, especially in a form of blog post
with embedded video.

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jules
Facebook I get, but how does he get access to bank transfers?

~~~
Jach
I wonder if he scans for any credit card data with an RFID reader.

~~~
veemjeem
how do you scan for credit card data with a rfid reader? very few credit cards
have rfid.

~~~
Jach
Here's a story from earlier this year
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/249138/rfid_credit_cards_are_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/249138/rfid_credit_cards_are_easy_prey_for_hackers_demo_shows.html)
And as other commenters have noted, you only need to "succeed" with a few
people to put together this video, so even if only a small portion of the
population has a vulnerable card it can be enough. But even a vulnerable CC
might not have enough info, so we can consider an even more classic
magician's/pickpocketer's trick of swiping the person's wallet off them
without them noticing and getting a password reset on their online transaction
history page using the physical card and info gathered from social networks to
pull off the simple social engineering. Not very likely, but if we're trying
to come up with ways to get at a person's transaction history...

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gokfar
It is a hell of a lot easier (cheaper) to use actors than to actually pull
this off, at least the banking part.

Since the video is an ad and makes no serious claim that this isn't staged,
I'm betting that it is.

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jevinskie
I think that I should start to wear a balaclava while I'm reversing code.

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ardit33
Some people would call it stalking, some would call it "research" and plain
being careful who you are dating (or trying to).

Lets be honest, %99 of normal people would be looking online somebody that
they are interested on. Either what they do, what friends you might have in
common, etc. Normal fare.

If you are not, then it is weird. You either not interested, too busy, or just
careless.

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uulbiy
There is really no need for the equipment that these guys use (or seem to be
using). A simple name search at pipl.com yields quite impressive results.

