

How Wired.com Tracked the iPhone Finder - ams1
http://brianxchen.tumblr.com/post/565083430/how-wired-com-tracked-the-iphone-finder

======
pak
Step 1: a comment on Facebook observed by a Wired intern leads to a probe of
the guy's friends and recent groups.

Given the latest spritz of "I'm leaving Facebook" posts on HN, this is a
coincidentially relevant tale of how it was used to track somebody down
against his wishes. Even more interesting was that the timing of his profile
deletion was an indicator to Wired that he was involved in something abnormal.

Some of you seem to regret ever opening a Facebook account; you can count
Hogan solidly among your numbers. This story is a memorable counter to the
claim that in the new era of social networking, people want everything to be
public all the time. Perhaps you might not care too much about your privacy,
but one day might come along where you really need to and it's too late.

~~~
yaroslavvb
IMHO, this fits nicely under Eric Schmidt's philosophy that "If you have
something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it
in the first place." After all, it's the morally questionable act of profiting
from someone's mistake that's the ultimate cause of his troubles.

------
awa
FTA: I hope it sends a message that journalism is still very much alive,

Wow... why don't I see a hue and cry regarding the name revelation by
wired.com here. When Gizmodo released the name of Gary powell it was called a
cheap shot... But stalking someone using facebook and revealing their name to
the world which definitely could affect the person's career is suddenly fair
game.

~~~
raganwald
Has this person been _convicted_ of a crime? No? Well now... Does anybody
remember Richard Jewell?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell>

~~~
pak
On the other hand, the guy's lawyer does admit he was the one that found the
phone, it's not likely Wired found the wrong person.

I don't think Wired is making any assumptions about the legal status of what
he did.

Does that make it any less freaky that trawling Facebook is what led to this
scoop? Well, admittedly no.

~~~
raganwald
To me, "trawling Facebook" means using publicly available information.
Pretending to be interested in friendship is "social engineering," which is a
polite way of saying "lying."

------
pohl
A telling Facebook comment on the wall of a former Wired intern who still had
connections to Wired. Had he not done that, he might still be underground.

~~~
wallflower
> But even so, the comment was vague (a single word) and not enough to draw a
> conclusion

What was the single word?

Payday? Money? "Stolen?!"?, Nevermore?

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barrkel
First step, you get lucky. I mean, once you have a name and a social group,
you're already 99% of the way there.

------
chrisbennet
I wonder how many lies were told in order to get this scoop? "Hi, I'm a friend
of Brian's, do you know...?"

~~~
ros3
Hi I'm that intern.

No lies involved. We got an email at Wired about the phone (pre-Gizmodo story)
and ignored it. After the story we came back to the email, I looked it up on
Google, found his real name associated to a post on a forum, searched it on
Facebook and, for some very odd reason, he accepted a friends request from me.

I guess the lesson here is not to talk (or accept friends requests) from
strangers.

~~~
raganwald
You dishonestly pretended to be interested in friendship with someone and you
tell us that he lesson is not to accept friendship requests from strangers?

I take the lesson as "Beware, even the nicest people will rationalize
dishonesty."

