Lawrence00
Senior Member
Face images can be google image searched. I live in Missouri and look a lot like Brad Pitt. Still not too easy to find. Most of us in Missouri look like Brad Pitt.
Could someone actually find out who I really am on this site
- Thread starter LoveTulips
- Start date
Nathan
SF VIP
- Location
- High Desert- Calif.
...had to Google that, so funny!
LoveTulips
Senior Member
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada
No, I'm not on the run from the police.
But I do talk about people that I have worked with, not by name, but I do mention my city, New Westminster in BC, and I do mention the college which is very close to where I live. On the other hand, hollydolly, when I think about it, I suppose, why should I care if I offend someone as I don't work there anymore anyways. 
Twostep
Well-known Member
- Location
- Tiny town Oklahoma, OK
And I thought you were kind of cute.
and we all LoveTulips??? so thereNo, I'm not on the run from the police.
David777
Well-known Member
- Location
- Silicon Valley
I have been a member of various websites for over 2 decades but have always been careful not to post links between them nor use my real name except on one. Also have a 2 decades old website with thousands of images and pages of unique content AI would find useful. When I search with my real name, Yahoo! shows over 2 dozen pages of hits, far more than just a decade ago. I during last few years, have however cross linked a few posts between two boards and now AI search outputs have become aware of such.
So in this new AI era where robots can read vast unlimited amounts of content and by its intelligent comparison software find even one obscure cross connection even years apart in otherwise forgotten back pages, we users need to be careful about what we post. Once made public, such information could become permanent. Most people tend to use pseudo names but that is not the case on some social media like Facebook or business and commercial sites like Linkedin. AI is now capable of seeing all that was previous buried in time.
Here in California, criminals are increasingly using hi tech to find their victims. Some of our lock gated ultra expensive residential areas have seen gangs of South American foreigners fly into the US and then burglarize targets they have figured out how to tell if anyone is home. Simply innocently posting how one will be on a week or two vacation may soon be dangerous if used by tech savvy cretins preying on the rest of us.
Telemarketing phone banks can be set up to automatically place robot calls to target phone numbers just to see if anyone answers. If such lines are quiet for several days, AI could alert thieves. This last week have suddenly been receiving a few calls each day where calling lines just listen and then hang up. For the most parts, most of us are just small fry not worth bothering with but AI could change that since so many alien criminals have now moved through our borders and then taken up residence in locations without being hassled.
Just yesterday I read how even legal immigrants of one ethnic group based in Sacramento was being sentenced for operating a statewide group responsible for stealing thousands of catalytic converters and then selling them to another ethnic group in New Jersey that then sold them to a scrap metal dealer that made hundreds of millions of dollars. The world is no longer as simple as it once was and lawless types that have little respect for the rest of us see us as their prey.
David
So in this new AI era where robots can read vast unlimited amounts of content and by its intelligent comparison software find even one obscure cross connection even years apart in otherwise forgotten back pages, we users need to be careful about what we post. Once made public, such information could become permanent. Most people tend to use pseudo names but that is not the case on some social media like Facebook or business and commercial sites like Linkedin. AI is now capable of seeing all that was previous buried in time.
Here in California, criminals are increasingly using hi tech to find their victims. Some of our lock gated ultra expensive residential areas have seen gangs of South American foreigners fly into the US and then burglarize targets they have figured out how to tell if anyone is home. Simply innocently posting how one will be on a week or two vacation may soon be dangerous if used by tech savvy cretins preying on the rest of us.
Telemarketing phone banks can be set up to automatically place robot calls to target phone numbers just to see if anyone answers. If such lines are quiet for several days, AI could alert thieves. This last week have suddenly been receiving a few calls each day where calling lines just listen and then hang up. For the most parts, most of us are just small fry not worth bothering with but AI could change that since so many alien criminals have now moved through our borders and then taken up residence in locations without being hassled.
Just yesterday I read how even legal immigrants of one ethnic group based in Sacramento was being sentenced for operating a statewide group responsible for stealing thousands of catalytic converters and then selling them to another ethnic group in New Jersey that then sold them to a scrap metal dealer that made hundreds of millions of dollars. The world is no longer as simple as it once was and lawless types that have little respect for the rest of us see us as their prey.
David
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LoveTulips
Senior Member
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada
Thanks everyone, I'm the original poster. And I'm not on the run from the police. Actually, I don't know why I even care about offending anyone - because if I talk about anyone, it is about people at my former work place and I don't plan on going back to work there or connect anymore with anyone there.
Actually, I don't know why I even care about offending anyone - because if I talk about anyone, it is about people at my former work place and I don't plan on going back to work there or connect anymore with anyone there.
hollydolly
SF VIP
- Location
- London England
thata girl...lol.....No, I'm not on the run from the police.
.... but in reality,..I talk about loads of things.. people think they know me and my life, but actually I don't give real names or exact places... ..the stories are all true, but I don't need to give any information to make them more of a story.. and I don't
For example I say I have a home in a gated community in Spain..I've posted pictures of it.. but I've never said what town, or village...
I've mentioned what I did for a living many times as a TV production researcher but not the specifics of it..for example not the details and specifics of the shows, and the many well known faces I've worked with... and so on...
..so it's easy to talk about something , and give the full story without giving the FULL story ..IYSWIM
papa tiger
Well-known Member
We are here because we like to be here.
I probably get banned occasionally because
I think there is too much going on. Haha
Another tricky topic! … …
Of course I believe the internet is being used and nothing is safe at all.
You check out at a Motor Mart, the girl asks for your ID and scans it.
U start getting tons of phone calls and texts soon after from rural places.
So they know your name too, now thas total crap!
Find a hole and crawl in if you thing you can be safe!
I probably get banned occasionally because
I think there is too much going on. Haha
Another tricky topic! …
…Of course I believe the internet is being used and nothing is safe at all.
You check out at a Motor Mart, the girl asks for your ID and scans it.
U start getting tons of phone calls and texts soon after from rural places.
So they know your name too, now thas total crap!
Find a hole and crawl in if you thing you can be safe!
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Tish
SF VIP
- Location
- Rural N.S.W. Australia
Sorry, I have no idea, you could always use a VPN
BlueDragonfly
Senior
- Location
- Florida
Funny story, which can be verified if the other member wishes to, I was on break from being here. I went to another forum to see if it was interesting. ALL the forums on the internet, this individual was a member there and recognized my profile pic!
Tommy
Senior Member
- Location
- New Hampshire
I'm still trying to figure out WHY anyone would want to find out who I really am. I'm really painfully boring.
hollydolly
SF VIP
- Location
- London England
me too, Tommy..I'm still trying to figure out WHY anyone would want to find out who I really am. I'm really painfully boring.
I'm always amazed at the amount of brains and energy criminals will put into their schemes so that they don't have to get jobs where they would have to use their brains and exert energy.
Like Lewcat, I don't care how many people find out who I am and where I live but I would hate to have outed my relatives about things that are their own private business.
I currently have about 7 different "usernames" on active accounts and about 8 more from old closed forums. The only site where I use my real name is the game site where I play Hearts. I thought I had nothing to fear there, but boy do some of them hate me now.
I notice and remember details and over the years there's been times people have posted enough information I could find them if I wanted to, I dont want to but I like putting the pieces together. Just be careful what you post, nothing wrong with naming your town as long as you don't share a picture of your house that shows your street address. Don't share a picture of your car that shows the license plate, or mention the name of doctors office you go to, or the name of the park you walk in everyday.
Personally I have nothing to hide so don't care if someone were to recognize me or track me down, but still try to be careful with what I post, as should everyone.
Personally I have nothing to hide so don't care if someone were to recognize me or track me down, but still try to be careful with what I post, as should everyone.
There's one Senior Forum member I think I could find based on information she once gave about her church. Of course that didn't pin point her house, but I could go to the church service, figure out which one she probably is, follow her home, come back when she's gone and steal all her knick-knacks, take them home and dust them, then sneak them back.
JustBonee
SF VIP
- Location
- Texas Gulf Coast
I'm still trying to figure out WHY anyone would want to find out who I really am. I'm really painfully boring.
… when they find you … then what?
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Gardenlover
The world needs more love
Just for informational purposes, not to argue, etc.
Metadata of an image refers to the additional information stored within or associated with the image file that describes various attributes about the image. Here's an example of common image metadata (in EXIF format, which is standard for photos from digital cameras and smartphones):
Example: Image Metadata (EXIF)
| Metadata Field | Example Value |
|---|---|
| File Name | IMG_20240510_123456.jpg |
| File Size | 3.2 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 4032 x 3024 pixels |
| Camera Make | Apple |
| Camera Model | iPhone 14 Pro |
| Exposure Time | 1/120 sec |
| F-Number (Aperture) | f/1.6 |
| ISO Speed | ISO 100 |
| Date Taken | 2024-05-10 12:34:56 |
| GPS Coordinates | 37.7749° N, 122.4194° W |
| Orientation | Rotate 90 CW |
| Software | iOS 17.4.1 |
| White Balance | Auto |
David777
Well-known Member
- Location
- Silicon Valley
True, NO one is interested in <insert your member name>.
As I noted above, criminals obviously to this point have little interest preying on most ordinary online users as long as there is so much larger unprotected wealth to go after. People primarily use pseudo website names not to hide their wealth but rather to freely anonymously post content that might cause some others to negatively target them and track their posting between multiple unrelated sites. Otherwise average users are generally boring, uninteresting with trivial assets they may need to protect. However people with more public exposure like politicians, public artists, entertainers, national sports persons, media persons, celebrities, leaders of all manner of societal commercial and organizational structures need anonymous content posting protection lest those disagreeing with whatever negatively target them.
And then their are the wealthy that may not be in the public realm but have assets criminals could target by knowing where they live and when their residences are likely to not have anyone home. Most such people that often quietly live in upscale residential communities have not in the past had to worry much about protecting their residences beyond living in places with reasonable local police protection, a dog in their backyard, neighbors, and common consumer door locks etc. Those days are now over and AI will soon make such more dangerous for some of the reasons I posted above and much more.
Tools gangs of professional burglars have access to in order to break into typical residences make doing so much easier and can be bought at local Home Depots. They can neutralize most dogs with poisons and most wealthy people don't yet have fancy security systems installed because they haven't needed them and such has been costly. A criminal can quietly park on public streets and watch what is going on including patterns of when residents drive away. They can have juveniles probe homes to see if security systems are encountered. With information now widespread on the Internet, methods professional criminals use is now easily absorbed down through ignorant low level punks that don't need to know much about using whatever. That is a factor for the increasing proliferation of personal identity hacking.
So yeah we live in a new more dangerous era, especially for those with assets and AI will quickly make all this worse.
As I noted above, criminals obviously to this point have little interest preying on most ordinary online users as long as there is so much larger unprotected wealth to go after. People primarily use pseudo website names not to hide their wealth but rather to freely anonymously post content that might cause some others to negatively target them and track their posting between multiple unrelated sites. Otherwise average users are generally boring, uninteresting with trivial assets they may need to protect. However people with more public exposure like politicians, public artists, entertainers, national sports persons, media persons, celebrities, leaders of all manner of societal commercial and organizational structures need anonymous content posting protection lest those disagreeing with whatever negatively target them.
And then their are the wealthy that may not be in the public realm but have assets criminals could target by knowing where they live and when their residences are likely to not have anyone home. Most such people that often quietly live in upscale residential communities have not in the past had to worry much about protecting their residences beyond living in places with reasonable local police protection, a dog in their backyard, neighbors, and common consumer door locks etc. Those days are now over and AI will soon make such more dangerous for some of the reasons I posted above and much more.
Tools gangs of professional burglars have access to in order to break into typical residences make doing so much easier and can be bought at local Home Depots. They can neutralize most dogs with poisons and most wealthy people don't yet have fancy security systems installed because they haven't needed them and such has been costly. A criminal can quietly park on public streets and watch what is going on including patterns of when residents drive away. They can have juveniles probe homes to see if security systems are encountered. With information now widespread on the Internet, methods professional criminals use is now easily absorbed down through ignorant low level punks that don't need to know much about using whatever. That is a factor for the increasing proliferation of personal identity hacking.
So yeah we live in a new more dangerous era, especially for those with assets and AI will quickly make all this worse.
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David777
Well-known Member
- Location
- Silicon Valley
@Gardenlover , thanks for that useful post that most people using smartphones and have never changed default settings will not be aware of. Thus turning off location information on your phone could be wise for those with residential assets to protect though most ordinary persons have nothing much to protect. Even if one has already created lots of photos with such information, once out of a phone and on a computer, one from a Command Prompt, cmd.exe, window can run exiftool commands to delete not only location info but any specific parameter or all exif information down through sub directories.
I just rechecked on my own dated Motorola moto g6 that was released in mid 2018, my current settings. Under:
Settings
Camera
Permissions
Are 4 fields one of which is:
Location
That indeed still turned Off via a slider icon while the other 3 are ON.
I just rechecked on my own dated Motorola moto g6 that was released in mid 2018, my current settings. Under:
Settings
Camera
Permissions
Are 4 fields one of which is:
Location
That indeed still turned Off via a slider icon while the other 3 are ON.
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papa tiger
Well-known Member
I nodded off to sleep about that time there. …. ….
Was up to late last night driving over to the Lake.
We had planned to get here before 8:30 PM. Accident
Closed our route, Alternate route has to have bridges over
The Large rivers.
Those bridges under repair an stoplights. One was a 10
minute wait due to traffic. Finally got to sister house to
happy mother's day. They wanted us to stay and eat.
….Was up to late last night driving over to the Lake.
We had planned to get here before 8:30 PM. Accident
Closed our route, Alternate route has to have bridges over
The Large rivers.
Those bridges under repair an stoplights. One was a 10
minute wait due to traffic. Finally got to sister house to
happy mother's day. They wanted us to stay and eat.
David777
Well-known Member
- Location
- Silicon Valley
Although the below exposes some bad news for a lot of us, it is better to get it out in the public open now than later. And I do recall noticing this a few years ago during a time Internet users were too technically unsavvy to make much use of it. AI changes it all.
Exiftool is the primary tool used by image file users to work with exif parameters that are stored in all image file headers. I cannot help those that want to install and run the perl package. I have used exiftool for decades but non basic computer capable non command line users may be lost.
There was a recent years change to exiftool installations in order to add a bunch of perl library html help files that advanced users thought were useful by non command line users by being platform independent browser runable. However the perl file installation itself was a can of worms for those unfamiliar with general perl installations.
The exiftool Home page is at:
ExifTool by Phil Harvey
A bit lower from the top of that page is:
(The Windows packages are based on work by Oliver Betz, and use his launcher. Oliver also provides self-installing versions of these executables. See this forum post if you have any problems/comments with these versions.)
Select the link in that sentence. Oliver Betz built a way to install the basic package.
Oliver Betz | Artikel / ExifTool Windows installer and portable package
If one just runs and installs via that process, the exiftool.exe command will be useable from a command line.
I copied one of hollydolly's seniorforums dot om images today from one of her posts, downloading it on this cheap Windows 11 laptop I've been annoyingly using like a cripple the last week since my Dell XPS-15 laptop's master boot file was corrupted on. Every time Windows OS changes, it tends to greatly annoy old users like this person as gurus writing the OS code tend to force old users to use new processes for the sake of gurus who think they are improving use for unsavvy users.
In my Download folder ran
exiftool.exe IMG-7866.jpg > t1.txt
That created a new t1.txt file with 150 lines of exif information like:
Make : Apple
Camera Model Name : iPhone 12 Pro
Orientation : Horizontal (normal)
X Resolution : 72
It also includes:
GPS Latitude Ref : North
GPS Longitude Ref : West
GPS Altitude Ref : Above Sea Level
GPS Time Stamp : 15:10:59
GPS Speed Ref : km/h
GPS Speed : 0.05310787397
GPS Img Direction Ref : Magnetic North
GPS Img Direction : 2xx.6437378
GPS Dest Bearing Ref : Magnetic North
GPS Dest Bearing : 2xx.6437378
GPS Date Stamp : 2025:05:10
GPS Horizontal Positioning Error: 5.7xx645576 m
Profile CMM Type : Apple Computer Inc.
I changed two digits in some parameters from numbers to xx in order to hide her location. Any computer savvy person could do this. There are useful reasons why people include all this camera GPS information in photo headers that many programs can use but if camera enabled that is the usual smartphone default, it also can tell savvy users like me where you took a shot that will increasingly expose one to issues I mentioned. Not an issue for many as most people have little of interest to hide.
One can paste those coordinates into maps and get the exact spots. In addition to not enabling such information on my own cameras, I remove exif information from images used on my website. Board admins may be probably clear such information from uploaded files with a single command on their databases however that is a specific database implementation question.
I looked at some of my own images processed with Adobe Photoshop for trivial web use and found AI could extract information from years of my own Internet uploaded posts that I'd prefer not be known though nothing too important like gps location info. Parameters I had set up in Adobe Photoshop 20+ years ago. Once a person uploads a file onto an Internet website using usual web board tools they do not have control over those files again. I'll predict herein someone will use AI with web robots to suck all such property information into their own databases and then use such information for purposes no one thought about years ago. So yeah a lot of us are dead meat at this point to change things.
David
Exiftool is the primary tool used by image file users to work with exif parameters that are stored in all image file headers. I cannot help those that want to install and run the perl package. I have used exiftool for decades but non basic computer capable non command line users may be lost.
There was a recent years change to exiftool installations in order to add a bunch of perl library html help files that advanced users thought were useful by non command line users by being platform independent browser runable. However the perl file installation itself was a can of worms for those unfamiliar with general perl installations.
The exiftool Home page is at:
ExifTool by Phil Harvey
A bit lower from the top of that page is:
(The Windows packages are based on work by Oliver Betz, and use his launcher. Oliver also provides self-installing versions of these executables. See this forum post if you have any problems/comments with these versions.)
Select the link in that sentence. Oliver Betz built a way to install the basic package.
Oliver Betz | Artikel / ExifTool Windows installer and portable package
If one just runs and installs via that process, the exiftool.exe command will be useable from a command line.
I copied one of hollydolly's seniorforums dot om images today from one of her posts, downloading it on this cheap Windows 11 laptop I've been annoyingly using like a cripple the last week since my Dell XPS-15 laptop's master boot file was corrupted on. Every time Windows OS changes, it tends to greatly annoy old users like this person as gurus writing the OS code tend to force old users to use new processes for the sake of gurus who think they are improving use for unsavvy users.
In my Download folder ran
exiftool.exe IMG-7866.jpg > t1.txt
That created a new t1.txt file with 150 lines of exif information like:
Make : Apple
Camera Model Name : iPhone 12 Pro
Orientation : Horizontal (normal)
X Resolution : 72
It also includes:
GPS Latitude Ref : North
GPS Longitude Ref : West
GPS Altitude Ref : Above Sea Level
GPS Time Stamp : 15:10:59
GPS Speed Ref : km/h
GPS Speed : 0.05310787397
GPS Img Direction Ref : Magnetic North
GPS Img Direction : 2xx.6437378
GPS Dest Bearing Ref : Magnetic North
GPS Dest Bearing : 2xx.6437378
GPS Date Stamp : 2025:05:10
GPS Horizontal Positioning Error: 5.7xx645576 m
Profile CMM Type : Apple Computer Inc.
I changed two digits in some parameters from numbers to xx in order to hide her location. Any computer savvy person could do this. There are useful reasons why people include all this camera GPS information in photo headers that many programs can use but if camera enabled that is the usual smartphone default, it also can tell savvy users like me where you took a shot that will increasingly expose one to issues I mentioned. Not an issue for many as most people have little of interest to hide.
One can paste those coordinates into maps and get the exact spots. In addition to not enabling such information on my own cameras, I remove exif information from images used on my website. Board admins may be probably clear such information from uploaded files with a single command on their databases however that is a specific database implementation question.
I looked at some of my own images processed with Adobe Photoshop for trivial web use and found AI could extract information from years of my own Internet uploaded posts that I'd prefer not be known though nothing too important like gps location info. Parameters I had set up in Adobe Photoshop 20+ years ago. Once a person uploads a file onto an Internet website using usual web board tools they do not have control over those files again. I'll predict herein someone will use AI with web robots to suck all such property information into their own databases and then use such information for purposes no one thought about years ago. So yeah a lot of us are dead meat at this point to change things.
David