DISCLAIMER: This is for research and teaching purposes only. I am not making any claim or accusation that this person is involved in the despicable acts that Kos contributors have partaken in over the past year. This is strictly an example of how to use a personal blog to lift the veil of anonymity.
When someone creates an online persona starting with the intention of remaining anonymity it usually isnt a big deal. However, when they are politically motivated they are usually doing this for the purpose of starting shit and harassing people. So here is a quick tutorial on how to use the smallest clues to unmask some of these losers. Ive chosen someone who calls themselves “Anonymiss”.
If you have noticed the “anonymiss” tag has slimed its way over to Daily Kos some time ago. Now we know the group has more than one member but for all intents and purposes we will focus on just one. Anonymiss in DC seems like a good place to start and that is what we will use for an example. So in a few easy steps I’ll show you how this is done
1) The first thing we see in the side bar is that she is a Daily Kos fan. Great, we’re on the right track. Plus her blog postings include her adventures of going to see the inauguration of Obama and random light slams against those who are not liberals. Moving on…
2) Dont bother starting at the most recent entries. Go to the earliest. This is something that I learned from my homegirl Mandy Nagy (aka Liberty Chick). Start at the beginning and work your way forward. It gives you a great picture of who you are dealing with and the chances of missing an important detail is greatly reduced. So, lets go to the first month of the blogging, December 2008 entitled “Wrong Number, Anyone?”; this is where we learn her identity and is chock full of clues. Ok, see picture below, this is where you should be.
3) In this post she is aggravated because she has received two voice-mails from people that are complaining about the biased news coverage. She makes it a point to stress that she is not in the news business. As she states, “Keep in mind that my work has NOTHING to do with the Middle East. At all. Zip. Zero. Nor am I a reporter.” One person complains about the covering of the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. The second is a larger clue. So lets take her own words again.
“Fortunately, the next message happens to be from a much more rational guy from some newspaper in Pennsylvania who was wondering if I could help him get some more information about an article “I” ran on the Treasury.”
Now we know that there is an article in December 2008 that has a byline (author’s name) on it that is either the exact same name as hers or at least close enough to mistake her for the author. Do you see how easy this is yet? She then confirms that the callers that found their way to her voice mail were actually looking for the Associated Press.
“And then I call the Associated Press, who tells me that they’re really sorry, but people must be misdialing my number, which is similar to the number for the Business Desk.”
And then again she confirms it. She returns the call to one gentleman and tells him:
“I manage to say ‘Hi, I just wanted to let you know that you called and left me a message about an Associated Press article yesterday but you had the wrong number.'”
4) She has given us everything. Finding out her name now couldn’t be easier. At this point you swing over to Google and look for Associated Press articles from December 2008 with a female author. You will find the article on the Palestinian conflict as well as the article on the Treasury. Go ahead and check, I’ll wait. Ok are you back? Got the name? Great, now enter that name into Google and see if there is another person with the same name in Washington D.C. Well I’ll be damned, there are only two people in the country with this name and yes, one is actually in DC while the AP writer just has a DC number.
Great Job! You just unmasked an “Anonymiss” No hacking needed. Now you know her name and where she works. You used information that she freely provided. Bonus: Afterwards you can check out their friends and see what they are saying. Heyyyy, wait a minute, they actually tweeted a picture of her with the caption? “Not so anonymous now are ya?” Yes they did.
(L) Carrie Clark, (R) Anonymiss in DC
PS-if that blog posting goes away it is in the Freeze Page Data Base and can be viewed HERE
END NOTE REGARDING THE REAL ANONYMOUS AND ANONYMISS: I am not targeting any real member of Anon or an of those who are the real Anonymiss. I am targeting the political hacks, the paid political operatives, who were such cowards that they decided to use illegal means to intimidate their political opponents and used YOUR good name to hide behind. I am talking about people like Neal Rauhauser of Progressive PST. New fags were the cancer that was killing /b. Rauhauser is just one example of the poison that is killing ANON. Ask him yourself and he’ll just attempt to Triforce so he can prove that he is a legit. The Anonymiss of the Daily Kos are not legit; Ditto on the other ANONS teamed up with Daily Kos. The sharp anons are picked up on his fake profiles and his lame attempts to co-opt Anon and labeled him as COINTELPRO and called him out. Congrats, you were spot on.
Ameristroika 