Eerie internet communication

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Has anyone ever been in a situation where an internet friend knows your name even though there is no plausible means for them to have discovered it XD Always eerie!

I see you have set your email address in your profile to be visible to everyone on the internet. That may have something to do with it. You might want to change that setting from 'YES' to 'NO'. The default is always 'NO' so you must have made it public yourself at some time.

Thats my stock forum email address which I made specifically for the purpose, my actual name isnt registered to the account. Obviously there's a reason for the seeming clairvoyance but its still a little unnerving XD I think one point thats worth making is that were all probably more visible than we think on the internet and theres probably a digital trail leading to each of our facebook accounts...

There is no trail to my facebook account, I haven't got one! If you've got a fb account and don't use any advert blocking, script blocking and accept all cookies thrown at you, then all websites track you and know where you've been, who you are, where you live and what you're likely to buy. Even if you take all these precautions they can still track your computer's fingerprint (browser, version, add-ons, operating system etc) I worked for an international company for a while that was involved in this sort of thing and it was shocking what information they knew about everyone in Europe and the Americas. The NSA have got nothing compared to the big boys of data handling. The NSA are only interested in potential terrorists or political adversaries, but the big advertisers and data handlers are interested in everyone who has got a bank account, credit card or 10 cents in their pocket.

I believe you, and that us depressing.

The soundcloud link in your signature has somebody's name very prominently attached to it.* If that is your name, that is how people figure it out. I saw it the instant I clicked on the soundcloud link.

If that's not your name, disregard. (Name not given in this post so that if it is your name, you can remove the link or alter it for privacy).

*I don't mean gabor-k. as seen in the link itself. I mean within the link only visible if clicking on it.

Last edited by Janissy on 15 Sep 2014, 3:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

haha I know that lol its fine its not my given name

They could have reverse searched an image that you also posted on an account connected to your name. Or looked at the hotlink url, sometimes links contain user IDs.

Or they could be someone you know messing with you.

My RL name is linked to my gmail address thanks to my unused google+ account.

Google has a bad reputation for leaking people's real names by linking google accounts. All these big internet companies try to get everyone to form some sort of social network using their services. I use a Yahoo account to send out email ban notifications to problematic members I ban from WP and by default Yahoo wants me to set up a social network with these people... erm... no! Just because I send someone a one-off email doesn't mean I want to be best buddies with them and share my private life with them.

I hardly use my gmail much anyway. I use it for the odd forum registration and that's it.