I’ll do a proof by counterexample. I have no idea how do to that, therefor there is in fact something stopping someone from finding out exactly who you are, which proves the premise to be false. QED mothafucka.
There’s a world of difference between leaving enough info in Public Internet for some rando to find you and needing a search warrant. It’s trivial to check someone’s comment history on reddit for selfies and start looking for landmarks. I’ve always kept a hard divide between anything that has my real name and my shit posting.
Randos on the internet don’t have access to that though. I wasn’t going to get into it, but I also run blockers for those sorts of things as well. The few times I’ve seen targeted ads, they’ve always been way off my actual demograph.
You sure I’m the one acting tough? I’ve simply never shared personal information. I grew up when the idea of putting personal pictures with names online was taught to kids as dangerous. It’s takes effort to doxx yourself and I’ve never done that.
Good you know the basics of protecting your anonymity here’s your medal 🥇
If you think I’m showing how much of a 1337 haxx0r I am by listing some steps to look through people’s posts and shit, you should try reading it as a warning instead.
Something really freaky happened to me back on Reddit. I don’t think I posted anything that was too personally identifiable. About as close as I’ll get is saying that I live in red-county in Colorado and am a Broncos fan. Then one day on a fairly niche gaming subreddit, I mentioned how close something in the game was to a nickname that people called me at work, and said something like “hopefully my coworkers never find out about this in the game or I would never hear the end of it.” Then someone responded, “see you at work on Monday [my first name] ;-)”
I still have no clue how that happened. I went back through every comment I had ever made and not once did I post where I worked or what my first name was. I’d never once told any of my coworkers my reddit user name either. It was a bit of a privacy eye-opener for me to realize that even if I thought I was posting anonymously, someone could still potentially find a way to tie my online persona to me.
Might be worth your time to go to the gaming subreddit on your web browser and then use the development mode of the web browser to inspect all the cookie data.
The company might be putting more information in there than they show on the screen, that could be available to anyone who can do a search on their website for your characters name.
For example, once I was playing World of Warcraft on an alt, and I argued with a tryhard player about being nice to other players. The WoW Armory, when you look up the alt’s name, adds in its cookie/memory the name of all the other characters for that same account (to populate a drop-down selection). So that guy started harassing me on my main character without having never knowing its name.
Was that guy the owner of the wow armory? Because otherwise…
No, he was another player/customer. See below.
how did they get your cookie store inside your browser?
When you pull up a character on the Armory inside of the cookie/memory information was a list of all the other characters for that same account/character. And anyone can pull up any other account characters name on the Armory.
My guess is the list of all the character names for the account was there so if you wanted to switch between one character to another from a drop-down UI object.
My point is developers can leak additional information assuming that users can’t see it because it’s not displayed on the UI, but if somebody goes into the developer mode on the browser they can inspect all the memory/cookie information for that web page.
Finally, this was a long time ago, so who knows if it still works that way today or not. My point of mentioning it was as an anecdote on how additional information can leak in ways we wouldn’t suspect.
The simplest explanation is probably that even though the subreddit was niche, the reason you are on it is connected to your demographics, which you share in common with coworkers, making it more likely for one of them to also be browsing it.
All right prove it.
Post my real name, real home address, and my current location.
There’s nothing stopping you, apparently.
I’ll do a proof by counterexample. I have no idea how do to that, therefor there is in fact something stopping someone from finding out exactly who you are, which proves the premise to be false. QED mothafucka.
Tbh they did say someone, not everyone.
To find you attackers would:
How much have you doxxed yourself through the years?
Then do it. I used the same username reddit. Last time someone tried to prove it, they got the state wrong and I never even tried hiding that.
Naah, I got better stuff to do than snooping at you 🕵️
And I’m not experienced in it, so it would take a lot of time learning the craft. Those series don’t watch themselves you know…
Don’t make claims you can’t back up.
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There’s a world of difference between leaving enough info in Public Internet for some rando to find you and needing a search warrant. It’s trivial to check someone’s comment history on reddit for selfies and start looking for landmarks. I’ve always kept a hard divide between anything that has my real name and my shit posting.
Removed by mod
Randos on the internet don’t have access to that though. I wasn’t going to get into it, but I also run blockers for those sorts of things as well. The few times I’ve seen targeted ads, they’ve always been way off my actual demograph.
Yeah he’s just be a cunt that pretends he doesn’t understand nuance to feel superior. Still plenty of that from reddit here
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Or they may be 12 years old irl.
Don’t ask people to doxx you, you are the one standing in a field during a thunderstorm.
And I can fully back up my claim of having no experience in doxxing.
You are the one that ends up in trouble by acting tough guy, when someone with too much time on their hands posts your details on pastebin.
You sure I’m the one acting tough? I’ve simply never shared personal information. I grew up when the idea of putting personal pictures with names online was taught to kids as dangerous. It’s takes effort to doxx yourself and I’ve never done that.
Removed by mod
Good you know the basics of protecting your anonymity here’s your medal 🥇
If you think I’m showing how much of a 1337 haxx0r I am by listing some steps to look through people’s posts and shit, you should try reading it as a warning instead.
a) That would be in violation of Lemmy.World rules and get instant deleted and banned.
b) It would put the poster in legal trouble.
c) Hello, Snowden, PATRIOT and PRISM.
I totally agree with the third point, but that’s not anyone.
Anyone with a purpose, and money.
Those are some pretty sizeable caveats lol
Something really freaky happened to me back on Reddit. I don’t think I posted anything that was too personally identifiable. About as close as I’ll get is saying that I live in red-county in Colorado and am a Broncos fan. Then one day on a fairly niche gaming subreddit, I mentioned how close something in the game was to a nickname that people called me at work, and said something like “hopefully my coworkers never find out about this in the game or I would never hear the end of it.” Then someone responded, “see you at work on Monday [my first name] ;-)”
I still have no clue how that happened. I went back through every comment I had ever made and not once did I post where I worked or what my first name was. I’d never once told any of my coworkers my reddit user name either. It was a bit of a privacy eye-opener for me to realize that even if I thought I was posting anonymously, someone could still potentially find a way to tie my online persona to me.
Might be worth your time to go to the gaming subreddit on your web browser and then use the development mode of the web browser to inspect all the cookie data.
The company might be putting more information in there than they show on the screen, that could be available to anyone who can do a search on their website for your characters name.
For example, once I was playing World of Warcraft on an alt, and I argued with a tryhard player about being nice to other players. The WoW Armory, when you look up the alt’s name, adds in its cookie/memory the name of all the other characters for that same account (to populate a drop-down selection). So that guy started harassing me on my main character without having never knowing its name.
Was that guy the owner of the wow armory? Because otherwise… how did they get your cookie store inside your browser?
No, he was another player/customer. See below.
When you pull up a character on the Armory inside of the cookie/memory information was a list of all the other characters for that same account/character. And anyone can pull up any other account characters name on the Armory.
My guess is the list of all the character names for the account was there so if you wanted to switch between one character to another from a drop-down UI object.
My point is developers can leak additional information assuming that users can’t see it because it’s not displayed on the UI, but if somebody goes into the developer mode on the browser they can inspect all the memory/cookie information for that web page.
Finally, this was a long time ago, so who knows if it still works that way today or not. My point of mentioning it was as an anecdote on how additional information can leak in ways we wouldn’t suspect.
Most likely scenario is they saw you browsing Reddit at work and saw your username on the screen. Reddit leaves the username out on the main page.
The simplest explanation is probably that even though the subreddit was niche, the reason you are on it is connected to your demographics, which you share in common with coworkers, making it more likely for one of them to also be browsing it.
Real smooth, Philip