A Part of Previous -- The Blog Series Tease

*An Excerpt from “The Turtle’s Diary”

Once upon a time.

I knew this woman who was extremely protective of her online identity.  As a teaser for the upcoming series that I promised on protecting oneself while being an active online social nudist (and also since everyone seems to be SUPER interested in how to discover someone’s real name online), I’ve decided to use this real life example of this woman I know/knew or however it should be phrased... hey, we’ve kind of lost touch over the years and what can I say?  Anyway, I have to be careful of my use of descriptors here because she is known by others in our community and would have no problem recognizing herself in this piece if she were to read it.  We aren’t in the same social circles anymore (plus the story dates back a couple of years) but still, let me be careful while still using this story as an example.

I’m always harping on people about being careless in some of the postings they make in revealing too much information.  Personal information that they really had no intention of leaving behind.  As far as people go, sometimes we forget that a photo might include something scotch taped to a mirror or the fridge might have our kid’s picture with something from the school.  How dangerous is that?  Simple things we overlook thinking to ourselves, “Oh well, I can’t live in a complete bubble...” and you’re right.  We can’t.  But we can try to be more careful in what we leave behind as we try to be well received in our various social media circles.

At the time, it was important for this woman that I knew to protect her identity due to personal reasons but in general, being identified was a major concern to her.  She and I had discussed many times that I would help keep her safe should she ever question a friend request she received.  And I did do many background checks on different people for her.  Now I myself didn’t know her real name at the time – I thought I did by the appearance of it – it looked like a real name but nope... fooled me all while I was trying to protect her.  Too funny now that I think back on it.

So this woman posted a photo to a general nudist group in which everyone has known one another for quite some time but, nonetheless, there are always new folks coming on board whom we do not know.  The photo showed partial numbers on a front porch and I felt it exposed too much so I immediately sent a private message to alert this friend.  It’s now been so long ago that I don’t remember what led to what as far as me showing her how quick and easy it is to find someone with the tiniest bit of information.  I don’t know if maybe she thought to herself that because she used an alias name she would be safe or what the reason was that I ended up showing her what came up after only an hour or two of hunt and peck on the Internet.

In all fairness to this woman, let me be upfront and tell you what she told me regarding me discovering her real name; she claimed afterward that she sent me a friend request in Facebook that would have revealed her real name to me.  In all fairness to myself, let me be upfront and say that there are about 25 people on my current MeWe Contact List that know when my Facebook account was closed.  Some were even sent dated emails from me inviting them to join me at MeWe after the account had already been deleted and people were wondering what happened and where I had gone.  Now I’m not denying that this woman may have sent something to somebody but... I closed pretty much anything and everything remotely related to Facebook, e.g., Instagram, about 3 months before I ever knew this woman.

That said, let me continue.  So this woman posted a photo with partial numbers showing on the front porch.  Let me lay out quickly how easy it was (remember this is only a teaser to the upcoming blog series – and omg, it’s still frigging too long).  Here’s where I diverge a little.  Did you ever stop to think about how cities were developed over the years?  Most cities are sort of built in big circles around the old center city.  First, there’s the old city which then has a circle of (depending on region) old Craftsman styled homes that began in the last years of the 19th century and remained popular through the 1930’s.  This is of course followed by a big circle of mid-century homes built in the 1950’s.  Then there becomes this weird kind of mixture of home styles within that 1950’s time period when someone decided that adding gingerbread trim might be a nice feature.  Anyway, you know where I’m going with this – right?

First I focused in on the style of home.  It’s funny how we all think we live in a big city and... How on earth could anyone identify me with only some of the house numbers appearing on my house?  Let me just say that I focused on the style of home and found the city circle that matched.  I got my search down to two streets that contained that same set of number ranges which provided me with 5 or 6 Google Earth (or whatever that thing is called) images of houses.  Okay... not bad for only an hour of looking, right?  Now I had to find which one has a front porch that looks the same as the one in the photo that was posted.  Found it; bingo – pay dirt!  So I thought.

Wow, the name on the house from public records (the assessor’s records for that county) doesn’t match the person that I know.  The name’s not even close.  Now how can that be?  I must not be as good a gumshoeing as I thought.  Since I’m never wrong, I kept digging.  Remember I said above that this woman was using a profile name that was not her real name however I didn’t know it at the time so I started piling in the name searches of the person’s name that I thought I knew – at least any thing that would pull up anything different.  Turns out her name was not real but that’s neither here nor there, she has her reasons and I completely understand them; after I knew her situation.

So I started entering the name I knew into Google.  What I’m going to reveal here is more than the woman herself knows that I did to come up with what I did.  Anyway, the name search kept coming up with some woman also not related to the house that I had narrowed down.  I kept getting some other woman who was related to something like poetry (I think).  She had a recognized name in her own right and was/is married to someone also with name recognition.  This couple were heavily involved in horse racing and even had a horse that had been entered in national races.  This is NOT the same woman that I know.

Okay, so now someone has really peaked my interest just because.  No, really – just because!  I hate it when I’m presented with a puzzle – I just have to solve it.  Anyway, you remember that this is just a teaser for the upcoming blog series, right?  And no, I’m not going to just leave you here and say, “The end.”  LOL!  So keep reading, it’s really not that much further to the end of this one anyway.

So, I go into hyper drive when confronted with a challenge and let’s just say I only needed to spend about another hour to finish the puzzle.  Here’s what I did, I didn’t give up on only finding that other woman with the horse.  My upcoming blog series will teach you how to do some of the things I did (and do) to dig deeper.  Did you know that you can even pull up someone’s college thesis and figure out most likely their profession?  Yep, with simple searches that include operators such as:  UCLA **** @ UCLA.edu where the **** is the name you are searching.  Viola, guess what you come up with?  Doctor Soandso works on the identification and treatment of severe mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), with additional interest in...

How simple is that?  Well, that’s not the situation with my woman friend.  Not exactly but its close.  I did an extended search sort of like what I mentioned above but I pulled up a public announcement that she sent from her phone to one of the establishments where she worked.  Yep, her phone was somehow tied into an email account linked somehow to the profile name she was using.  This email not only revealed the link between her real name and her profile name but then... match that up with a certain Google image of a certain car near a certain possible place of employment that matches the make and model of a certain car in the Google Earth image of that house that was in a certain style neighborhood.  And, you’d be amazed at what you can pull up from your local DMV website.

Everybody has their own story to tell.  More of mine will be coming up in further additions that are more than just a tease.  Stay tuned and stay naked my friends!

*The Turtle’s Diary is a collection of thoughts, insights and stories based on a turtle’s true life experiences – gained by the misguided trust in others.

Final Edit, 12-18-2018 - 09:06 am PST