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Comment by bentcorner | Hacker News Reader

All it takes is just once. I saw a reddit comment that documented how one user determined the real-life identity of another user who was attempting to stay anonymous. The slip up? Two photos posted by the user under two different accounts shared the same background, and the user posted using both accounts in the same comment thread.

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I dox'd a guy once knowing only the day that he earned his pilot license and the state he lived in. (FAA publishes a database that contains that info).

Let's face it, at most one if your identities can be tied to your actual real-world activities. Otherwise people can find enough correlations to out you. Witness JK Rowling's new book.

Meh, you lot will never figure out my real world identity!

If only I knew your phone number ...

I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

JK Rowling's dox was a result of a member of the publishing house's solicitors telling his wife, who then told a close friend who provided the initial leak on twitter, which gave the newspaper breaking the story enough to go on to start drawing those conclusions.

Found the BBC story about this, if you're interested. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23366660

For me it was a first name (unusual) and two schools attended (this in the days when universities were much more liberal with posting their student directories.

The internet is full of smart individuals with an eye for detail.

Lesson learned, if trying to stay anonymous only use cat photos as profile pictures found on google images.

Different cat photos!

Unless we all standardize on the same cat photo. officialcatavatar.com anyone?

Limecat. Been around for ages, ready for battle.

... from the most generic search term you can imagine.

The lesson is that your ability to remain anonymous drops in almost direct proportion to the quantity of content you make available.

A careful user might have a more-shallow slope; they might be able to post more photos, if they're carefully scrubbing EXIF and being mindful of spillage (unintentional details in the frame). But every single posted photo is still inexorably eating away at their potential to remain anonymous.

After publishing the first picture, you might have to throw away the camera... You never know how much unique is the fingerprint of the camera. Might be very useful to crawl profiles to map photos and screen names.

You wouldn't have to throw it away, just label it with the identity that posts photos from it.

...and not use that camera for anything other than posts made with that identity.

I happen to know where the bad pixels are in one of my digital cameras. Not sure of the other.

Even when I take photos of interesting stuff, I'll find an alternate source rather than post mine.

Damnit, you're on to me, aren't you.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ndvh3/serious_wh...

ahh yes, the creepy gone wild stalker story

What's the full story?

It's funny, i so rarely browse reddit, but i somehow happened upon this story this week - i guess it came up in some kind of mega "what are you most ashamed of" thread or somesuch. Ultimately it was as GP described; a redditor researched one of 'gone wild' big 'stars', poured through her history ,ultimately found another reddit account of a selfie shot that had the same background as the 'gone wild' shot so concluded they were the same or friends, researched back that history and ultimately found her real identity.

Here's a link to it: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ndvh3/serious_wh...

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