I have been writing and preaching about Social network information harvesting and why it is a bad thing (Check out the post here). I recently stumbled upon something, which is, publicly known though, but still worth mentioning. The mentioned “something” is a very good example of why too much information about one’s self is never a good idea.
I was having some fun with Riddler the other day. For those who do not know what Riddler is, well it is F-Secure’s search engine for web domains and much more. Unlike Shodan where all ports are scanned and then the headers are saved in a database, Riddler can be used to query about specific domains and subdomains and get some very very interesting information. So, as I was saying, that I was having fun with Riddler and I stumbled upon a strange subdomain of
The ICWATCH, contains public database of mainly LinkedIn profiles of people in the United States government. Though the website is publicly known. It was quite astonishing to see how much information people have posted on their Linkedin accounts. It makes sense if someone is in sales or normal private sector job, but giving so much information and revealing what the person does, for intelligence community is, well not advised, in my opinion.
Back to the point, open-source intelligence (OSINT) is completely legal and any person/agency can easily gather information about anyone without committing a crime. I usually talk about advertisers, malicious hackers, social engineers etc, who use this to take advantage of the information collected and harm innocent users. People should keep in mind that tracking people across multiple social networking platforms is a trivial job nowadays, for a skilled hacker.
It is very important, not to disclose personal information on the internet. Especially social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, etc. Sharing personal stuff is never a bad thing, but people should be smart about what they share. If you are working for the government, there is no need of writing everything about what you do, on your Linkedin profile.
Peace!