The Internet Sleuth Game

[DIzzIE]

The Internet Sleuth Game

Every image and every word can be traced back to you. Seemingly minuscule nuggets of data can be mined from anything that's placed online, and combined to create a complete profile of you. Advertisers know this. Governments know this. Your adversaries know this.

So in order to hopefully get you to start paying attention to details, let's play a game. An Internet Sleuth game where, whenever you have some time to kill, you can pretend to be, well, an Internet sleuth :P.

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The first challenge:

Where did the author of this resume cover letter eat lunch a couple weeks ago? (Minimal answer should include city/name of restaurant).
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(Yes, in theory there is more than one answer, though there is one prominent one)

There will of course be some caveats and potential uncertainties and therefore also some assumptions, but we'll discuss those after the challenge is over.

No prerequisite knowledge is required and neither are any special tools needed to solve the challenge, only a web browser. We'll see how this goes (too easy, too hard, etc...) and go from there. The winner gets to pick the next challenge (with the rules again being that no special know-how is required and that the sleuthing subject is chosen at random, i.e. not your friend or someone you want to dig up dirt on).

Have fun .

[Ventanator]

Pedro Ruiz
West Palm Beach Florida:
WhitePages.com - Online Directory Assistance
He is somewhere between 25-30, so he is, I think anyway, probably number one on this list.

If I had more time, I could mail them all with something, asking for a multimedia designer obviously, and hopefully the Pedro I'm looking for would mail back. If not, call them all. If Pedro isn't one of the ones with a phone number, then I'll have him narrowed down. When that happens, if I have to, I'll friend him on facebook and see if there is more info...if not, I'll track him down. But this is just a game, so the white pages works for me.

As far as to what restraunt he ate at a few weeks ago, try these:
most popular restaurants in West Palm Beach Florida - Google Maps

Sorry that my links suck, but I'm halfway new here...anyway, those are the more popular ones in poor lil Pedro's area. Of course, as a business man, he probably stops at places like McDonalds and Burger King as well. With a little more effort, it wouldn't be that hard. It started at 5:37, it's now 5:46 and I know all of that about Pedro, plus what schools he went to, where he works, his job history, his taste in fashion, and I've viewed a few of his YouTube vids.

I guess that's what you wanted?

Edit:
I just noticed that this resume was typed up in 2002, when Pedro was still in high school...wait, it says he worked as a video editor then. He must have went to a trade-school type class for multimedia designing...

[ThisDay]

next challenge?

[DIzzIE]

Someone suggested a challenge today, and whilst it's a bit too simple to qualify as a formal challenge, it's the best (and pretty much only) suggestion I've heard (remember winners are supposed to be the ones to propose subsequent challenges), so we'll call this an interim practice challenge:


Practice Challenge #1:
What brand of beer is this?

[Hetfield]

so glad i'm not on a public computer.

[DIzzIE]

If anyone needs it, here's a version of the image with a couple clues highlighted.

[timcarroll]

Dizzie do you make these? This is a pretty cool idea. You should make a site devoted to stuff like this.

[Hetfield]

The beer is Baltica. Please tell me she's over 18!

[S7@1T3D]

I dont think she is Het.......

[Hetfield]

Oh dear, thats bad. In the nicest possible way, please don't do that again, I dont wanna have the same expierience as the girl, in prison.

Okay, before anybody points this out, The reason I have not attempted to issue another challenge is because Dizzie pointed out that this was a very simple easy "Practice" challenge, and I feel that it was a little easy to qualify and give me that power.

Dizzie if you would like me to issue a challenge, just mention and I will have a go.

[DIzzIE]

Go for it, nice job on finding the last one btw (specifically it's a Baltika Classic No.3).

Just remember the three main guiding principles: the 'subject' of the challenge has to be chosen at random (i.e. not anyone or anything you know or want to dig up information on), the challenge shouldn't require any special skills (i.e. everything should be publicly available, no need to 'crack' any passwords or anything like that), and the challenge must have an answer (i.e. you should have completed the challenge yourself prior to posting it).