What The Hell AJ?

#anonymity #networking #papertrail #forum #socialnetworking #spiceworks #thanksAJ

This post comes courtesy of a friend of mine A.J. Stringham, owner and operator of www.thanksaj.com.  This is a little post about covering your tracks, and something that caught my eye today on Spiceworks.  Now in this particular instance A.J. is a very active member of the community, everyone knows him, he's either famous or infamous depending on who you ask.  People know his blog, and follow his blog, but something I never thought about came apparent when A.J. dusted off his super sleuth magnifying glass and uncovered a treasure trove of paper trails.  Lets talk.
Every website, every blog, every gaming system, has a way of tracking incoming connections, mainly IP address and the sort.  Now what if a link to a website is posted somewhere else?  Say a forum, or a facebook post?  Every time someone clicks on it, the host website receives a tad bit of information as to how someone found the page.

For example, there is a cryptowall thread on spiceworks with a link to my site.  Every time someone clicks that link, it gets noted by blogger and saved in my dashboard.  I can then venture over to my dashboard and see that, yes this link is being clicked on most frequently on this page, which is quite phenomenal.

Problems only occur, when a link to a website is posted in a private or hidden corner of the internet that has no intentions of being seen by those who aren't members.  This causes ripples that can't be unrippled, in A.J's case he now knows about a hidden corner of the internet that is talking about him, he's getting traffic, but why?  In his case paranoia is acceptable as the title of the link was a bit rash, and seeing as I'm trying not to curse on this blog, I'll leave that to your imagination.

What am I getting at here?  Don't leave a paper trail to your hide out if you truly wish to remain anonymous.  Don't post links to hidden forums, don't share links on private forums, unless you want to be found.  Anonymity is key when it comes to private groups.  Short post, but thought I'd startle AJ with another "what the" link leading to his web page, and hey you get a two post day today, pretty sweet.  And as always, be safe my goblins.

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