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>A group of private investigators hired by Dateline NBC located McDermott when they noticed a centralized cluster of IP addresses originating near Puerto Vallar
by nommm-nommm 10y ago
>A group of private investigators hired by Dateline NBC located McDermott when they noticed a centralized cluster of IP addresses originating near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, all clicking onto a site dedicated to tracing his whereabouts.
Protip, use a VPN/Tor and incognito mode preferably on someone else's Wifi with a burner laptop you bought from Craigslist with cash while Googling your crimes. I've heard of murder/kidnapping suspects being found out this way as well.
... or really, just resist the urge to Google your crimes.
- celticninja 10y agoIt seems that Google searches do not aid in identifying murderers but once they have been identified Google searches certainly seem to help convict them.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoIt's not a murder but... http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/20/the-long-arm-of-the-google/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/20/the-long-ar... >The cerebral Gundlach also gave investigators a tip for solving the crime. He says that while he was at home in his family room, it dawned on him that thieves would do a Google search using his grandmother’s name to find out more about the paintings and how much they might be worth... Gundlach told the authorities that they should check the Internet to see who might have googled the name Helen Fuchs. He says exactly two such searches were executed: one by him and one by the thieves. That's just from a quick Google. I've heard of criminals becoming suspects from Googling crimes before they become public, it's not that hard to identify an early or frequent Googler in most cases especially if they are logged in.
- celticninja 10y agoVery interesting, although they were lucky it was very niche.
- RyJones 10y agoMSN maps and dialup RADIUS logs put a murderer in prison at one point. It turned out nobody else had printed a map of the area the body was hidden.[0] [0] http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis-maury.htm http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis-maury.htm
- nommm-nommm 10y agoReally interesting story thanks for sharing.
- RyJones 10y agothanks. I worked on the MSN/UUNET RADIUS implementation in the late 90s, so that particular capture has stuck with me
- sombremesa 10y agoOr...you know, just don't keep visiting the website of the people who're trying to track you down? Googling wasn't what got him caught.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI supposed he used Google to find the site that was tracking him. I was using "Google" broadly.