Comments on: Twitter Porn Names Scam

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:48:02 +0000

Mr RFD Big Stuff sounds great for a bloke though!

By: Kim Woodbridge

Kim Woodbridge — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:54:22 +0000

Hmm … my first pet was named Mr. Big Stuff and we didn’t have a street name. It was so rural that it was an RFD address – rural free delivery. Mr Big Stuff definitely doesn’t work for a woman.

Since so many women keep their own names now, won’t mother’s maiden name become useless?

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:44:10 +0000

Seems like PCworld and Mashable have finally caught on and published their own take on this “scam”. Like Robin said, it’s a useless scam really, although it could have potential. I suspect it’s just a twitter game that went viral, no one will actually benefit from it other than twitter who will be able to show another big spike in interest when they talk to future advertisers and investors.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:30:41 +0000

@Robin You’re right. Although I bet I could dig around and find out where you actually lived if I really wanted to. But, any tiny nugget of information can and will be useful to a scammer. They could focus on batches of ten tweeps say, visit their websites sites, their facebook pages, their flickr accounts…etc etc and find all kinds of details and minutiae that might ultimately give them have enough information to open a simple account on a website, get a spoofed email address or something and then work their way up to opening a full identity theft and empty your bank account…ever read Red Paperclip?

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:21:09 +0000

Yuri, I suspect this was initially done for fun, but now that I’ve mentioned it could be a scam, someone will start datamining those tweets you can bet…

By: Yuri Alkin

Yuri Alkin — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:25:27 +0000

Great catch. Behavior-based security attacks have been tried before on Facebook and other places, but Twitter makes it way easier, when it comes to scale, reach and data mining. I think like any other scam-like Twitter activity this is only a preview for thisngs to come.

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:40:39 +0000

I think this is a bit of a stretch. Almost no street names are unusual enough to provide any information about where a person was born. (Even given the big assumption that the street would be in the person’s birthplace.) Without city and state information it would be virtually impossible to find what street the person was referring to.

When you add to that the fact that you don’t have the street number or date information I don’t see anyone could make any use of the information.

I can see how something like this might be used to lure someone into revealing something useful face to face, if you already know their basic information: name, current address, current phone number, age. But I don’t see how a pornname could “easily” be used for a scam. Even if the person’s twitter ID is their real name and their bio tells what city they live in now, you’re very far away from getting into the person’s account in an unknown bank.

Are there any examples of anyone actually using information gained from a pornname to pull off a scam?

Here’s the name of a real street that I really lived on as a kid: South 4th Avenue. Where was I living?