Know What Information Is Available

Know What Information Is Available About You: If you have Google yourself, you have learned firsthand what is available about you online, but you probably missed a quite a bit.

If you have not done so already, try Googling yourself: See what types of information are available, and note that the level of detail that can be found.

Note whether any of the information give clues about your background, passwords, family, or anything else that can be used to build a picture of who you are.

Sites that may contain personal information include these:

• Spokeo
• Facebook
• Myspace
• LinkedIn
• Intellius
• ZabaSearch
• People Search
• Shodan

There are tools that reveal more about a victim or target than a Google search done. Some companies mine, analyze, and sell this data for a few dollars without regard to who may be requesting the information or how it may ultimately be used.

By combining information from multiple sources using social engineering and Footprinting techniques, you can paint a pretty good picture of an individual, up to and including where they live in many cases.

One of the tools in this list, Intellius, is a great example of how accessible personal information may be For less than $30 per month. You can subscribe to this service and look as many individuals as you desire.

In some cases, your search may yield multiple results (for example, if a person’s last name is Smith or Jackson), but this can easily be addressed by using information from the other sources on this list to narrow the search results.

Using Intellius, I was able to use information from the Facebook and  LinkedIn profiles of friends and family to fine tune the results.