"ICQ-traitor." The role of ICQ in competitive intelligence.
Author: Yuschuk Evgeny Leonidovich
One of the advantages of the Internet is the ultra-fast transfer of information to any distance.
The need for a cheap and fast way to transfer information was always the most advanced means of solving a problem were used to solve this problem. First developed mail. Then email. In 1999, ICQ was added to them - the well-known "Internet pager", which many affectionately called "Asya" or "ICQ". The company Mirabilis, which provided this service, offered people a quick connection with the ability to store messages on the company's server in the absence of the recipient on the Internet, and all this is free of charge. In addition to sending text messages, ICQ also allows you to transfer files (this creates threats to information security, but information security is beyond the scope of this article).
')
As usual in such cases, people are so accustomed to a new form of communication that they no longer treat it critically. ICQ has become a familiar subject of everyday life, to which many do not pay attention at all, and with which no threats are associated. And this opens up very interesting prospects for competitive intelligence.
Some are beginning to spend on the Internet a considerable part of their lives, both at work and on their own initiative. There are more and more such people. Users place ads, participate in discussions of various issues, open websites and blogs. On most of these resources during registration, you can specify the address of ICQ. And people point it out. From this point on, they become fairly easy prey for competitive intelligence, since the number of “ICQ” among the overwhelming majority of people is one for all occasions.
Usually a person believes that if he does not fill out information about himself in the personal data section of ICQ, then he is anonymous. This is not true. I have often managed to create a complete psychological portrait of a person, find his current and past places of work, existing and former businesses, hobbies, telephone numbers and email addresses, friends and acquaintances, former classmates, places to meet this person. And all this - having at the start only an ICQ number. The principle of work in such a search for information is similar to that in ordinary life and is familiar to anyone who was involved in operational work: if in the process of searching there is new information. it is checked separately.
I will describe the algorithm for such a search on the Internet. I will give it on the example of a specific person, but, for ethical reasons, I will not give any figures and specific facts, but only - search queries on the Internet and a description of what is obtained from them. The numbers are replaced by the symbol 'x. 'Queries for Yandex. A description of their transcription for Google can be found in the article “Google without secrets. Operators of Google in practical examples " . For other search engines - in the sections "Help" or "Advanced Search" of these machines. In addition, the description of the request language of Yandex is very well described in the article by Denis (liveuser) "Hostess for a note. Search through Yandex for specialists . "
Before giving a description of the search for information on the ICQ number, I want to say that in most cases this search will not produce results. However, the more a person “lives” in the virtual world, the more his means of communication appear there. Therefore, in my opinion, more people will be able to explore, having at the start only the number of "ICQ".
First of all, look at the ICQ number itself. In most cases, it is nine-digit and represents an unordered set of numbers. However, for some the number consists of six characters. Such numbers play in the virtual world about the same role as the image models of mobile phones in the real world. And their presence in itself characterizes the owner as a person who loves to attract attention to himself with his outward exclusivity. And since only those who spend quite a lot of time on the Internet know about this attitude to six-digit numbers, it will usually be a valid conclusion that the owner of a “beautiful” number “asi”, if not completely migrated to the Internet, is close to that.
1. The ICQ address is entered in the Yandex search bar in both spellings. At the same time, as Denis (liveuser) in the article “Hostess on a note” advises, it is better to enter these numbers in quotes.
Example request for ICQ number xxxxxxxxxxx:
"Xxxxxxxxxx" | "Xxx-xxx-xxx"
Often in the issuance of such a request, in addition to ICQ numbers, completely extraneous data gets into the results. In this case, you may need to modify the request by typing in it the additional words ICQ, “Asya” or “ICQ”
(“Xxxxxxxxxx” | “xxx-xxxx-xxx”) (icq | “asya” | “aska”)
In the case that I took as an example, the following resources were obtained, on which information about the object is located:
* The site of the enterprise on which the object operates
* Service of bookmarks, on which in public access there are bookmarks on resources that the object is interested in
* Dating site on which the object is looking for an acquaintance with a woman
After that, you need to go to each of the received resources and look for additional information there.
In the example on which the article was written, this gave such additional information:
* Mobile phone number of the object
* Business phone numbers
* Business name. On which the object and the address of this company
* E-mail address
* Product range, which is engaged in the enterprise object
2. By phone numbers and email address, a new search is performed.
By phone numbers (phones are recorded in various versions in quotes, through the operator "logical or") requests may look like this:
"Xxxxxxxx" | "Xxx-xxxx" | "Xxx-xx-xx"
"+ 7495" | "+ 7-495-xxx-xxxx" | "(495) xxx-xx-xx" | "+ 7-495-xxx-xx-xx"
By email, the request might look like this:
"Xxxx@mail.ru"
"Xxxx" / + 1 + mail / + 1 + en
Separately, a search is conducted on the nickname (that part of the email address, which is located to the left of the "dog"). In some cases, it helps to identify email addresses on free mail services. Many people give the same nickname in their work email and free. However, they unreasonably believe that they retain their anonymity. True. This is only possible if the nickname is unique enough.
The result is the following data.
* Last name, first name of the object
* Surnames, names, patronymic names of his employees
* Company staff structure
* Partners in Russia and abroad - in the CIS countries
* Price bases in which the facility enterprise places its advertising information
* Bulletin boards on which the facility enterprise places its information
* Places of active recreation of the object in clubs ("parties") according to interests. With an indication of the schedule and topics of meetings of participants - past and future.
* The problems of the object and its family members with health and information about how these problems were solved.
* Numerous photos of the object in an informal setting.
3. Using the link operator, the site of the object is checked. This operator shows who refers to the site from the outside (an example is given for the arbitrarily taken site www.abcd.ru ). An asterisk after the site name means that we are satisfied with the link to any page on this site.
Request: link = " www.abcd.ru *" (lately it works only for Yandex blogs, and not for the main issue)
The result is the following data.
* Blog of the object (there are no numbers in the blog - neither phones, nor icq, but the site address was indicated and due to this it was revealed when searching for external links to the site)
* More than a hundred advertising billboards, which, when analyzed, gave an almost complete picture of the past and the current state of the object's business.
* Resumes of former and current employees of the facility who are looking for work.
* Personal pages of the facility staff, giving an idea of ​​the internal relationships in the team at the facility.
4. The site is verified using the Whois service.
www.zoneedit.com/whois.html
This service provides information on where the server is located that provides the hosting site of the object, and when the term of payment for the domain name expires.
Thus, it is clear that if a person uses the Internet actively, then even having only his ICQ number, you can get enough information to plan an approach to a person in order to get the necessary information, and in some cases to find materials that compromise the object. .
There are a few more points related to ICQ that a competitive intelligence specialist should pay attention to.
1. When communicating by “ICQ”, there is an opportunity to see the ip-address of the interlocutor. This feature does not always work, but quite often. Therefore, experts who were engaged in operational activities, often choose "ICQ" for the first contact. At the same time, they usually register their number specifically for this communication, so that he does not have a past, but they carefully study the interlocutor.
2. Start a new number “ICQ” - a minute thing. Therefore, it is often not possible to obtain any information about a person by the ICQ number, even if his old number is strongly “illuminated” - it is simply not possible to link him with this old number.
3. Many people will fill out user information. They always and everywhere fill it. Moreover, in addition to information about the real name and date of birth of the person, in “ICQ” it is provided to fill in such fields as “Interests” and “Work”. Such people are a godsend for a competitive intelligence specialist. Here, for example, the words of one of the specialists of competitive intelligence. having operational experience: “The search for a potential development object on ICQ is interesting (in my case, QIP). In the add / find users function, in the global catalog tab, in the“ Key.word ”window, enter ... let's say„ marketing “. Voila 20 people with nicknames, with ICQ, and a sea of ​​interesting information. "
4. Some people cannot drop their ICQ number and value it very much. Usually this is a number that has existed for a long time and for which many contacts are “tied up” For some, the entire customer base is “tied” to this number.
5. There are situations when the number of "ICQ" is stolen. Often this is done using a Trojan program, which itself sends a message asking to accept the file and open it. As a person receives a message from his friend, he often falls into the trap. The password is sent by e-mail to the new owner and after that it is difficult to understand where the old owner of the number left traces, and where the new one is.
6. There are cases of direct misinformation, when in the messages the ICQ numbers of another person are deliberately indicated - for example, to compromise him.
7. Sometimes a nickname chosen by a person for “ICQ” can tell a lot about him. This is not a very reliable sign, but nevertheless it must be borne in mind.
"Sorry, this is not for you ...".
Experienced ICQ users note that quite often people, when communicating with several interlocutors, are at the same time mistaken with the windows in which they respond. As a result, the answer goes to the one to whom it was intended. This situation occurs so regularly that it does not cause any surprise to users. Therefore, a specialist in competitive intelligence when communicating with an interlocutor on ICQ can apply such a technique as stuffing information with the following: “Sorry. That's not for you". Not in all countries such a device is ethical, but in all countries it is possible to become its victim. therefore, we must not forget about this possibility.
"Happy Birthday! ".
Approaches to the object when using ICQ can sometimes look quite unusual. One of the entrepreneurs, the owner of a fairly well-known business, after reading the first version of this article, cited an example (asking not to be named): “Happy birthday on ICQ is congratulated by a completely unfamiliar girl. I ask how I found it. He says that there was no one to communicate with, in the search she set the conditions that our city and DR are today. She found three people and knocked me first. I did not immediately banned (it is still nice when they congratulate). We talked, and began to communicate on abstract topics. So for more than two years sometimes asyatsya. And even the thought does not arise, will meet in real ”.
How to protect yourself?
It is enough to use different ICQ numbers for different purposes. Just as mobile, home and work phone numbers give different people and few know them all.
There are programs that allow you to run several ICQ numbers on your computer at once. One of these programs, qip (http://qip.ru/), which, in addition to the possibility of running several “asek” at the same time, also does not burden the user with advertising, significantly saving him traffic.
In addition, it is advisable not to add to the contact list of people who ask for this via ICQ (“knocking on ICQ” is a term arising from the fact that a request to contact the standard is accompanied by a sound like a knock on the door).
I thank Igor Stenin from Ekaterinburg and a member of the Ice Scout Forum for advice and additional information. which they gave me during the preparation of this article.
One of the advantages of the Internet is the ultra-fast transfer of information to any distance.
The need for a cheap and fast way to transfer information was always the most advanced means of solving a problem were used to solve this problem. First developed mail. Then email. In 1999, ICQ was added to them - the well-known "Internet pager", which many affectionately called "Asya" or "ICQ". The company Mirabilis, which provided this service, offered people a quick connection with the ability to store messages on the company's server in the absence of the recipient on the Internet, and all this is free of charge. In addition to sending text messages, ICQ also allows you to transfer files (this creates threats to information security, but information security is beyond the scope of this article).
')
As usual in such cases, people are so accustomed to a new form of communication that they no longer treat it critically. ICQ has become a familiar subject of everyday life, to which many do not pay attention at all, and with which no threats are associated. And this opens up very interesting prospects for competitive intelligence.
Some are beginning to spend on the Internet a considerable part of their lives, both at work and on their own initiative. There are more and more such people. Users place ads, participate in discussions of various issues, open websites and blogs. On most of these resources during registration, you can specify the address of ICQ. And people point it out. From this point on, they become fairly easy prey for competitive intelligence, since the number of “ICQ” among the overwhelming majority of people is one for all occasions.
Usually a person believes that if he does not fill out information about himself in the personal data section of ICQ, then he is anonymous. This is not true. I have often managed to create a complete psychological portrait of a person, find his current and past places of work, existing and former businesses, hobbies, telephone numbers and email addresses, friends and acquaintances, former classmates, places to meet this person. And all this - having at the start only an ICQ number. The principle of work in such a search for information is similar to that in ordinary life and is familiar to anyone who was involved in operational work: if in the process of searching there is new information. it is checked separately.
I will describe the algorithm for such a search on the Internet. I will give it on the example of a specific person, but, for ethical reasons, I will not give any figures and specific facts, but only - search queries on the Internet and a description of what is obtained from them. The numbers are replaced by the symbol 'x. 'Queries for Yandex. A description of their transcription for Google can be found in the article “Google without secrets. Operators of Google in practical examples " . For other search engines - in the sections "Help" or "Advanced Search" of these machines. In addition, the description of the request language of Yandex is very well described in the article by Denis (liveuser) "Hostess for a note. Search through Yandex for specialists . "
Before giving a description of the search for information on the ICQ number, I want to say that in most cases this search will not produce results. However, the more a person “lives” in the virtual world, the more his means of communication appear there. Therefore, in my opinion, more people will be able to explore, having at the start only the number of "ICQ".
First of all, look at the ICQ number itself. In most cases, it is nine-digit and represents an unordered set of numbers. However, for some the number consists of six characters. Such numbers play in the virtual world about the same role as the image models of mobile phones in the real world. And their presence in itself characterizes the owner as a person who loves to attract attention to himself with his outward exclusivity. And since only those who spend quite a lot of time on the Internet know about this attitude to six-digit numbers, it will usually be a valid conclusion that the owner of a “beautiful” number “asi”, if not completely migrated to the Internet, is close to that.
1. The ICQ address is entered in the Yandex search bar in both spellings. At the same time, as Denis (liveuser) in the article “Hostess on a note” advises, it is better to enter these numbers in quotes.
Example request for ICQ number xxxxxxxxxxx:
"Xxxxxxxxxx" | "Xxx-xxx-xxx"
Often in the issuance of such a request, in addition to ICQ numbers, completely extraneous data gets into the results. In this case, you may need to modify the request by typing in it the additional words ICQ, “Asya” or “ICQ”
(“Xxxxxxxxxx” | “xxx-xxxx-xxx”) (icq | “asya” | “aska”)
In the case that I took as an example, the following resources were obtained, on which information about the object is located:
* The site of the enterprise on which the object operates
* Service of bookmarks, on which in public access there are bookmarks on resources that the object is interested in
* Dating site on which the object is looking for an acquaintance with a woman
After that, you need to go to each of the received resources and look for additional information there.
In the example on which the article was written, this gave such additional information:
* Mobile phone number of the object
* Business phone numbers
* Business name. On which the object and the address of this company
* E-mail address
* Product range, which is engaged in the enterprise object
2. By phone numbers and email address, a new search is performed.
By phone numbers (phones are recorded in various versions in quotes, through the operator "logical or") requests may look like this:
"Xxxxxxxx" | "Xxx-xxxx" | "Xxx-xx-xx"
"+ 7495" | "+ 7-495-xxx-xxxx" | "(495) xxx-xx-xx" | "+ 7-495-xxx-xx-xx"
By email, the request might look like this:
"Xxxx@mail.ru"
"Xxxx" / + 1 + mail / + 1 + en
Separately, a search is conducted on the nickname (that part of the email address, which is located to the left of the "dog"). In some cases, it helps to identify email addresses on free mail services. Many people give the same nickname in their work email and free. However, they unreasonably believe that they retain their anonymity. True. This is only possible if the nickname is unique enough.
The result is the following data.
* Last name, first name of the object
* Surnames, names, patronymic names of his employees
* Company staff structure
* Partners in Russia and abroad - in the CIS countries
* Price bases in which the facility enterprise places its advertising information
* Bulletin boards on which the facility enterprise places its information
* Places of active recreation of the object in clubs ("parties") according to interests. With an indication of the schedule and topics of meetings of participants - past and future.
* The problems of the object and its family members with health and information about how these problems were solved.
* Numerous photos of the object in an informal setting.
3. Using the link operator, the site of the object is checked. This operator shows who refers to the site from the outside (an example is given for the arbitrarily taken site www.abcd.ru ). An asterisk after the site name means that we are satisfied with the link to any page on this site.
Request: link = " www.abcd.ru *" (lately it works only for Yandex blogs, and not for the main issue)
The result is the following data.
* Blog of the object (there are no numbers in the blog - neither phones, nor icq, but the site address was indicated and due to this it was revealed when searching for external links to the site)
* More than a hundred advertising billboards, which, when analyzed, gave an almost complete picture of the past and the current state of the object's business.
* Resumes of former and current employees of the facility who are looking for work.
* Personal pages of the facility staff, giving an idea of ​​the internal relationships in the team at the facility.
4. The site is verified using the Whois service.
www.zoneedit.com/whois.html
This service provides information on where the server is located that provides the hosting site of the object, and when the term of payment for the domain name expires.
Thus, it is clear that if a person uses the Internet actively, then even having only his ICQ number, you can get enough information to plan an approach to a person in order to get the necessary information, and in some cases to find materials that compromise the object. .
There are a few more points related to ICQ that a competitive intelligence specialist should pay attention to.
1. When communicating by “ICQ”, there is an opportunity to see the ip-address of the interlocutor. This feature does not always work, but quite often. Therefore, experts who were engaged in operational activities, often choose "ICQ" for the first contact. At the same time, they usually register their number specifically for this communication, so that he does not have a past, but they carefully study the interlocutor.
2. Start a new number “ICQ” - a minute thing. Therefore, it is often not possible to obtain any information about a person by the ICQ number, even if his old number is strongly “illuminated” - it is simply not possible to link him with this old number.
3. Many people will fill out user information. They always and everywhere fill it. Moreover, in addition to information about the real name and date of birth of the person, in “ICQ” it is provided to fill in such fields as “Interests” and “Work”. Such people are a godsend for a competitive intelligence specialist. Here, for example, the words of one of the specialists of competitive intelligence. having operational experience: “The search for a potential development object on ICQ is interesting (in my case, QIP). In the add / find users function, in the global catalog tab, in the“ Key.word ”window, enter ... let's say„ marketing “. Voila 20 people with nicknames, with ICQ, and a sea of ​​interesting information. "
4. Some people cannot drop their ICQ number and value it very much. Usually this is a number that has existed for a long time and for which many contacts are “tied up” For some, the entire customer base is “tied” to this number.
5. There are situations when the number of "ICQ" is stolen. Often this is done using a Trojan program, which itself sends a message asking to accept the file and open it. As a person receives a message from his friend, he often falls into the trap. The password is sent by e-mail to the new owner and after that it is difficult to understand where the old owner of the number left traces, and where the new one is.
6. There are cases of direct misinformation, when in the messages the ICQ numbers of another person are deliberately indicated - for example, to compromise him.
7. Sometimes a nickname chosen by a person for “ICQ” can tell a lot about him. This is not a very reliable sign, but nevertheless it must be borne in mind.
"Sorry, this is not for you ...".
Experienced ICQ users note that quite often people, when communicating with several interlocutors, are at the same time mistaken with the windows in which they respond. As a result, the answer goes to the one to whom it was intended. This situation occurs so regularly that it does not cause any surprise to users. Therefore, a specialist in competitive intelligence when communicating with an interlocutor on ICQ can apply such a technique as stuffing information with the following: “Sorry. That's not for you". Not in all countries such a device is ethical, but in all countries it is possible to become its victim. therefore, we must not forget about this possibility.
"Happy Birthday! ".
Approaches to the object when using ICQ can sometimes look quite unusual. One of the entrepreneurs, the owner of a fairly well-known business, after reading the first version of this article, cited an example (asking not to be named): “Happy birthday on ICQ is congratulated by a completely unfamiliar girl. I ask how I found it. He says that there was no one to communicate with, in the search she set the conditions that our city and DR are today. She found three people and knocked me first. I did not immediately banned (it is still nice when they congratulate). We talked, and began to communicate on abstract topics. So for more than two years sometimes asyatsya. And even the thought does not arise, will meet in real ”.
How to protect yourself?
It is enough to use different ICQ numbers for different purposes. Just as mobile, home and work phone numbers give different people and few know them all.
There are programs that allow you to run several ICQ numbers on your computer at once. One of these programs, qip (http://qip.ru/), which, in addition to the possibility of running several “asek” at the same time, also does not burden the user with advertising, significantly saving him traffic.
In addition, it is advisable not to add to the contact list of people who ask for this via ICQ (“knocking on ICQ” is a term arising from the fact that a request to contact the standard is accompanied by a sound like a knock on the door).
I thank Igor Stenin from Ekaterinburg and a member of the Ice Scout Forum for advice and additional information. which they gave me during the preparation of this article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/52648/
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