After much pressure from relatives, and with great reluctance I joined F/book at the weekend. I cannot possibly use my real name as it is so singular, but my chosen nom de plume identified me to my own relatives. They never had my real name, real date of birth, real location or any other identifer which is user-supplied.

I carefully checked all the security settings and deleted cookies every time I exited.

Today I went back in there on a different computer for a final search for a sisterinlaw who had been nagging me to join. Yet again I failed to find her. While I was hunting around, F/book suggested that I use another search tool, which I clicked upon.

To my horror, another window opened and it said "You also have this yahoo account. Give us permission to look in there for your friends."

F/book had NEVER been told of that Yahoo account of mine. It was obviously NOT the one I had used to register. Furthermore, it is not a Yahoo account which any of my relatives use: it is a back-up work account and rarely used.

If that isn't the creepiest computer experience I've ever had, I can't think of one which beats it. My F/book account has now been deleted. Somehow I doubt that that will stop them spying on me/my computer/s but I've done my best.

And assembled multitudes thought I was paranoid about Facebook and its ilk.
(Not that you are. You just confirmed exactly what my fears were/are. Oh yes, and the cloud is a good thing, says Big Brother.)

I was very (healthily IMO) paranoid about F/book before this.

I already knew that anyone who can see any pictures you put up, can copy them/screen grab them - obviously without your knowledge let alone consent.

I already knew that once you put photos up there, you don't own the copyright any more. They do.

I already knew never to let them into your email account - whichever one you pick to register with.

I already knew that I had to "friend" my own relatives and wait for them to accept the "friend".

What I didn't know, however, apart from this appalling demonstration to me today that they somehow know about my non-F/book Yahoo accounts, was that when you browse for people - relatives in my case - they offer you complete strangers to "friend" who are on your relative's lists. Complete strangers. Never heard of them.

But F/book knows that someone you're searching for, knows them.

Why the F would I want to contact a complete stranger just because a cousin of mine knows him somehow?

The whole place gave me the heebyjeebies. Even closing the account takes some effort - 3 different popup windows, multiple requests for password, AND typing in the random-generated words back to them, and multiple attempts to make you say why. I lacked the nerve to tell them to eff off.

Probably just by reading your cookie file. I bet tacit or any admin here could do the same (if they wanted to).



"Friends of friends" -- in some cases total strangers, in some cases ex-lovers.

What's the big whoop?

There was no F/book cookie, as I have quite clearly said.

I ALWAYS CLEAR COOKIES before and after going to f/book.

Now that you've told me that, Hal, I'll clear cookies everytime I come here, too.

There, just done that before posting this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is a terrible shame to me that people should be so suspicious of any Admin on this, of all sites. Thank you.

I've been thinking about this and reckon that Hal has done this forum a great disservice. He has put into my mind and anyone else who reads this, that the Admins of this forum may, can, and perhaps do

look at member's cookies to examine their browsing activities.

I already know that this forum uses Statcounter or similar, and I have no problem with that: I use it on my own website.

I would have thought that Adminning this forum is hardly a full-time job, given the low traffic. However the seed of doubt has now been planted. Maybe some of the multiple Mods are so underoccupied that they do look at the content of user cookies? Just as F/book may do.

Having said that, I have my browsing history here on this particular Mac. Today was the first time I went to f/book on this Mac. I still don't know how they KNEW of my other Yahoo account but it's scared me enough to make me clear cookies for every single website before AND after going there. (Right now the only cookies enabled are google and this one, which I had to enable in order to log in. I'll clear it when I've finished this post.)

This is Not Good. Thanks, Hal. And I'd appreciate some reassurance from Admin/Mods for what it's worth.

I'm talking about your Yahoo cookies. Did you clear those too?

Anyway, it doesn't have to be the cookie file. I'm no webmaster, but there are probably other avenues by which a website can determine the email identities of its visitors.

At least such would come as no surprise to me.

I've found this and it gives me no comfort whatsoever:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-fixes-cookie-behavior-after-logging-out/4120

I have now proved conclusively that F/book keeps your cookies for Days. Fortunately the Mac I was on earlier (when all this happened) had never had Firefox history changed from default. I had to go back FIVE days to find a previous 3-second visit to f/book.


Therefore, despite having cleared cookies before I went there today, they had my browsing history nailed. From 5 days ago.


F/book has to be the most sinister place on earth. And thanks to this, my already understandable fear (from having been stalked on the internet a few years ago) is now reinforced even further. I have gone around the office fixing every Mac's browser not to accept 3rd party cookies, clearing history, and asking every time before accepting any site cookies. All thanks to F/book.

There are millions of people using that place who presumably have no idea what is going on, on their own computers, by them.

How stupidly naive they are, and I was.

Well... i'll wait for more knowledgable folks to post with detailed answers.

But none of what you indicate is either surprising or anywhere near as "bad" as your perception of it.

What exactly are you afraid of?

[i mean: they're not gonna steal your credit card or anything like that. you might as well stay the heck away from google.com too -- if having your "movements" tracked creeps you out.]

Facebook is making me paranoid, but for personal reasons I still have a FFB account. However I only access FB using a browser I have dedicated to that purpose alone and I never visit any site other than FB.

Personally I cannot imagine any reason why I would want to examine an FTM members browsing habits and I deeply resent the implication that I, or any of my colleagues, might do so.

That's actually not correct, though it's a common misconception. It's based on a misunderstanding of the Terms of Service.

if you upload a picture to Facebook, you give them an irrevocable license to store and transmit the picture. You have to; after all, you're asking them to...err, store and transmit. The idea is that you can't upload a picture and then sue them for copyright infringement because they have it on their server.

Giving them a license, however, absolutely does not mean transferring the copyright to them. You still own the copyright; you haven't given it away.



Most likely, they know about the Yahoo account because they see the Yahoo cookie.

A lot o folks tend to form networked social communities; statistically, if someone you know knows someone else, the odds are better than even that you know that person, too. You can always decline to try to contact friends of friends.

I don't use Facebook (except as a repository for my Twitter feed), though I don't find that behavior especially creepy. There's other Facebook behavior I reserve that term for.

That probably wasn't Bensheim's intent.

As far as my part, i never asked why or implied anything. The ONLY issue was whether or not it's possible to do so (which you both beautifully evaded answering). [though —in a way —those responses almost imply a "yes".]

@Bensheim: see if this Terminal command produces any useful output:
grep $LOGNAME ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist


--

As far as facebook... what i find most irritating are the plethora of 3rd-party apps that take advantage of naive users who leave all their access settings wide open. But with my restricted settings, the rogue apps never gets to see my friends list... so it stops there. Then i just clean the nonsense off my wall and block that app totally, forever.

Harmless but annoying. (well, harmless to Safari/Apple OS so far.)

> A lot o folks tend to form networked social communities; statistically, if someone you know knows someone else, the odds are better than even that you know that person, too. You can always decline to try to contact friends of friends.

I don't do Facebook...period, but I once got a "friend" request, and two of the three extraneous people I was offered were people whom I know but who had absolutely -0- connection with the original "friender," and the one to whom I've spoken swears that I'm not mentioned anywhere in his account.

Can you see any way that may be possible?

Well, if your email address is in the address books of those extraneous people you know, and they have at some point used Facebook's "friend finder," a feature which peruses their address books for matches with name/email address combos already in the FB database, then when the would-be friender entered your name/email address combo, FB likely matched it up with info already in the database ("hey, we already have an artie505@whatever.net—in the address books of Paul Extraneous and Art Extraneous—so let's try to get these good folks together on Facebook").

One can choose to find this unauthorized bandying about of one's email address sinister (although the friends/acquaintances who used "friend finder" provided authorization by proxy; does that make them sinister?), but with 10% of the world's population using Facebook, techniques for figuring out who really knows whom might, alternatively, be regarded as essential.

Anyone who's tried to find his or her long-lost college roomie Bill Clark, only to give up after the first four or five hundred Bill Clarks returned by a Facebook search, might appreciate seeing the correct Bill Clark proffered as a potential friend, without being too alarmed by the implications such magic carries regarding the data manipulation going on behind the scenes.

There was no sequence of events like that.

I had joined f/book 24 hours earlier and had used an assumed name (as stated in post 1). Let's for the sake of this thread, say that I used "Blue Sky".

The email address which f/book revealed that they knew was mine, is a Business-only back-up. (as stated earlier.) No relatives have ever used it. It could not be in any of their own address books on their own computers, with my real name next to it or associated with it.

There is no way of searching for me, using my real name, on f/book, since I do not exist on f/book in that or (now) any other name.

Even if any relatives had seen their "friend" requests from Blue Sky, whatever they did next would still not have linked "Blue Sky's" membership there, to my Yahoo business email address.

F/book, not having my real name at any point, have no way of associating me with the back-up business email address at Yahoo.

The only possible explanation is that they used a five-days old cookie to this computer, where they found ME using that Yahoo log-in.

I call that spying, and very overt spying now that they have proved that they do that. It is none of their goddammed business what I do on my own computer, off their site, days earlier. At that point I was NOT a member of their repulsive site and had only visited for a few seconds, five days earlier. Yes, I do call this sinister and it should be a criminal offence.

I also continue to be upset that another member of this forum has planted the seed of doubt that Admins here could look at other people's cookies to snoop on our internet browsing too. I am still waiting for someone in authority to unambiguously deny this, not only to me but to every other of this forum too.

Until I have such assurance, it is a dammed nuisance having to delete cookies for FTM every time I log out.

If there is a way to do that, I have no idea what it is.

Dude... it has nothing to do with "admins here".
Any website, anywhere can read your cookie file.
Did you run the Terminal command i gave you?

You think that's bad? Go back about 10 years when our [forums] login passwords (also in the cookie file) were sometimes stored there unencrypted.

Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.

You are the one who first suggested this, not me.

Post 18487 "Probably just by reading your cookie file. I bet tacit or any admin here could do the same (if they wanted to)."



In 25 years of using Macs I have never had to use a Terminal command, have no idea what they are, how to do them, and what if anything they show; I see no reason to start now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
According to Firefox, FTM has now put 5 cookies on my computer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



10 years ago is hardly relevant.

Thank you for your sarcasm / irony / wit / taunt. Delete as appropriate.

No interest in FACEBOOK. Never have; never (knowingly?) will.

P.S. Even the idea of iCLOUD doesn't sit all that well with me. Storing my own computer contents somewhere "out there" just doesn't feel quite right - although I certainly can see its appeal to some folks in respect to convenience, etc. Not that I have any deep dark secrets to hide . . . but I am trying to hang on to whatever remnants of privacy remain in this techno-cyber age!

But I digress . . . Getting back to the topic of cookies/cache . . . There are several apps mentioned throughout this Forum which can help to some degree in removing these items (Onyx, etc. - some free, some not). Check out these and see if any of them make cleanup of the unwanted tracks a little bit easier for you.

I ran that command and only got: firstname-lastnames-imac:~ firstnamelastname$

What does that tell me? Thanks.

Ran your command:


What, if anything, does "Permission denied" mean as respects Bensheim's upset?

Not much it seems. Results will depend on which sites you allow to store cookie data... and what data they decide to put there. It's all pretty arbitrary.

In my case i can see all three of my e-mail addresses as stored by three separate (unrelated) websites.

I don't understand your question " as respects Bensheim's upset? " ???

Anyway, you did not run my command (only part of it).
You got a "permission denied" error because the cookie file itself is not executable.

I was just giving an example. I figured you could extrapolate the obvious. Did you honestly think only FTM and Facebook can read a cookie file?



Good. Stay blind. [or use TextEdit or perhaps better TextWrangler... only $LOGNAME won't work there, so you'll need to search for your shortname]



i'm just pointing out that (assuming you've been surfing that long) that you've been exposed for over a decade. So why the sudden fit of paranoia?



You're taking EVERYTHING in this thread way too personally.

These are just technical facts being discussed here. Chillax man.

What I meant was did the "Permission denied" put Bensheim's fears to rest, but since it's the result of having run an incorrect command...

Oops... I saw the prompt and didn't look to the left.

DEAR FOLKS:

Actually, that command is only gonna work if your e-mail and your shortname are the same. [which i have done for uniformity's sake since day one.]

So here's the deal if your situation is different...
as an example, let's say your e-mail address is:

groucho@marx.com

In that case (if your shortname isn't also groucho... then), the proper Terminal command would be:

grep -i groucho ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist

Thanks to Hal and his withering sarcasm, and thanks to F/book and their proof of spying on everyone's computers, I have now deleted the Yahoo account with which I used to register with them.

I have also gone into a gmail account and deleted all the contacts because I am in no doubt that F/book will have that account too. This is because all the relatives I was so naively trying to "friend" were in there.

I am the last person on earth who should have gone to F/book. I should have obeyed my instincts which are usually sound, in telling me not to do something which is anyway unnecessary.

I've also checked my own profile here, to see which email address I supplied. It's another Yahoo one. If it had (STUPIDLY) been my main work one, I would have changed that too.

I have also considered asking how one deletes oneself from here, but (obeying instincts) I do not want to do that, yet. It's a good free resource, better than Apple's own user forums. However, should I decide to delete myself from here, how do I do that?

Thanks for any replies from non-sarcastic Mods or Admins.

For the benefit of posterity, may one ask: "Why?" ?

--

FWIW, i think that FTM is really cool when it comes to this sort of thing (data collection). Meaning: i don't notice ANY going on at all.

OTOH, when **posting** a forum message at places like macosxhints, Macworld, MacRumors, MacNN, etc., etc., those sites seem to be reading all kinds of stuff (from our end of the network) which amounts to a noticeable "upload" larger than just the text contained in our posted message.

E.g., if i post "Hello World" in one of those forums, i can see a lot of data being transmitted to their server. . . a whole LOT more than just those 12 chars. What exactly it is that they're logging i'm not sure.

Not so here, as far as i can see.


--

Finally, facebook is actually a ton of fun. I'm in touch with school mates and other acquaintances i haven't seen for over 40 years. Some have a bunch of old pics posted, and gangs of us get together [while scattered all over the globe mind you] and make humorous comments, and recount wild adventures of youth. It's a freakin' blast.

None of that could happen via e-mail or over the phone... not even Skype. It'd be a shame if i let some faux-phobia make me miss out on that.

You wonder how web sites like FB know about email addresses you maintain without being explicitly told. I can't tell you how they got hold of your Yahoo address, but it must have been from a publicly accessible source. Despite what you claim as certain, it is most assuredly not because they are somehow hacking your Mac.

Beyond the obvious (you or your friends somehow publishing your info like DK described) there are various ways in which you as internet surfer stand out. Some of these details are discussed in the thread Web privacy: cookies vs browser specs. Related privacy/security concerns were discussed in several MacWorld articles I linked to in THE CYBER-SECURITY THREAD.

Another tool I can recommend in this context is Safari extension Ghostery, which shows you who's tracking you when you visit any particular web page. Install it, visit these forums again and see for yourself. Then compare that with other sites you frequent.

As to whether FTM can access your cookies, I can say that as a mod I can't with the UBB.threads tools I have access to. It's possible that admins have access to such tools, but to be sure they would have to chime in with the details. That said and assuming they have such access (it would be a UBB software-based privilege), I'm sure that they aren't likely to use it if only because they have better things to do. That may not reassure you, but it's good enough for me. Btw, the FTM cookies control your access to the forums, nothing more, nothing less.

Finally, the email address you need to provide FTMF upon registering is required so admins have a way to contact you directly, in case contact via the forums is not possible or desirable. Even for that purpose we don't use these addresses lightly, nor (AFAIK) do we provide 3rd party access to them.

Alternaut, did you read my post no. 18532 (now on page 1)?

I did not give them my real name. They did not know my real name. Real name, not. I did not give them my company name. They did not know my company name. I was a Fictional name. There was no connection, there, between me/my company, and my Fictional name.

No ONE had responded to "friend" requests either. ALL they knew was that I had "friend requested" some relatives. That does not instantly identify me or my company!



Hacking? I never mentioned hacking. What I am saying is that they proved to me that they do have a trail of websites visited, even if you are not a member of F/book.



The first thread you mention, I am already in it.
The one linking to Macworld, I have just looked at, and I had already done all the safety/security tips recommended therein.



That is not the address I deleted.

===============

I must admit to being astonished that people as computer-savvy as yourselves (that's a collective yourselves) are not bothered about the fact that F/book have proved that they track internet use AND demonstrate that to your face. If, however, you now have me down as a delusional hysteric then I'm afraid there is little I can do to prove what I say happened to me on Monday night.

F/book is the creepiest site on earth, and they prove it. Oh, and I don't use Safari, but thanks for that suggestion, I only use Firefox and IE when absolutely necessary as aforementioned elsewhere on this forum. (People didn't believe me about that either IIRC.)

Sounds like you haven't looked at your cookie file yet, despite several posts (including one from an admin, back on page one) having already posited that as the most reasonable solution to this angst-ridden mystery.

Facebook doesn't need to "track you around the Internet" just to discover that secret e-mail address, when some other site you frequent has thoughtfully preserved that info inside your cookie file already.

Yes, facebook —as well as an increasing number of sites (as i mentioned: google, and we can probably add yahoo) —use whatever legal means they can to determine what people enjoy doing... so they can strategically place appropriately tempting advertisements hither and yon. But this practice is common knowledge... and (as i also mentioned), you seem to have survived for many years now with that same cookie info exposed to the world, easily available to those who might seek to peruse it.

Perhaps we (and the other 500 million facebook users) could better share your concern if we knew what to be afraid of.

Help us.

You mean this bit from Tacit?

"Most likely, they know about the Yahoo account because they see the Yahoo cookie."

Well, my F/book account was registered with a Yahoo email address. (Which I've now deleted.)

Hence them seeing a Yahoo cookie. According to your/Tacit's "logic".

You can sneer at me all you like, Hal. It only hurts a bit. Not being believed by anyone here (other than sneering Hal) hurts more.

Oh and before I leave I must say that I really don't like being spoken to like that. I run my own small but successful business and have done for 25 years, through multiple recessions, ups and downs, but we keep going strong. Not many other small businesses can say that, these days. I have staff and legal and financial responsibilities. I am not stupid, nor an hysterical type.

So now I will take the course which is usually advised when encountering someone who takes great glee in trying to pull you down on a messageboard: Ignore Them.

That is my last post to you. Goodbye Hal.

Wow.

I think you have misunderstood 97% of what's been said in this thread.

Starting from the overreaction to my first post right through to my last.

I wonder why.


PS: have you searched your cookie file yet, to see ALL the e-mail addresses there?

Nobody to my knowledge is sneering at you or disbelieving you.

Facebook may be able to read Yahoo cookies. That's how they found your Yahoo address--the one you didn't give them. A bit creepy, to be sure, but not necessarily nefarious. Any time you use Yahoo, and you tell Yahoo to remember your ID, a cookie is sent to your computer; if you have three Yahoo accounts, you have (at least) three Yahoo login cookies. If Facebook saw one of those, that's how they knew about the account.

By "the address books," may I assume that you mean the address books people have created in their Facebook accounts, not the address books on their computers?

If so, my question remains unanswered, because, while it's not at all unlikely that extraneous #1 has me in her address book, extraneous #2 swears that he doesn't have, and has never had, a Facebook address book.

Is it possible that an unnamed extraneous #3 has both me and extraneous #2 in hir address book and thus the connection?

Oh, well... It's not like I'm freaking out over the whole thing; I'm just trying to get a bit of insight into Facebook.


My impression is that many (most?) people who join Facebook are both looking to be found and to find others and are happy that Facebook can accommodate them...without getting to deeply into the means.

No, I meant the address books on their computers. Those are what "friend finder" uses to look for "people you may know" who have Facebook accounts.

The moment has passed, mercifully. I grew weary of deleting cookies for every website, since I use the internet so much for work and other. My attempts at controlling website presence were self-defeating and frankly pathetic.

One of the benefits of growing older is learning what to get riled up about, and what to move on from and get over it. Tomorrow is another day and who knows how many days any of us have left. Life's too short for this nonsense.

I apologise for the rants. It happens to everyone from time to time unless you are a Zen Buddhist, presumably.

Thank you to all the mods for your as-ever calm. (Are you Zen Buddhists?) <----joke, of sorts.

Wow! So people actually give Facebook access to their entire lives, so to speak.

In that case, I'll never be able to even begin to guess how the connection to me was made.

Ces't la vie!

Thanks.

Very !

There's an entire generation of young adults out there who have never experienced privacy of the sort we older'uns are accustomed to claiming as our birthright.

It might be argued that those folks actually have a more realistic understanding of the fact that one can't really hide in this day and age than we do.

Unless your consumer transactions are all consummated with cash, your name and what you buy are recorded in a database somewhere. Unless you're paid under the table, your place of employment and your income are noted by the IRS. Those who drive have license, registration and insurance information out there. Those who visit a doctor have medical records out there. Campaign contributions can be looked up. Real estate transactions and whether property taxes are paid on time are a matter of public record.

Against this backdrop, allowing Facebook to import one's address book so people in it can be suggested as prospective Facebook friends doesn't seem an alarmingly unwise choice.

Actually, I think it's a bit different. I think that many people consciously CHOOSE not to have the kind of privacy that some of us claim as our birthright, because they see no advantage to it.

Instead of thinking "I want to go through life with my head down, being as private and withdrawn as possible from other people and hiding myself from the folks around me," they think "I want to be visible; I want to reach out and make connections with other people; I want to be seen by the folks who are like me, and use these tools to form a community of people I'm close to."

Everybody is somewhat vulnerable to digging, but opening up your address book to Facebook voluntarily exposes you to not only those to whom you choose to be exposed, but to those from whom you'd prefer to be hidden.

As the old saw goes, though, you pay your money, you make your choices, and you take your chances.

I'll stand by my

I suppose that's true for those who leave Facebook's privacy controls configured to the wide-open settings Facebook would prefer (Facebook's goal is for all seven billion of us to have seven billion friends each), but for those who choose the most restrictive settings, the resulting "people you may know" suggestions Facebook makes to folks found in your address book don't allow those folks to know much more about you than that you exist—which, presumably, they already know, else why would they be in your address book?

There actually may be a more realistic middle ground that many of us "older'uns" are seeking and that is, WE want to choose to whom we reveal ourselves. It is not necessarily to no one or to everyone, but rather people, institutions, whatever that we choose.

As this thread has pointed out, that type of determination may not be possible with Facebook and its similar ilk.

"(Facebook's goal is for all seven billion of us to have seven billion friends each)"

Then they have failed with this particular individual. Not that one non-convert will make any difference to their alleged hegemony.

I couldn't see the point of it. I already exchange photos with my brothers without F/book's help. I had no intention of posting photos of mine, for 7 billion people to see, potentially.

Going back to someone else's post about getting back in touch with people from college days 40 years ago; I've already been round that trail with Friends Reunited, about 10 years ago. We got in touch, met up in real life, and then that was more or less it. Life moves on. It's not necessarily fascinating to hear or see what now-60 yr old college mates are doing with their grandchildren on holiday.

Except that that hasn't been possible for at least the last forty years or so.

Facebook and the advent of the computer age hasn't actually eroded privacy the way we think it has. What it's done is made it impossible to ignore the fact that our privacy was already eroded.

It started with telephones and credit cards. Credit cards alone give you an incredibly detailed picture of someone's life; put 'em together with phone records and oyu can trace who that person knows, who they're business rivals with, who they're sleeping with, you name it.

Add grocery store discount cards to the mix and it gets even better--and available to more people. Throw cell phones into the mix...well, you get the idea.

Privacy is an illusion. You haven't had it for decades. Facebook didn't make that happen; it just took the illusion away.

i guess one stipulation of a 'social network' is that its members be... well, social.

Alas. Good point.

How do you work that one out?

. . . I think that comment was meant to be a little "tongue in cheek" to make a point.

However, it is quite possible to deduce one's activities from his/her credit card statement if it has billing for a, a-hem, 'massage' parlour, or a 'less-than-stellar' motel, etc. (The smarter folks pay in cash only!)

A common PI trick to ferret out cheating spouses involves doing searches for credit cards in the name of one of the married people and a person not his or her spouse; apparently, many men who keep mistresses (and some women who keep lovers as well) will get a credit card in the name of the married man and the mistress, rather than the married man and wife, and use that credit card for expenses related to the affair, so as to keep the financial information away from the spouse.

Another way to do it is to trace movements of people using the credit card. Hotel reservations using a credit card when the spouse believes that the person is late at work or away on business or whatever, people checking into a hotel reserved in someone else's name using someone else's credit card, that sort of thing. From what I've been told, most PI sleuthing involving suspicions of affairs has less to do with following folks around with cameras and telephoto lenses than it does to do with wading through financial records.

Same is true of criminal investigations as well. Most (all?) FBI field agents have accounting backgrounds.

> "doing searches for credit cards"

Is there an easy answer to "How on Earth?"

I don't know about America, but here in the UK (and probably throughout Europe) credit cards are issued with only one name on. Maybe I've read it wrong and it means "a credit card account with two different names and two separate cards"?



This all seems like a lot of palaver for some extra nookie. Why doesn't the straying husband (say) go on a trip to somewhere he legitimately goes on business or recreation, and get the lover to meet him there? Then he can show genuine bills for legitimate hotel when he gets back, if necessary.

I suppose that is a form of social networking.

PIs and law enforcement can get access to credit card information in any of a number of ways, some more legal than others. Social engineering, digging through credit card receipts, impersonating the person who owns the credit card ("pretexting"--which wasn't illegal until recently), and so on are all common, at least according to a PI mailing list a friend of mine belongs to. Fascinating stuff.



Yep. One account with two authorized users.



We're assuming a person of means who's supporting a mistress. More garden-variety affairs might be harder to track, but families where someone has a more garden-variety affair might not have the means to hire a PI.

I wouldn't know; all my partners know about each other.

Thanks.

I was afraid you meant that there were on-line databases that could accessed by searchers.

At this point, there might be; I don't know. I do know that there are online databases which can be subpoenaed by law enforcement, but I don't know about searchable databases.