Online tools promote amateur sleuthing

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The bar's hopping. The guy's hot. She's curious. He's mysterious. She decides to go gumshoe on him.

The bathroom stall becomes her office, the smartphone her secretary. And using a tech tool like DateCheck that can scope out a potential partner's background in a Philip Marlowe minute, she's cleared him for a romantic go-ahead.

Case closed.

From the ladies room to the chat room to the tweet-stream in the next cubicle, America is becoming a society of amateur spies. With a burgeoning arsenal of websites offering cheap tricks to sniff out subterfuge, abetted by multitudes baring their souls on Facebook, everyday life has become a realm of nonstop intrigue: Spouses are snooping, business competitors are spying, sexting celebrities are apologizing, and everyone's following Ronald Reagan's advice to trust but verify.

"Everyone's checking out everyone else," says Wolfgang Kandek of Qualys, a Redwood City, Calif., firm that helps companies like Facebook store and guard their confidential data. "Once you put information online, it's there forever. So you can look someone up on Facebook, look at their house on Google Earth, and follow them around on Twitter."

Our vital statistics stretch behind us like vapor trails - cell phone records, e-mail accounts, family photos pasted all over Flickr for the world to see. Technology has brought inexpensive spy gadgets that would make the Hardy Boys squeal with delight. And the Internet spits out more snooping websites every day, with names like PeekYou, iSearch and Whozat.

Investigators and Internet security experts report an ever-expanding arsenal of tech spy tools and growing numbers of ordinary citizens using them. According to a recent survey by consumer review site Retrevo, 36 percent of respondents said they had checked their spouse or partner's e-mail or call history without their knowledge, with those under 25 doing it even more.

"There are quite a few people who see that cell phone or e-mail account sitting there and can't resist scrolling through a few messages," says Andrew Eisner, director of content at Sunnyvale, Calif.,-based Retrevo. "The younger generation, especially, seems to have fewer reservations about doing this stuff, and they're the same ones who expose the most personal parts of their lives on Facebook. We're breeding a generation of exhibitionists."

The two trends - more snooping and more publicizing our lives online - have dovetailed to create a background-checking free-for-all. And while many of the websites can swiftly and benignly link you to an old classmate or a missing aunt, the same technology raises troubling questions about privacy for ordinary citizens whose online information may not be as secure as they think. Internet security expert Ryan C. Barnett says many users aren't connecting the dots when they give up their birth date, e-mail address and dog's name at multiple way stations across the Internet.

"These sites are so spread out that a lot of users volunteering all these separate bits of information don't think about all of it together in totality," he says. "People think this social-networking stuff is so cool, but they don't think about what's going on behind the scenes."

For the amateur sleuthhound, the hunt often starts with a cell phone. Diane, a 35-year-old San Jose schoolteacher and single mother of three, started poking around her fiance's cell after she noticed he was suddenly dressing better and staying out all night with friends. Soon she was hooked.

"It sucks you in," says Diane, who asked that her full name not be used. Suspicious phone numbers led her quickly to the computer. "I decided to go online and see if I could do a phone trace at a site like peoplefinder.com. Once you start looking, you find this whole river of supposed resources. Everybody out there seems to be selling information.

"The first taste is free," she says, "but it's often a come-on for paid information. I spent a lot of money at different sites but I finally hit a wall, so I decided to hire someone."

Private detectives get calls every day from people like Diane, who eventually obtained incriminating photos of her fiance and his lover - along with DNA evidence from his underwear - and confronted him, then kicked him out. Often, this initial online sleuthing helps someone firm up their suspicions, while a professional with a surveillance camera and sophisticated databases helps nail the case shut. Many investigators say a lot of the online resources are rip-offs, or offer up stale or bogus information. Still, former IRS agent Al Ristuccia says a lot of personal records unavailable to the public just a few years ago are now "readily accessible to everyone and cost little to nothing."

"Be careful what you put out there," he says. "One of the first things I do when I background someone is to Google and Facebook them, and it's amazing how much personal stuff people offer up, starting with their date of birth. You can easily find their friends. And if you're trying to put together a link-analysis, say, on a criminal case and trying to connect one party to another, that all shows up."

San Jose private detective Frank Estrella, 42, says Internet tools make his gumshoe duties easier. "Google images," he says, "is something I use every day. And Google Earth is a great tool for checking out an area before we arrive for surveillance. We can find a good place to park, like behind those trees down the street, before we even get there. So looking around for the perfect spot and risking being seen like in the old days are gone."

The information everyone's looking for now shows up so easily online in part because it's so easily put there in the first place. New Jersey librarian-turned-private investigator Cynthia Hetherington teaches an all-day seminar in social-network searches for federal agents. She says, "Someone can have a couple glasses of merlot and start ranting online, overexposing themselves without realizing their audience is international."

Even while they use these tools themselves, investigators say they're often creeped out by how much intimate detail is available, either for free or a small fee. They point to sites like Trackle ("Your eyes on the web") and Spokeo, which can scour a user's social-networking landscape, or increasingly sophisticated face- and geography-recognition apps for mobile phones.

And, say Internet security experts, the technology is only going to get smarter - and, probably, creepier.

"Curiosity is part of human nature," says David Cowings, senior manager of operations for Symantec Security Response. "There will always be a market out there for both legitimate and illegitimate snooping."

(c) 2010, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

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