I frequently review my referrers log, to see who is sending hits to my page. Occasionally I see something exceptionally strange. Currently my top referrer for April is www.iaea.org, which makes no sense because there are no links to any site on their page. I’ve seen this sort of thing before and I always assumed it was a DNS glitch misrouting links to my page.
Today, I just saw the most chilling entry in my referrer log. I tried to check the site but it is obviously firewalled from the regular internet. Here is the URL, read it and be afraid, be very afraid:
http://homeland.fbi.gov/Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=751658
Think about that for a second. If the FBI is using sequential record numbers, they have computerized files on over 750,000 people, and it appears they’re monitoring me. Also consider, we have no idea how high the record numbers go, there could be millions of “suspects.”
Update: In the comments, it was suggested that the URL came from a web browser that fakes the referrer. I never heard of such a thing, but I figured it was likely to be a dumb prank like this.
I saw something you posted on Hesoid’s counterspin blog and had to agree with you. I’m going to have to say I agree with you about the incompetance of certain troops and receiving medals. Plus I keep hearing all these people refer to her as cute or beautiful.
All I’m thinking is, she isn’t a fucking beauty queen she’s someone who didn’t actually sign up for this type of duty. Maybe, I’m just biased cause she isn’t even what I would consider hot on my chicksIwant to bang scale. She looks like your average hometown girl. Average hometown girls are good for regular americans (Joe SixPack and Betty Alcohol) who can’t swing any but, not for the Vicioux.
The saddest part is she is already being eaten by the media. What do I know, I am crazy and I spend a lot of my time drawing alien girls in adobe illustrator?
I was just glad someone shared my point of view. Went down shooting as they shot her my ass. If the Iraqi’s wanted her dead, as deadly as we’ve been told they are, they would have pumped her full of lead like 1970s paint.
You’d think organisations like that would be able to do their web roving without leaving a calling card… or maybe part of the idea was letting you know you’re being watched.
It’s was probably that ‘how to make a placard’ entry. Placards are dangerous. ;^)
I’ve known about your site from reading your posts in sci.lang.japan & chased your link here to find the “Scary FBI Web Searches” entry.
As you probably already know, several web-browsers allow for “faked” referrers – Mozilla, Netscape, Beonex for starters. Highly configurable! (Several firewalls do to!)
I doubt you’re being ‘watched’… or, at least, i *hope* you’re not! Perhaps someone is “playing” with you?
Anyways – good luck to ‘you&yours’ and please keep up the good work here; it’s quite refreshing!
Thanks for the info. I’ve been puzzling over some weird referrer data for months and there’s been nothing this odd before. I am inclined to believe this was a stupid prank with a faked referrer, but in these days (and considering some of the opinions I post here) it wouldn’t surprise me if this website was in some huge FBI google-ish database of leftist websites.
Anyway, I’ve heard some spammers are toying with tools to leave faked referrers in blogs, I don’t know what they’re up to and I don’t think they do either.
Here is a similar conversation at Brent Simmons blog:
http://www.inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=2462
It has some details about reffere spoofing, and an example of how to do it in curl.
-Ross