There are many stories online about Graham Platner’s Reddit comments from 10+ years ago, but none of them explain exactly how his account was tied to his real identity. I searched high and low, but no search engine would spit out what I was looking for.
How exactly does something like this go down? Why does no one seem to ask this question?
Is your argument going to be it wasnt him? Public toilet pleasing himself… Lol
So the origin seems to be CNN’s KFILE. In the original article they only mention that there were biographical details that lined up with Platner:
On his Reddit, Platner didn’t identify himself by name, but he shared biographical details, including his military service, age, occupation and residence in Maine. While the account dated back to 2009, many of his most incendiary comments reviewed by CNN were posted around 2021.
The biggest clincher seems to be that he admits it’s his old account. CNN is a major news outlet and so they were able to get an interview with him and he straight up admits it’s his account. He also has a very identifying nazi tattoo that he discussed on his reddit account.
So I’d say from what I’ve seen, it’s a combo of him being a very public figure and having a lot of info about him out in the public already, and him constantly posting about his real life with specific events and dates and identifying marks on his body that can easily be cross-referenced. You can actually identify someone surprisingly easily even with no name as we’ve seen in a few cases such as the AOL search database release.
Also he does just admit it’s his account he didn’t even try to deny it, so if you’re trying to avoid getting your account linked back to you you basically can’t do worse than that.
OP asks a valid question. I understand that when you are a politician or public figure who is going to put yourself in opposition to others, well-funded organizations will do oppo research on you.
I don’t fully understand how this works, but I have always wondered how it’s possible to link a public figure to a Reddit account if they have never identified themselves, and their posts are not popular and date back from years ago.
Who?
There is no argument to be made. I simply want to know how these opposition research people do what they do. What tools do they use? Is every page on the internet saved and stored for later perusal, just in case a future senator might have posted something on it?
Most of the doxxes come from close circles/data brokers cabals. In reality, journalists and antifa activists just receive the tip off. There’s a ton of examples of unexplainably complicated things being tied together, when in reality the perpetrators of doxxing just called their contacts accross different places. the OSINT part just wasn’t there to begin with.