Man Creates "Creepy" Stalking App

An anonymous reader writes "Creepy, a package described as a 'geolocation information aggregator,' is turning heads in privacy circles, but should people be worried? Yiannis Kakavas explains why he developed his scary stalking application. Creepy is a software package for Linux or Windows — with a Mac OS X port in the works — that aims to gather public information on a targeted individual via social networking services in order to pinpoint their location. It's remarkably efficient at its job, even in its current early form, and certainly lives up to its name when you see it in use for the first time."

Re:paranoia ho!

[rekenner]

As opposed to just going "Welp, someone ELSE better look through that code!", I decided to. I'm not going to claim I'm a security or python expert, but I know the latter decently enough to feel safe in saying... ain't nothing there but what it says on the tin.

Re:paranoia ho!

[asto21]

From the 'creepy' site

Location information retieval from :
Twitter's tweet location
Coordinates when tweet was posted from mobile device
Place (geographical name) derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface. Place gets translated into coordinates using geonames.com
Bounding Box derived from users ip when posting on twitter's web interface.The less accurate source , a corner of the bounding box is selected randomly.
Geolocation information accessible through image hosting services API
EXIF tags from the photos posted.
Social networking platforms currently supported :
Twitter
Foursquare (only checkins that are posted to twitter)
Image hosting services currently supported :
flickr - information retrieved from API
twitpic.com - information retrieved from API and photo exif tags
yfrog.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
img.ly - information retrieved from photo exif tags
plixi.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
twitrpix.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
foleext.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
shozu.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
pickhur.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
moby.to - information retrieved from API and photo exif tags
twitsnaps.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags
twitgoo.com - information retrieved from photo exif tags

I'm creepier than they are

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not worried, because anyone that stalks me is bound to find out that I'm creepier than they are.

I can confirm this.

Re:paranoia ho!

[scdeimos]

Anyone instantly worried that installing this software in your own machine might also make any data on that machine available for stalking? It somehow doesnt seem like a good idea to me to trust a programmer proficient at this kind of this without a very very thorough code review first

Knock yourself out. The source code is available from the project page:

• http://ilektrojohn.github.com/creepy/
• git clone git://github.com/ilektrojohn/creepy