A Google Dork Isn't A Guy Wearing Google Glass

I was one of the people who was sent a Google Glass almost twenty years ago.

I got it from their PR team.

Google wanted influencers to talk up Google Glass, and I was on their list.

I don't remember much about that early version of Google Glass, other than the battery life sucked.

And since I need to wear glasses, wearing glasses that didn't have my prescription was kind of a non-starter.

It was nice that Google's camera could see things, but I sure couldn't.

You know what happened next: Google Glass flopped.

Mostly because people didn't like a visual reminder of The Panopticon they've since built for themselves with their smartphones and social media.

On the plus side, we got the hilarious term, "Glassholes" out of the ordeal.

But that's not the kind of Google Dork we're talking about today.

Privacy Tip: What Search Engine Should You Use?

When it comes to using a search engine, for most people in most cases, DuckDuckGo is the way to ... Go.

(I swear to God, no one at their marketing department told me to say that.)

When you need to take things a step further, I recommend using a self-hosted instance of SearXNG.

That gets a little complicated though.

As it is, I still need to show a lot of you how to use Free File Sync.

So, an easier way to use SearXNG, for now, is to find a public instance using this list, and then do your search.

The key difference between SearXNG and DuckDuckGo is that DuckDuckGo is going to show you results within their own search engine.

SearXNG is going to show you results from everyone's search engine.

SearXNG comes in handy for #OSINT, or Open Source Intelligence.

Or Open Source Intelligence Techniques if you're nasty.

We're going to talk a lot about OSINT.

We'll also talk about setting up a self-hosted SearXNG instance in future posts.

For now, I just want to flag that using a public instance of SearXNG has some risk:

-It could go down at any time.

-Search engines may block access to the public instance you're using at any time.

-And the person hosting that public instance could see your search queries.

This would be hard for that person to do, but it IS possible.

Ok. So, What About Google?

Google has some uses.

For example, as a local news journalist, I set up a custom Google Search Engine that only searched through specific websites.

This way, I could scan for someone to see if they've appeared in the local media before.

I will show you how to do that later.

Another example is Google Dorking.

This can get complicated, so today we're just going to use a short example.

If you go to Google, and wanted to stalk me, most people would start by searching for BJ Mendelson.

But since I have twenty years worth of stuff out there that Google's indexed, you can narrow that search.

So that only items specifically where my name is mentioned on a page — as opposed to just something I wrote or produced — comes up.

You can do this by searching for "BJ Mendelson"

The use of the quotation marks narrows the search results.

There are over a thousand Google Dorks.

I will only mention the ones relevant to protecting yourself from fascists and weirdos.

Otherwise, stick with DuckDuckGo for most searches and SearXNG if you need to go deeper.

-BJ