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MySpace is a wonderful tool to stay in touch with friends and meet new people. However, it has as many dangers, if not more, than sending your kids alone to a shopping mall. The same tactics that hackers use to crack your passwords can be used by online predators to find the location of your children. However, this is not a vulnerability of MySpace. This is a vulnerability in how you raise your children.

MySpace asks for a lot of personal information. However, this information isn't necessarily disclosed on your public pages. Also, there is no legal requirement to actually tell the truth. Sometimes, when I don't want to be bothered, I'll make up a fake name, with an address of 1123 Fibbonacci Lane, Beverly Hills CA 90210. Then for a phone number, I'll use 512-479-2222, which just happens to be the Mr. Gatti's Pizza in Austin, TX. As I no longer live in Texas, it's quite convenient. Or, I use an email address that I used to have.

However, if I get an email from you, the name of your school's mascot, and your team colors, I can find the physical location of your school. Here's how.

Your emails have headers that contain SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) information about the handshake (connecting one computer to another) that leaves traces in the forms of IP addresses and DNS names. These can be traced to your physical location. If you did a DNS lookup on me, you would find ip70-178-252-xxx.ks.ks.cox.net (IP 70.178.252.xxx). That would indicate a router in Kansas. However, there are sites that guess where you're located from based on your IP address. One guessed Tyler TX. Another guessed Mineral Wells, TX. That's because there's a Cox Communications office in that area. Those towns are about 20 minutes apart. Another says Overland Park KS.

However, one of these sites accurately found my location. It also gave latitude and longitude coordinates. It correctly identified my ISP. And it pulled me up on a Google Map. From there, it would not be difficult to use the mascot to identify the school I went to. Then I could find the physical address of the school. I could use www.switchboard.com to get a street address, then I could get a map print out of the school. I found this site on Google. Someone could easily calibrate how accurate the software is by testing known locations. Then, once they found one that accurately located IP addresses that they knew the locations to, they could use it to find yours.

So, let's look at the activation email from Helium.
"from www.helium.com

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