Frank Estrella in the News

With online tools, amateur snooping is a growth industry

‘Everyone’s checking out everyone else’

By Patrick May
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Updated: May 17, 2010, 6:44 am / 0 comments
Published: May 17, 2010, 12:30 am

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The bar’s hopping. The guy’s hot. She’s curious. He’s mysterious. She decides to go gumshoe on him.

The bathroom stall becomes her office, the smart phone her secretary. And using a tech tool such as Date- Check that can scope out a potential partner’s background in a Philip Marlowe minute, she has cleared him for a romantic go-ahead.

Case closed.

From the women’s restroom to the chat room to the tweet-stream in the next cubicle, America is becoming a society of amateur spies. With a burgeoning arsenal of Web sites offering cheap tricks to sniff out subterfuge, abetted by multitudes baring their souls on Facebook, everyday life has become a realm of nonstop intrigue: Spouses are snooping, business competitors are spying, sexting celebrities are apologizing, and everyone’s following Ronald Reagan’s 1980s advice to trust but verify.

“Everyone’s checking out everyone else,” says Wolfgang Kandek of Qualys, a Redwood City, Calif., firm that helps companies such as Facebook store and guard their confidential data. “Once you put information online, it’s there forever. So you can look someone up on Facebook, look at their house on Google Earth and follow them around

on Twitter.”

Our vital statistics stretch like vapor trails—cell phone records, e-mail accounts, family photos pasted all over Flickr for the world to see. Technology has brought inexpensive spy gadgets that would make the Hardy Boys squeal with delight. And the Internet spits out more snooping Web sites every day, with names such as PeekYou, iSearch and Whozat.

Investigators and Internet security experts report an ever-expanding arsenal of tech spy tools and growing numbers of ordinary citizens using them. According to a recent survey by consumer review site Retrevo, 36 percent of respondents said they had checked their spouse or partner’s e-mail or call history without their knowledge.

“There are quite a few people who see that cell phone or e-mail account sitting there and can’t resist scrolling through a few messages,” says Andrew Eisner, director of content at Retrevo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. “The younger generation, especially, seems to have fewer reservations about doing this stuff, and they’re the same ones who expose the most personal parts of their lives on Facebook. We’re breeding a generation of exhibitionists.”

The two trends — more snooping and more publicizing our lives online — have dovetailed to create a background-checking free-for-all. And while many of the Web sites can swiftly and benignly link you to an old classmate or a missing aunt, the same technology raises troubling questions about privacy for ordinary citizens whose online information may not be as secure as they think. Internet security expert Ryan C. Barnett says many users aren’t connecting the dots when they give up their birth date, e-mail address and dog’s name at multiple way stations across the Internet.

Private detectives get calls every day from people such as Diane, who asked that her full name not be used. She eventually obtained incriminating photos of her fiance and his lover — along with DNA evidence from his underwear—and confronted him, then kicked him out. Often, this initial online sleuthing helps someone firm up their suspicions, while a professional with a surveillance camera and sophisticated databases helps nail the case shut.

Many investigators say a lot of the online resources are rip-offs, or offer up stale or bogus data. Still, former IRS agent Al Ristuccia says a lot of personal records unavailable to the public just a few years ago are now “readily accessible to everyone and cost little to nothing.”

San Jose private detective Frank Estrella, 42, says Internet tools make his gumshoe duties easier. “Google images is something I use every day. And Google Earth is a great tool for checking out an area before we arrive for surveillance. We can find a good place to park, like behind those trees down the street, before we even get there.”

The data everyone’s looking for shows up so easily online in part because it’s so easily put there in the first place. New Jersey librarian-turned-private investigator Cynthia Hetherington teaches an all-day seminar in social-network searches for federal agents. She says, “Someone can have a couple of glasses of merlot and start ranting online, overexposing themselves without realizing their audience is international.”

Even while they use these tools themselves, investigators say they’re often creeped out by how much intimate detail is available, either for free or a small fee. They point to sites such as Trackle (“Your eyes on the Web”) and Spokeo, which can scour a user’s social-networking landscape, or increasingly sophisticated face-and geography- recognition applications for mobile phones.

And, say Internet security experts, the technology is only going to get smarter.

“Curiosity is part of human nature,” says David Cowings of Symantec Security Response. “There will always be a market out there for both legitimate and illegitimate snooping.”

Private detective Frank Estrella, photographed
April 28, 2010, with some of the tools of his trade.
(Pauline Lubens, Mercury News)


Private detective Frank Estrella.
(Pauline Lubens, Mercury News)


Portrait of private detective Frank Estrella, photographed
April 28, 2010, uses online tools as part of his work, in addition
to the traditional cameras and binoculars.
(Pauline Lubens, Mercury News)