Journal 2/3

Journal 2 

Light Journal Today!


Break was okay, but when it comes to my project, I didnt do much at all. Sometimes - code particularly - requires some time off to fully understand what you were trying to accomplish. Its the same thing that writers do in order to minimize scripts, just shove it in a drawer and wait. Coming back, my code is sloppy. Although it works, I want it to be as easy to understand as possible.


I am also reprogramming my website. I am not happy that I didnt get it in, but my ego told me I could custom program it in 3 days, this was not the case, and the website remains dormant and sad. So fixing that is something I hope to accomplish as of today (1/19/22)


Getting back to it, I hope to be flying the plane this semester. Remaking my code, doing more work at home, and having at least 10 website removals working before April!


Ready for some more work!

Journal 3

What a hard super mega uber annoying couple of weeks it has been for my project so bear with me here.


I want you to first visualize with me, close your eyes, but still continue reading and stuff. A young, bright kid, starts a project to do removal of people from people search websites. When he starts, he has the most effective solutions already coded and working to remove people from objectively the most popular website, Intelius. This inflated this kid's ego. He successfully exploited a multi-billion dollar corporation! Then, for the first time in nearly 13 years, things changed.

Original Intellius Opt Out

Easy, and efficient

New Opt Out Page

Horrible and Hard to Remove anyone

The anger and sadness that washed over me killed me a little inside. 


I was determined to not let this stop me, but as some guy at some point in time said, “When you can’t control anything, control what you can.” So that's exactly what I did. I moved on to people finder while I tested a new solution, so stay tuned! (Here's a sneak peak)


When it comes to people finder, there were a couple things I realized fairly quickly that made them a perfect test candidate for testing. #1, all their files are local, they are an individualized data broker, making them an easy target for exploiting. #2, they have no security checks outside of captcha, no verification, nothing; one simple gcaptcha and it's good to go. #3, easy final post verification, they only use cookies, so what is the worst that can happen? Regex, regex is the worst that can happen,


When you pull cookies from websites, there can be a variety of elements. For me, the cookies looked like this:


<RequestsCookieJar[<Cookie __cf_bm=XvV3ve4VZOcmpOHLvPugXPBgLaw6pUW7_6wk4Z2Kujs-1676569551-0-ATIqNpA//8d506/Kctedyx5Ux3fbUxOcUSBNk0ield5NEc7x2pboIs9o5ykTQbzdDGFZIcHooG9m2Yhs2LK6mzk= for .peoplefinders.com/>, <Cookie pf.browserid=c161fcf9-495c-45df-b521-9d0b913c63d4 for www.peoplefinders.com/>, <Cookie pf.sessionid=CfDJ8AieCU8EhBxFp7Ve%2B%2B0RbbL%2B7sQ3qnl2W6UJtjyMfiZ8%2FlOCSKjUlmYVUzsfRozVrRElw5Tp9axke42a8toZtmff6ULh86yktCZHURQSLyFQbGGUS5Mz07dcsb9DJtD%2BY%2FMIzwextfH9cABHhU%2FYMmUV1EAL780F7%2FbfvQF5eFQw for www.peoplefinders.com/>, <Cookie pf.xsrf.token=CfDJ8AieCU8EhBxFp7Ve--0RbbK29KsyBxABuR9hyB-95rZ5ZfXgfX9gAFXYGch8CfQKjSZ9idb9mMVB-L0pXmC-vBHY6re2QXz9z05wnMYswZVCS6qRJVE17BMeZilcpPqD29mDDFhV_F578Nm3r8J0LTs for www.peoplefinders.com/>]>


Do you see how it says “for peoplefinders” at the end of every cookie? I need that gone. If I send that with the data, the website's security will detect me using a bot, and instantly ban me, that's bad. So, I need regex to filter out just what I need, from what I don’t. This way, I can send the cookie with little to no repercussions.


Accomplishments


Reflection

I'm very disappointed in myself for how little I have done. I know I could be doing more, but my time management is not where it needs to be, and that feeling is extremely invalidating and frustrating, so, what i'm going to do now is work on it during my vacation and beyond.