Spy on people in Chat Groups

Want to spy on people, targets of your investigative journalism or even on colleagues?  You can read someone's email to chat groups, find out not just what they have posted to one group but read their entire cyber footprints -- find out every other chat group they have visited. Start by reading the how-to articles or the easy instructions, then click on the tools.

• Easy, step-by-step instructions         Start here to understand what to do
• Read JNet articles on how to spy     For more background, read these articles
• Google Spy Tools                               Use these tools to start your spying
• Spy on government civil servants

Plus on other JNet pages:

• Privacy watchdogs
• Privacy email tools

"How to Spy" Articles:

• "Media" Column: Spying on Chat groups
• "Media column": Keeping your email private
• "Globe and Mail" article: Caught in the Net

Easy Step-by-step Instructions:

If you don't even know the person

1. Go to Google's Usenet, put in the search term of the topic you are interested in -- for example, "abortion"
2. Click on any of the messages you get
3. If the author interests you, click on his or her name -- NOT the email address -- at the top left hand corner of the message, next to the person's email address.
4. You will find everything that person has written to public usenet groups

If you know someone's email address:

1. Go to Google Advanced Search  
2. In the "author" box, put in the person's email address
3. Press search. You will find everything that person has written to public usenet groups
4. You can also look for anything that person has said in a certain chat group or any keyword that person has used by adding these search terms in the appropriate boxes

If you know part of their address:

If you don't know the person's email address, but only where they work -- or if you want to read all the emailto chat groups from a certain company -- put in just the last part of their address without their name. For example:

*@nytimes.com

will get you messages from people at the New York Times.  

How to avoid being spied upon:

1. Use various email aliases or anonymous services
2. If you do not want Google to archive your message, follow these official instructions from Google:
   
   Type:

   x-no-archive: yes

   into the Other Headers field when posting via Deja.com (or, in the x-header field if posting with a conventional newsreader program). Deja will also recognize this string if it occurs alone as the first line in the body of your message.

   This will not prevent your messages from being archived if they are copied or referenced in a reply to your message

Spy tools:

• Google's Usenet
• Google Advanced Search