Social Engineering Task # 5

My task was to find “What is Helion Black’s date of birth?

This is a very interesting task, we barely know each other and start the conversation with what’s your date of birth doesn’t seem right. Even if I could ask him after number of blah.. blah.., nobody will ever reveal his/her date of birth unless to a confidential person. So, my approach was take my time (six days) and try to find it through various social media, online, and other methods; rather than directly engage in conversation to make him suspiciously aggravate him.

First of all I researched for real name of Hellion Black. Then searched him online in every possible ways. I was right there, found almost every other detail but the date of birth. I was okay with online search until the point where that online site asked me to pay for specifics which I was looking for, I’m not going to do that. My best possible other option was through his social media pages and among them I found only Facebook as somewhat useful. I worked hard on that, I created a brand new Facebook page which almost resembled his Facebook friends. I was able to get connected to many of his friends and finally sent him Facebook friend request. I was hoping I could get some clue from his Facebook page, unfortunately didn’t get any response. I looked for some clue from his friends (mutual on Facebook) Facebook pages, that wasn’t helpful.

My strategy was effective and thought that can produce me some result. But even after waiting six days for his response on Facebook, I didn’t get any desired outcome. Interestingly I was able to connect to other person with the same name and almost similar appearance from his surrounding area and got the information I needed (I know that’s not good enough).

There was no moral stakes involved. I was too hesitant to make calls to the numbers even though I got as possible telephone numbers of Hellion Black. I value privacy and believe family should not be dragged unnecessarily for our school or business (personal) affairs.

I want to give my full credit to Hellion Black for keeping his online life reasonably secure. His LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram (if any) account won’t reveal any valuable information. It is better to keep our online profile secure, at the same time I acknowledge the fact that because of job nature and social responsibilities that won’t always be very possible for everybody.

When I got this assignment, I was like … not again… This was my fourth out of five task related to the players from our class. Then I said to myself okay, I can try it. I had very good plan on my mind and felt I could execute that. I tried and fell short of what I had to achieve.