*** For the purpose of this blog post, I’m keeping names out of this post to help protect the innocent. This section of the course I have never updated since I drafted it in 2005. During that time, chatting has only gotten easier with every teen having a mobile device and the data online has only gotten that much easier to search and locate ***

I’m going to break down a course that I have given to my family, friends, and Scouts over the years. It is about sharing too much online, and it might not be what you are thinking. This will be a multi-part post.

This is how an Internet predator could possibly use an innocent chat session to find and stalk a school student online. The below chat is 100% fiction, I chose Fredericksburg, Virginia as the location of the chats.

Analyzing the Chat Session

Now it is time to break down this chat session and see how it can be innocent and turn 180 degrees in a few minutes. I have created a “Dox” chart on the right side of the slides to help understand what information is being gained.

The predator, who is posing as CoolDude94, now has a target, a 14-year-old girl from Virginia. And of course, he just “happens” to be a 15-year-old boy and he chooses another state besides Virginia, to keep CutieGirl95 feeling less vulnerable. As the chat continues, he discovers that she has a little brother (this helps him as the younger brother is likely not going to be a threat. He also discovers that she has a computer in her own room, which helps him as he knows she will have privacy and she will be online out of sight of her parents.

Further chatting back and forth, he finds that CutieGirl95 is home alone after school and he never even had to ask, she freely gave him that detail.

Now the next thing our predator is trying to ascertain is what school CutieGirl95 goes to. But he can’t ask the question directly.

Now he knows what school she goes to and then he asks her if she plays any sports, and she tells him she plays midfield on the soccer and field hockey teams. Then they exchange names, CutieGirl95 is Ashley and CoolDude94 is claiming to be Mike.

Now is the most critical part of the chat and that is trying to pinpoint her location. And he leads the chat by talking about the ride he had on the school bus. She took the bait and she gave him details about her bus as well. Sure enough, she tells him that she rides bus #168 and she has a two-minute ride from school and she lives behind the school practice field.

Then it is time to go offline with Ashley, likely so he can stalk someone else.

How the predator finds Ashley

He took the information he found out and used Google to get further details.

If you look closely at the above slide, the school not only posted the girl’s last names but also their phone numbers and email addresses.

To help the parents of students, most schools will put bus schedules online as well.

Now it is a little bit of a guessing game until he does a little more research. So he is now looking for a list of possible locations.

Now he can add the bus number that he got from Ashley

Coupled now with the rough time frame Ashley gave him.

Validation with future chats

Now that he has located his target, he follows up with further chat sessions with her to validate what he found, to get photos of her, and maybe even talk sex with her.

So what happens next?

In 1996 and 1997 Fredericksburg resident Richard Evonitz kidnapped and murdered three Fredericksburg area girls Sofia Silva in 1996 and Kristin and Kati Lisk in 1997.

After Richard Evontiz killed himself by suicide by cop, it was discovered that he had stalked other girls in the region and kept a note book of the girls he was stalking.

Three really simply innocent questions for younger girls

#1 Favorite Teacher, Least Favorite Teacher, Principal

#2 School Mascot

#3 Time get home (or convince to get online ASAP after getting home), or school bus number

I actually worked this backward in order to come up with the information for this course I was teaching to the youth. I started with a name and worked it backward, making up some data to fill in the holes. So now, I wasn’t stalking the real Ashley.