Getting to the Truth About Illuminati.am

I took some interest in a Twitter account for Illuminatiam who claim to be the real Illuminati and state that their goal is to lead the human race to a better and brighter future.

In addition to the mentioned Twitter account, they also have two websites the "official " site and another which is the link most often distributed to the public. They also have accounts on Facebook, Vine (I guess to appeal to teenagers who may wish to join), Google+ (for some reason), Instagram and a YouTube channel where they posted this really well-made video.

All of these social networking sites are listed on their Verified Accounts page, in order to let their followers know which accounts are truly associated with them and aren't fakers along for the ride..

This seemed to be harmless enough. I followed them on Twitter for awhile until I got bored and unfollowed them. I'm still on their email list (handled by Mailchimp) which I ignored, until recently.

One day out of curiosity, I revisited the Twitter feed to see what they were up to and I really can't say that I was surprised by what I found: they were selling stuff.

When I say "stuff", I'm not talking just about their book. They're also selling medallions and even a nifty box to keep them in, as well as some items which have been discontinued, such as "Banner of Light" for members to hang on their wall, etc.all of which is sold via their Department of Distribution. The Department's website is given as departmentofdistribution.com but it simply redirects to here.

Their book "Illuminatiam: The First Testament Of The Illuminati" is sold through Amazon and Illuminatiam is listed as the author. You are able to read an excerpt of the book online, but the entire book was uploaded to the Internet by an unknown third party who apparently got their hands on a copy, photographed the pages and uploaded the pictures. Unfortunately, that link is no longer available. 

So, how to find out who these people are? One way to start is to try to discover to whom the websites are registered.

Illuminatia.am

Registrant:

Obsidian Maskreet

8549 Wilshire Blvd

Beverly Hills, 90211

US

Administrative contact:

Helen Milano

ILLUMINATIAM

8549 Wilshire Blvd

Beverly Hills, 90211

US

IlluminatiOfficial.org is registered anonymously through Domains By Proxy. No surprises there.

DepartmentOfDistribution.com is simply listed as registered by Helen Milano of Illuminatiam LLC, with no address provided. However, there is an Illuminatiam LLC registered in Wyoming to Dan Keen. The name Dan Keen is associated with numerous companies registered in Wyoming, not just Illuminatiam. One reason to have a registered agent out of the state you live in could be for tax purposes. Wyoming is considered much friendlier than California when it come to business taxes and whoever is running Illuminatiam had better be paying taxes with all the stuff they are selling to their followers.

Okay, so let's take these one at a time:

The address 8549 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills, CA appears to simply be a mail drop service. However, a phone number is also provided: 310-883-4423 and finding who the phone number belongs to is simple enough. It is currently being used as the business number of Spees Fitness, which is owned by Tanner Spees. You can visit his website, Facebook and Istagram pages.and the same phone number is used as in Illuminati.am's WhoIs record.

So, who is Tanner Spees? He's a circuit training instructors based in Los Angeles. He's got a nice website, I must admit. I couldn't find any connection between him and Helen Milano, aside from his phone number associated with a website she registered.

Hellen Milano claims to work for a public relations company called Lirim and her company supposedly handles public relations for Illuminatiam. I found the company website, Twitter and Facebook pages. The company makes this claim about themselves

Lirim is a public relations firm specializing in image management, branding, and global marketing strategies for religious and governmental heads of state.

Even though the website is registered in California to a person named Dana Camden, but using the same address given for Illuminati.am, I could find no listing of it as a registered business in that state. I couldn't find anything about who their past or present clients are, which is odd because you'd think that glowing reviews from their clients would attract new clients. The only client they appear to have is Illuminatiam, though they claim to have a large number of them. I'm rather suspicious about their claim to be working on behalf of "religious and government heads of state" because people in such positions already have subordinates to handle public relations on their behalf and wouldn't normally need to hire from the outside.

Helen Milano posted this in her Twitter feed and pinned it at the top, so it's the first thing you see when you get there

Clearing up confusion: I am not the author of the Illuminatiam Testament. I'm the PR director at @LirimPR and @Illuminatiam is our client.

— Helen Milano (@HelenMilanoPR) January 11, 2015

Fair enough. Although it is never explained why the Illuminati would even need a public relations company, especially one which doesn't seem to be very well-known. You'd think that they'd hire a larger firm with more resources.

So, why register the website under her own name, using a rented mailbox and another business' phone number? Well, that may simply be one of the services Lir.im provides. However, I couldn't find any other websites registered under her name or using that particular address except for IlluminatiTestament.com and one other site which I will discuss shortly.

Illuminatiam doesn't seem to do very much, aside from offering items for sale to their followers and occasionally posting what I suppose are uplifting messages to encourage their flock.

In fact, they even boast about shutting down what they call "fake Illuminati profiles"

In 2015, our associates closed over 475 fake Illuminati profiles. Beware impostors. Visit https://t.co/A9R2zAcxLK for our official pages. ▲

— Illuminatiam ❂ (@ILLUMINATIAM) December 29, 2015

No proof is offered to prove any accounts were ever shutdown by Illuminatiam's followers. But, if that has actually occurred, it would be a rather disturbing development. This makes it look like Illuminatiam is trying to assert itself as the real Illuminati and is trying to silence the competition. After all, there is very little that excites people more than being a member of an elite, semi-secret organization. It gives them a sense of purpose and a feeling that they are better than the unwashed masses around them. This isn't always a bad thing. It is usually just harmless self-indulgence on the part of the gullible. But sometimes, groups like this can become quite dangerous. Sometimes, the leaders of such groups inspire their followers to commit crimes and in other cases, followers do things on their own while thinking that the leaders may approve.

So far, Illuminatiam hasn't asked their followers to do anything except buy their products.

Recently, Illuminatiam posted this on their Twitter feed

An important announcement will be made in 2016. Follow the Illuminati's official pages to ensure you receive it. ▲ https://t.co/tfR2pb2RSe

— Illuminatiam ❂ (@ILLUMINATIAM) December 14, 2015

I suspect that Illuminatiam will release an "Illuminati Bible" in 2016, the initial Testament having been released to see how many people would actually purchase a book they were selling. Perhaps, sales of that book, as well as the medallions and other items they've sold in the past, were good enough that they may feel that it's a potential gold mine waiting to be exploited.

Add to that the fact that the domain IlluminatiBible.com has already been purchased and it's simply waiting to be built-up makes me pretty certain that this is what's going to happen next year. Here's the WhoIs report for that site.

Domain Name: ILLUMINATIBIBLE.COM

Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com

Registrant Name: Helen Milano

Registrant Organization: Lirim Public Relations

Name Server: NS09.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Name Server: NS10.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

DNSSEC: unsigned

In my opinion, Illuminatiam is a money-making scheme cooked-up by a few people who can build a decent website, make a good video, spread themselves over social networks, post some esoteric verbiage on their Twitter feed and market some junk to sell to the gullible. Sadly, they seem to have some people who post that they are "always loyal" to the Illuminatiam on Twitter, as well as actually buying whatever they're selling.

The people running Illuminatiam aren't stupid enough to tangle with the Tax Man and have registered themselves as an LLC in Wyoming, which taxes businesses at a lower rate than California, where Illuminatiam seems to have its base.

I've seen a lot of websites that claim Illuminatiam is some sort of cult or is actually the real Illuminati. Personally, I don't suspect anything of the sort.

In my opinion, it has all the marks of a money-making scheme, nothing more. The most frequent complaint I have seen about buying their swag is that it takes several weeks for them to actually ship the products to buyers. So, despite their supposed power and influence, the Illuminatiam can't mail t-shirts in a timely manner.

Over a year after I posted this entry, I discovered that it had been used as source material for an episode of the Quinnsider, which is rather cool, even though they got my last name wrong. The host, Quinn Wolf, disagreed with my belief that Illuminatiam is likely just a money-making scheme because they seem to have gone to too much effort for that to be the case. But, I think that the simplest explanations are often the most accurate.

Illuminatiam now has an online forum for its members to participate. Since I'm still receiving their emails and I received an invitation, I tried to join. I tried to join, but apparently they don't want me in their forums because they seem to have rejected my attempts to create an account and log-in, likely because of this blog post you are reading.

Yeah, I'm just crying myself to sleep over that. 

I'm still subscribed to their email list and I'll probably stay on it, just to see what else comes down from these clowns, unless they realize their oversight and kick me off.



Duane Browning

Venmo: @Duane-Browning-1

CashApp: $DuaneBrowning

Before You Buy That Used Cell Phone

I was recently speaking to a friend who had bought a used cell phone for her husband to use at his new job. Like most people, she wanted to save as much money as she could and didn't want to spend $600+ dollars for the iPhone 6Plus when she could spend about half that amount.

So, she and her husband went to a store that sells secondhand phones, picked one they like for what they thought was a good price and went home with their phone.

They discovered later when they tried to conect the phone to her cellular account that the phone had been reported stolen, They went  back to the store, told the owner what had happened and he traded them the stolen one for another phone he assured them wasn't stolen property.

However, that phone also turned out to be stolen.

I still remember the days when cell phones had just become available to the public when if your phone had been stolen, there was nothing to stop someone from using your phone after they had stolen it or from selling it to someone else who could also use it, etc.

Sure, you could call your provider to report the stolen phone and have it disconnected from your network. But, the thief could simply have it connected to another one who would have no way of knowing that the phone they were connecting to was stolen property.

Thankfully, those days are coming to an end and there are ways to prevent your phone from being used by a thief who has stolen it, as well as to protect yourself from buying a secondhand phone that had been stolen from someone else.

Every cell phone has a unique IMEI number assigned to it and no two phones will have the same number. These numbers are stored in databases which are easily searchable by the public.

Bookmark these addresses on your cellphone browser for when you go shopping to buy a secondhand cell phone for yourself or a friend.

Apple
https://www.icloud.com/activationlock/

Swappa
https://swappa.com/esn

IMEI
http://www.imei.info/

CheckESENFree
http://www.checkesnfree.com/


Duane Browning


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Danica Dillon versus Josh Duggar

Like many people, I read with great interest the news report of a porn star, with the stage name Danica Dillon, who claims to have been paid for sex on two separate occasions by Josh Duggar.

According to her story, Duggar was very rough with her during their first appointment. She claimed that he had flipped her around "like a rag doll". According to her interview with Entertainment Tonight he approached her again some weeks later, apologized for being so rough with her and asked for a second chance. She relented and she said that he was "a completely different person", though still a little rough.

Aside from a bit of titillation and a sense of "gotcha" on Duggar, with the revelations of his sexual abuse of young girls and his two Ashley Madison accounts, this seemed like small potatoes by comparison.

Jump forward a couple of months and Danica Dillon is reported to have filed a half-million dollar lawsuit against Duggar for his behavior during their two trysts earlier this year. Despite her earlier claim that he was only "a little rough" during their second encounter, she now claims that the second time was as violent and tortuous as the first. According to her court filings, she is so traumatized by what Duggar supposedly did to her that she has to undergo counseling and is unable to work in her profession.

Okay, I've got a few observations to make about this. But, first...

Full Disclosure

I used to work in Honolulu strip clubs as a disc jockey and was in the business for several years and during that time, I became very familiar with strip clubs and somewhat familiar with the porn industry, as well as the escort business.

I have absolutely no problem with anyone who chooses to work in the Adult Industry as a stripper, porn actor or escort, as long as they do so of their own free will.

Porn Star = Great Sex?

Some guys might be under the impression that having sex with a porn star might be the best sex they could possibly have and would be an experience beyond any sex they could have with anyone else. If you see ads posted by porn stars who advertise themselves being available as escorts, you'll see that their asking prices are far above what other escorts would ask for.

In the Age of the Internet we now live in, it's possible to find out how much an escort would ask for versus how much a porn star would and the results are quite significant. On average, a porn star escort asks for "donations" roughly 5 to ten times what other escorts do. So, Danica Dillon's $1500 is about average for a porn star escorting.I've seen figures that are much higher, ranging into thousands of dollars for one hour of their time. Of course, they wouldn't ask for that kind of money if they didn't think they could get it.

You may be wondering if it's worth it. Is sex with a porn star actually better than sex with any other woman, including escorts who don't work in porn?

Fortunately there are websites where men who patronize prostitutes can post reviews of how much or little of a good time they actually had and if it was really worth the money. Guys who have paid for sex with porn starts occasionally frequent these sites and talk about their time with whatever porn star they had sex with.

Overall, the results I've seen didn't indicate that these men enjoyed having sex with a porn star any more than with other escorts they had already seen and some men didn't think it was worth it at all. Often, porn stars who also work as escorts don't want reviews of them posted on the Internet, possibly for that reason.

So, from what I've read of reviews posted by johns, having sex with a porn star is no better or worse than having sex with any other woman. Maybe she might be willing to do things your wife or girlfriend wouldn't, but she'd probably not be better than other escorts in your city who charge a fraction of whatever the porn star does. So, sex with a porn star is kind of like buying a brand name shirt, you could have gotten something just as good for a lot less money.

And now, here are my opinions and observations on this lawsuit.

Unclean Hands

First of all, Danica Dillon's suit appears to be tainted by what lawyers refer to as "unclean hands". Dillon admits to accepting money from Duggar on two occasions in exchange for sexual services. This is prostitution and prostitution is illegal in all 50 states, with limited exceptions in Nevada. In Pennsylvania, where the first encounter took place, prostitution is a third degree misdemeanor. It is extremely unlikely that Danica wouldn't have known this when she agreed to accept the $1500 from Josh to go to a hotel room to have sex with him. They weren't just two consenting adults having sex, they were both breaking the law: Duggar for offering her money for sex and Dillon for accepting money for sex. The starting point for both events is a criminal act. By filing the lawsuit, Dillon is publicly admitting that she has engaged in prostitution.

Reckless Disregard for Personal Safety

Assuming what Dillon claims happened is what really happened, looking at it from a neutral point of view makes me wonder why she seemed to be so unconcerned for her personal safety while it was happening. Never mind the fact that she went to a hotel room with a guy she didn't know and had just met earlier that night. She claims that he didn't use a condoms. While I can't claim firsthand knowledge, even streetwalkers don't have sex with customers without a condom (convenience stores in areas where streetwalkers can be found often keep large stocks of condoms for sale) and I think most professional escorts would do the same. Yet, Dillon risked catching a sexually-transmitted disease, as well as pregnancy by not insisting he use one. Also, if he was so rough, did she tell him to stop while it was happening? Reading the news stories and watching the video posted above, she seems to have just laid there while he physically and verbally abused her. For all she knew, he could have killed her in that hotel room and her children would have had to go on without their mother. Imagine that: your mom gets killed turning a trick in a hotel room.

Way to give a shit about not only your own safety, but the welfare of your kids, Danica.

Oh, but it doesn't end there. She let him have a second chance only a month later. Any jury would ask themselves, if he was so bad the first time, why did you let him do it again?

Do you suppose I could go out with a woman, beat her up and rape her, then go back a month later to apologize, ask for a second chance and get one? I don't think so. What woman in her right mind would give me a second opportunity? Apparently, Danica Dillon would.

According to the court document, for the first encounter, Duggar actually followed Dillon to her hotel and propositioned her there. Didn't that creep her out, just a little? Most women would have had alarm bells going-off in their heads at that point.

She Can't Work? Really?

Dillon claims that the two encounters with Duggar left her so traumatized that she can't work in her chosen profession.

What "chosen profession" is that? If she's saying that she can't dance in strip clubs anymore, a quick look at her Twitter feed tells me differently. She has continued to tour around the USA and work at exotic dance clubs.

Maybe she can't make porn anymore? Again, her Twitter feed doesn't indicate that, though she has slowed it down a bit, claiming to need to concentrate on her personal life. But that decision came after the announced lawsuit.

Or is it because she can't work as a prostitute anymore? Well, that really can't be considered damaging, since she wasn't supposed to be prostituting herself in the first place.

So, exactly how has she been negatively effected by her encounters with Josh Duggar? Her claims of being mentally traumatized by him must be weighed against the first interview she did and the fact that she agreed to see him a second time.

Don't Expect to Get Paid, Danica

Dillon claims that, despite Duggar agreeing to pay her $1500 for the first time and only giving her $1000. I don't know if he paid her whatever he promised for the second time.

Still, if she's anticipating some big payoff, she might not want to get her hopes up. Duggar's family life is in tatters and his reputation is down the toilet. Josh isn't going to be bringing in the Big Bucks for a long time, if ever. If his wife decides to divorce him, Duggar's finances will be destroyed and there will be nothing left for Dillon to squeeze out of him.

It's entirely possible that Josh Duggar will try to rehabilitate his image when he gets out of rehab. Assuming his wife doesn't divorce him, he may try to reinvent himself in the same way that Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart did after their sexual misbehaviors became public knowledge. He might write a book about his "struggles with sexual addiction" and go on speaking tours around the country.

But, I wouldn't put too much faith (see what I did there?) in that being a way for Duggar to repair his shattered reputation. While Swaggart and Bakker did make minor comebacks, they were never as big as they had been pre-scandal. American evangelical Christians aren't known for being very forgiving in regards to sexual scandals committed by people they once idolized.

All that being said, I really can't see a judge or jury awarding Dillon any sort of damages. Remember, her "trauma" was the result of committing the act of prostitution on two occasions. In other words, she wants to be paid damages for injuries she suffered while she was breaking the law.

As I mentioned, prostitution is illegal in all 50 states, with limited exceptions in Nevada, and the government wants to discourage people from either being or patronizing prostitutes and rewarding damages to Dillon would, in effect, be rewarding her for breaking the law. The government's responsibility is to punish lawbreakers and awarding her damages could be seen as condoning her actions and the State cannot do that.

To make matters worse for Danica, her real name is now public knowledge, as is the fact that her husband is in the US Navy. I have no idea how the Navy would react to that bit of information, especially if he were in a supervisory role where he is stationed.

Simply by looking through her Twitter feed, Danica has gone back to her life of porn with a little bit of extra fame on the side. But, I hope she's not anticipating a big payoff from Josh Duggar in her future, because I think she'll be waiting a long time.

So, you may wonder what she should have done?

In my opinion, she should have just chalked the first appointment up as a lesson learned: don't take total strangers to your hotel room. She got roughed-up, scared and insulted. For that, she got $1000 cash money.

There have been prostitutes who have gotten killed by their customers.So, Danica Dillon can just cry me a river.


Duane Browning

From ExposingJohns to FlushTheJohns

It seems that some scams are here to stay. Whether it's the notorious 419 scam or fake lotteries, some ideas have so much traction that there will always be new people out there willing to give it a try for themselves.

Such is the case with ExposingJohns.com and its copycats. I've seen or heard of various sites that will post a man's name, phone number, city of residence and photo, etc and accuse him of soliciting prostitutes via the Internet. Sites like these claim to be acting in the Public Good and men whose information has been posted are expected to either pay hundreds of dollars to have their information removed from the site or risk their friends, relatives and coworkers seeing it and to suffer the resulting damage to their reputations.

I wrote about another would-be ExposingJohns replacement, Solicitly.com, which I stated was a rather unimpressive site which the people behind it seemed to have given-up working on. In the comments for that blog post, I was informed of yet another new blackmail site called FlushTheJohns.org and I decided to have a look.

Overall, it's pretty well-made. They seem to have copypasted text directly off ExposingJohns' site before it was taken down and put it up on their own without changing the text. See this on their Removal FAQ page

Why are ExposingJohns.com users doing this? Don’t we have a right to privacy? 

Everyone; including wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, family members, co-workers, current employers and neighbors have the right to know what’s going on online and in their neighborhoods. Just like any other illegal activity of concern that is exposed. ExposingJohns.com is no different than a complaint board that exposes the information of those who abuse the trust of the public. There are very serious issues arising such as the spread of STDs to the innocent, child exploitation and human trafficking. In our day and age, this is all now exacerbated by the easy sale of sex online. Since it is so easy to commit such crimes online it is our user’s job to make it easy to be exposed.

So, we're not dealing with mental giants here. At last count, the site has 8,554 listed posted. Most of these don't have the personal names of the men who supposedly called, though many do have city of residence. Random checks of phone numbers through the Facebook search engine yield no matches, so far. So, FlushTheJohns seems to not want to invest as much effort behind its site as ExposingJohns did.

Of course, the website is registered anonymously. Frankly, I would have shat myself if they weren't.

However, the servers are out of Sofia, Bulgaria and this gives us a place to start. The servers are owned by a Bulgarian company called Qhoster and it appears to be a legitimate company that's been around for awhile. As pointed-out in a previous article, Bulgaria doesn't even have any laws related to Internet-based crime, so using Bulgarian servers would seem like a good play.

On their site, FlushTheJohns says this

Can I pay you to take down a post about me? 

No. You may not pay us to take down a post about you. We would not take down a post for any amount of money. You can offer us $1,000, $10,000 or $100,000. We do not remove posts simply upon demand, request, nor as a result of threats, cajoling, or assertions of liability. We only remove posts if ordered to do so by a court order, the original poster or a trusted arbitrator.

Since the site is using foreign servers and gives no address where a court order would be served, the last sentence is a fucking joke. As far as who a "trusted arbitrator" would be, you only need to go to one of the entries and click the button that says
 

Doing that takes you off Flushthejohns.org and to DisputeThis.net which is a website that claims to serve as an arbitrator that resolves disputes over Internet content.

The agreement that you see at the link (here's a sample) informs you that you must agree to pay $399 to have the content removed. It also contains rather odd language for a legal agreement, rather like a layman wrote it. I'll underline and bold the relevant part:

By submitting a Complaint with us, the decision rendered by DisputeThis constitutes their sole and exclusive remedy and the you waives any and all claims and causes of action, actual and potential, known and unknown, accruing from the beginning of time until the effective date of the arbitration decision, against DisputeThis, the original host website, and their representatives, contractors, and employees. 

"From the beginning of time"? Are you fucking stupid?

This idiotic language inspired me to have a closer look at DisputeThis, despite the rather hostile tone FlushTheJohns takes against them

In an effort to help facilitate people who may be falsely posted as a cheater on our website, we used to use a 3rd party arbitration company called DisputeThis. However, they have been doing things behind our backs to take us down and have been asking too many questions about who we are. If you us their service, tell them to leave us alone, not the webmasters. You can also use a service called Truth In Posting (truthinposting.com) for removal.

Given that ExposingJohns seemed to have a similar relationship with their one-time advertiser, InternetReputation.com, I don't take this statement seriously and neither should you.

Okay, first of all, DisputeThis.net seems to be a very new site, only being created in October 2014. It is also anonymously registered and its servers are in the Netherlands. The Dutch servers are interesting, especially since the mailing addresses given on their website are in Australia and Vietnam, with the Vietnam office apparently being their headquarters.

This sounds like the "trusted arbitrators" are trying very hard to not have people know who and where they are. This is further evidenced by the provided pictures of their "staff".

Recognize this guy? You should. According to DisputeThis, he is their case manager and his name is Paul Walshe. But, doing a quick and simple Google Image search reveals that this picture is apparently clip art and this picture is given various names across various websites.

How about her? According to DisputeThis, she's Karen Wilson, the business account manager. You'll find her picture in many of the same places as the first one.

Supposedly, this is Nick Eubanks, who handles software support. You may have guessed by now that he's just another piece of clip art.

So, neither of these sites could be trusted.

The "Evidence"

Getting back to FlushTheJohns, looking through the profiles they've posted so far, it's obvious that they haven't invested as much effort as ExposingJohns did. While they post phone numbers, they typically don't include photos of the men they are accusing. 

As far as the accusatory texts offered as evidence, ExposingJohns showed that texts could easily be fabricated. While some of the texts shown are rather tame (e.g. saying "What's up?:) others are a bit more flagrant and certainly do look like the type of message sent to prostitutes by potential johns.

Nevertheless, there is no real evidence that any of the phone numbers given on FlushTheJohns is really the source of the texts displayed. For matters of  criminal prosecution, there is no unbroken line of evidence. It's simply the word of whoever is behind FlushTheJohns and the men being accused.

If any man receives a text from FlushTheJohns demanding payment to delete the profile or that they would press charges, the potential victim can simply tell them to go fuck themselves. There is absolutely nothing that could be done to any of the accused men based on "evidence" posted on the website.

Here are two things any first year law student could tell you:

1. Suspicion is not evidence; and
2. Accusation does not equal guilt,

In Conclusion

If your name and/or phone number is posted on FlushTheJohns and they send you a text message demanding payment, tell them to fuck-off and then change your phone number. If anyone asks you why you changed your number, tell them that telemarketers are harassing you.

If a friend, relative, coworker, employer or spouse confronts you with whatever is posted about you on the site, deny everything. Tell them that you've been receiving harassing text messages from Internet scammers or telemarketers.

If they ask how they got your phone number, tell them that you don't know. Maybe they hacked a website (e.g. Amazon.com) that you bought something from. Who knows?

Let me tell you one way that scammers can get your phone number and discover your name and city of residence:

There are millions of cellphone numbers out there and many of them have been collected by hackers over the years and put up for sale on the Dark Web. Numerous banks, online merchants and even the Federal Government have fallen prey to hackers.

Someone planning a scam, like FlushTheJohns, could buy some of these lists and enter the phone numbers into an address book. Once entered, they go to Facebook and click "Find Friends" and Facebook will search for profiles with that phone number. Too many people enter their phone numbers when they sign-up for Facebook, especially when they use the mobile app. If they make themselves searchable by their phone number, it's that much easier for scammers to find your profile, which tells them your name and city of residence.

It could be done even more simply by using a computer program to generate the numbers for them, so they won't have to pay for the lists.

With this knowledge, they can generate a profile for you on their site, create some phony texts messages on a template and post it online.

This is all done with the somewhat justifiable hope that the costs of acquiring the phone numbers, as well as the expense of maintaining the website will be offset by payments from frantic men eager to have the profile deleted as quickly as possible.

So, any threats of criminal prosecution by FlushTheJohns are empty threats and shouldn't be taken seriously. Just follow the advice I've offered and you should be okay.

The Nuclear Option

I feel that I should mention that one reason ExposingJohns may no longer exist is that it pissed-off the wrong person. That person went on to Hackers List and paid someone to hack ExposingJohns and take it offline. My blog entries related to ExposingJohns experienced a sudden and dramatic increase in views on the days after the hit was put out. Only a few days later, ExposingJohns was no longer posting john-shaming profiles and now serves as a site where you can download files.

For the record: it wasn't me who hacked ExposingJohns and I have no idea who put out the contract. Even if I knew, I wouldn't rat them out, because Anonymous is Legion. They don't forgive and they don't forget.

So, the people behind FlushTheJohns may not want to invest too much time behind this scheme, since lightning could conceivably strike twice. They posted over eight thousand profiles so far. So, for all this to be worth what time, effort and money they have already invested, at least half of their prospective victims will have to pay-up. If not, it was all for nothing.

Duane Browning