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Adcom tracking applicant on sdn
- Thread starter zoner
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My interviewer at HMS had been following me since freshmen year... OF HS!
He knew exactly who I was.
He also had a copy of my baby book and my 1st grade report card. Creepy, huh?
He knew exactly who I was.
He also had a copy of my baby book and my 1st grade report card. Creepy, huh?
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He clearly has no interest in you. My interviewer cut my umbilical cord.
Omg I laughed so hard....
But seriously. That poster said thay they track your internet number (ip? Address) and etc....
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No one is tracking you by your IP address. That's an idiotic suggestion and not even possible bar some nefarious attack.
This has been discussed ad nauseum. I'd suggest checking out one of the one million threads addressing the topic. In short, many schools follow activity in their school-specific threads, and if you provide enough info you will be identified, but no one is going to spend time to try and figure out who random users are. People have better things to do than that.
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That poster doesn't know what he/she is talking about. Any private profile info is kept private by SDN per our privacy policy, including your IP address. Adcoms have no access to that stuff.
However, any information that you publicly share on SDN (in your posts, in your linked MDApps, in the voluntary publicly accessible parts of your profile etc) could potentially be used to figure out who you are but it seems unlikely that an overburdened admissions office is going to spend too much time combing through online SDN profiles... I wouldn't say dumb stuff in the SSD threads you are interested in though just to be on the safe side
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As others have said, they can't look up your IP address. However, if you post identifying information, it would not be that difficult to figure out who you are. How many people do you think are applying to a particular med school with your exact GPA, MCAT, and undergrad?
It's 2012. The Internet is just another public place nowadays, so you should be careful what you say. Posting in general terms (ie giving a GPA range or MCAT range, not posting your specific undergrad or unique ECs) is safer if you are posting anything you might not want someone to look up on you. The chances of any particular adcom member looking you up is probably relatively low, but it's certainly not unheard of.
It's 2012. The Internet is just another public place nowadays, so you should be careful what you say. Posting in general terms (ie giving a GPA range or MCAT range, not posting your specific undergrad or unique ECs) is safer if you are posting anything you might not want someone to look up on you. The chances of any particular adcom member looking you up is probably relatively low, but it's certainly not unheard of.
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Indeed. Zoner been trolling pre osteo for a while now.
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4
487806
Agreed, but isn't tracking IP address illegal?
4
487806
Well, Zoner will be a Goner pretty soon.
mmmcdowe
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I was correctly identified and emailed by Case Western during my interview cycle due to something that I had posted. It wasn't negative, just an answer to a question that I had asked. That being said, I used to have a photo of myself as my avatar and some other obvious reasons to be an easy ID. Just be mindful of what you post, both in terms of your attitude and your personal information.
Why do you say that? I think some of you guys are neurotic about using that word
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People in pre osteo tell you something and then you come ask pre allo if its true? Really?
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Uh... Yeah sure if you think that fits the definition of trolling, call me whatever you like. So really what? Whats going on in your tiny brain of yours? Explain
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It's not trolling so much as annoying and a waste of everyone's time.
(sent from my phone)
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actually, VB (the forum software) collects IPs from every poster. It would be possible, but SDN would have to play ball with the AdComs to get your info. It isnt impossible for then to record IP from secondary apps submitted online either.
I only know this because I admin a car forum using an adaption of this software and we can look up IPs to check if someone has re-made a screenname to troll our site. It isnt super clean as regions can share and alternate IPs, but it works fairly well.
annoying and waste of time? On internet forums? No way!😱😱😱
Does sdn do this too to track trolling?
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I have no idea what SDN does. SDN is owned by a company or LLC (something to that effect) and has more rigid policies that we do at our site (being completely private we do what we want 😎). Someone mentioned the privacy policy here at SDN. I have no doubts that SDN is protecting our privacy in accordance to all TOS agreements, I was only saying that IP tracking on forums really isnt that hard or some conspiracy like nick was suggesting. Depending on browser settings I can even set up our site to show me the last several websites a user visited before coming to our forum. On the interwebs you drag an awful lot of info around with you wherever you go.
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Um well let's see here its.... UGH 
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Haha, no, it's perfectly legal. Almost every site and service will keep activity logs with IP addresses. There's even been talk of making those logs legally required for law enforcement purposes. Your ISP already most likely holds logs of everything you've done online in the last six months too.
However, contrary to popular belief an IP address is pretty useless on its own. To find out who was behind the IP address you have to get the ISP to tell you who had that address at a given time. To further complicate things, multiple people can have the same IP address on a given day. Indeed, if you look at court briefings of people busted by the FBI for internet crimes you'll find that often multiple other, innocent people were raided because they shared the same IP address during the times the FBI was interested in.
If you're concerned about being tracked you should be more worried about cookies and scripts. In addition, your browser can uniquely identify you everywhere if its header is unique enough (if you use firefox with a ton of add-ons, for example, you may very well be the only person in the world with that browser fingerprint) since sites also see browser headers.
None of this is usable by an adcom or other forum users though. If you're worried about that all you need to be concerned about is the stuff you say on here.
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I didn't say it was a conspiracy. What I implied was that given SDN's policy with respect to user information, the only way for an adcom to acquire connection information would be to compromise the site's security. SDN is not freely offering up user data to private entities assuming it follows its own policies.
(sent from my phone)
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you just used the phrase "nefarious attack". I agree that SDN isn't likely to share this information, but I was just trying to make it known that IP tracking wasn't some spy vs spy type thing. Privacy policy alone is what keeps adcoms from having our IPs (assuming they even cared enough to try to get them in the first place... all things considered only about 2% (hipshot estimate) of current medical students are members here so IP tracking via SDN isnt terribly high yield.....)
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It's not like it's useful. Unless you have a way to subpoena an ISP, the best you can do is narrow the range down to a certain geographic area which may or may not be correct. Most consumer IP addresses are dynamic, too. My IP address changes whenever my modem reboots.
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I honestly doubt that an adcom is going to waste time figuring out who you are, unless you post something offensive. They are busy people, and probably don't care who you are unless there's a reason to know you haha
4
487806
Great, it makes it sound like we're being watched. But you're right, it's best to avoid posting personal stuff online... Facebook isn't good for that reason.
Zoner just got owned.
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No school is making a concerted effort to track sdn members. How do I know? Because it would be a wild goose chase, in general, as well as a massive waste of time. They've got much better things to do.
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I keep a notepad document of people I may potentially be interviewing this year.
However...
1) My vote means little to nothing.
2) It is for their benefit more than anything. Just reminders of interesting crap to ask them about.
3) Vascular surgery is kinda small, so in all of SDN there are like 5 people to keep track of.
However...
1) My vote means little to nothing.
2) It is for their benefit more than anything. Just reminders of interesting crap to ask them about.
3) Vascular surgery is kinda small, so in all of SDN there are like 5 people to keep track of.
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Notepad document? They aren't even important enough for you to make a word document?!
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In real life, I go by the name "Captain Crunch". Good luck finding me.
...someone please tell me that they get the reference.
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word docs are for noobs.
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You monster. I bet you use Microsoft paint and spit on kittens too.
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I do use MS Paint. I don't spit on kittens though.
I spent an entire semester in a class that taught me how to use Illustrator and Photoshop. I still use MS Paint 🙂
