Is your MDApps Anonymous?

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MundaneMD

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Hey people, just giving you a heads up:

Just because you make your profile "Anonymous" on MDApps doesn't make it completely anonymous. There is a way to find out the undergrad institution of somebody even if they are anonymous.

Be careful. :eek:

(I don't really care about being anonymous, because I'm not paranoid about adcoms looking at it. But it seems that some people are worried about it, so I thought I would warn them about it.)
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I've actually had people post my name on my profile. I honestly don't care. I give out this information because some people like to see it. It shouldn't make them happy or angry or whatever emotion they feel, but for some they like to lash out at me. I just find it weird.

Anyway, worse things have happened.
 
Yeah, mine's anonymous, cuz I went to a really small school - I don't think there's even 10 of our grads on all of MDapps. I also removed it from my profile here on SDN because I got sick of the trolls....I share it with people I communicate with on a regular basis, and with any people who PM to ask (because that way I know who saw it).
 
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I deeply desire to have my own MDapps page, yet am entirely too paranoid to create one.

What if some crafty adcom uses information gathered clandestinely over the internet to piece together some sort of erroneous picture of who I am and wrongly rejects me? WHAT THEN? ARRRGH INTARWEBZ>!>!/
 
Well, I'm not overly paranoid. I have somewhat unique stats that would make it easy to identify me if you knew who I was. But I took away my undergrad because I think there's all of... one other person on MDApps from my school, and they don't even put the acronym like I did, so they could go to another campus. So it just makes me feel a little more comfortable.
 
What is the big dean if an adcom sees your website? Shoulden't it provide the same exact information that you sent via AMCAS. Aside from it listing all of the schools you are applying too, i don't see the big deal unless you falsified information
 
thegold91 said:
What is the big dean if an adcom sees your website? Shoulden't it provide the same exact information that you sent via AMCAS. Aside from it listing all of the schools you are applying too, i don't see the big deal unless you falsified information
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unless they tie the apps profile to the SDN screen name and see that someone is a heavy weed smoker, or at least claims they are in their posts :eek:
 
inaminute said:
unless they tie the apps profile to the SDN screen name and see that someone is a heavy weed smoker, or at least claims they are in their posts :eek:
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Well then, maybe you should watch what you post? Seriously, if they had enough time to go digging on a wild goose chase, then I expect them not to start weeding out applicants based on just MCAT and GPA.
 
Funny you should say this. Within the last 15 minutes, I clicked on somebody's MDapps profile number. I ended up searching for my medical school, and then looked at the students who are in my class.

Within a minute of reading one of the profiles, I knew exactly who in my class that person was. They are a close friend of mine, but still as friends we'd never talked about MCAT or GPA in anything more than general terms, and now I know exactly what his marks were.

Anonymity has become a huge issue in the medical blogging community, as well. A number of high-profile medical bloggers have shut down their blogs, for similar reasons: one named Barbados Butterfly was disciplined by her hospital administration for posting patient information, even though all of it was altered (full story).

Another blogger, the Flea (winner of the Best Medical Weblog award) had his mask stripped in perhaps the worst of all places - in a courtroom during a malpractice trial (full story). He had posted comments about the plaintiff, the plaintiff's lawyer, the jurors, even revealed the whole defence strategy... and it came back to bite him big time. Blog shut down, case settled for a huge sum.

This is something that crosses my mind every time I post on my blog. I have set Blogger to have some pre-entered template text come up before I write any post, to serve as a warning: "My grandparents read this, and, will this end up getting me sued someday?"

Just because you think you blog or post anonymously, it's still so easy for people to find out who you are.

So, no, don't post how much weed you smoke on sdn. Just a personal recommendation based on what I've seen go down.
 
So how do you go about finding what school they went to if they're anonymous? :idea:
 
Vvandenn said:
So how do you go about finding what school they went to if they're anonymous? :idea:
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I call BS on that...I thought of a way, but no, it didn't work. No matter how you search, my profile doesn't come up when I search for people from my undergrad.
 
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life lesson: NOTHING you post online is really anonymous, especially on SDN. It took about 3 minutes for me to find out the real identity of an SDN poster who made one inflammatory post too many last year.
 
Vvandenn said:
So how do you go about finding what school they went to if they're anonymous? :idea:
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Well, I don't really want to give away the method. It won't work for people who go to relatively unknown colleges, but it works like a charm for a lot of the bigger/known colleges in the US. Things like Harvard, Yale, Penn State, Rutgers, etc...

If you think it's BS, give me an anonymous MDApps number. ;)

I don't really want to give away the method, because the people made their profiles anonymous for a reason. I don't want to cause them any trouble. I just wanted to let them know that if an adcom is really determined, they can find out.
 
Well, since none of this is anonymous anyway, I'd just like it to be stated that I do not partake in drugs or imbibe alcohol. I just thought that all the people present should know that.

:p
 
M Sinner said:
Well, since none of this is anonymous anyway, I'd just like it to be stated that I do not partake in drugs or imbibe alcohol. I just thought that all the people present should know that.

:p
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I figured it'd be an appropriate place to share that I feed herds of homeless cats daily and let hobos shower in my bathroom.:thumbup:
 
MundaneMD said:
Well, I don't really want to give away the method. It won't work for people who go to relatively unknown colleges, but it works like a charm for a lot of the bigger/known colleges in the US. Things like Harvard, Yale, Penn State, Rutgers, etc...

If you think it's BS, give me an anonymous MDApps number. ;)

I don't really want to give away the method, because the people made their profiles anonymous for a reason. I don't want to cause them any trouble. I just wanted to let them know that if an adcom is really determined, they can find out.
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If an adcom is really determined, they can go fishing in the facebook pool and will turn up with wonderful things about their applicants. Of course, by the same token, that's why I completely hidden too! :laugh:
 
I took you up on the offer....I did have my undergrad in my SDN profile, so if any of you have seen it, please don't tell MundaneMD so we can keep the experiment accurate. Mundane, let me know what you think my undergrad institution was.
 
mvenus929 said:
He's pretty fast too... he got mine right.
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I gave him half a goldstar, even though technically he deserves about 0.0068....he gave me a choice of 3 schools, one of which was indeed a school where I took ONE course. He did not, however, even come close to where I did my entire undergrad of 48 courses.:p
 
I guess it doesn't work for Canadians. :D
 
jochi1543 said:
I gave him half a goldstar, even though technically he deserves about 0.0068....he gave me a choice of 3 schools, one of which was indeed a school where I took ONE course. He did not, however, even come close to where I did my entire undergrad of 48 courses.:p
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Considering that most people will apply to their state schools and most states have at MOST 1-2 major schools in the state, I don't really think it takes much of a genius to guess what school a person goes to. Even in a large state like Texas, there are 2 schools you could pick from and get 99% of TX applicants!

If that's not your method, meh? :laugh:
 
TheRealMD said:
Considering that most people will apply to their state schools and most states have at MOST 1-2 major schools in the state, I don't really think it takes much of a genius to guess what school a person goes to. Even in a large state like Texas, there are 2 schools you could pick from and get 99% of TX applicants!

If that's not your method, meh? :laugh:
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Sorry to disappoint you, but nope. Thats not my method. In fact, I figured out what I was doing wrong for Jochi. I narrowed her undergrad down to two colleges. I think that deserves a little more than "0.0068" of a gold star. :p

Fear Me. :smuggrin:
 
does the method only use the MDapp.com website, or is something else involved? I want to figure this out.
 
I figured it out!!!!:hardy: I'm so smart, I could be a doctor! I only did it for myself, so it might still need honing, but anyone want to share their anonymous profile with me so I can check my mad skillz?:hardy:
 
jochi1543 said:
I figured it out!!!!:hardy: I'm so smart, I could be a doctor! I only did it for myself, so it might still need honing, but anyone want to share their anonymous profile with me so I can check my mad skillz?:hardy:
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did you only use the website?
 
I don't know whether mine is anon. or not...how would it not be anonymous anyways?
 
OK, I PMed mvenus, but she's offline now, so anyone here who wants to offer me their anonymous MDapps and wait a minute or two for the result?:thumbup:
 
TheRealMD said:
Considering that most people will apply to their state schools and most states have at MOST 1-2 major schools in the state, I don't really think it takes much of a genius to guess what school a person goes to. Even in a large state like Texas, there are 2 schools you could pick from and get 99% of TX applicants!
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Well, the state I'm in has like 3 major campuses, and a whole bunch of smaller campuses. We have a huge amount of undergrads.

jochi1543 said:
OK, I PMed mvenus, but she's offline now, so anyone here who wants to offer me their anonymous MDapps and wait a minute or two for the result?:thumbup:
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Yeah, I was watching a movie :). She... sorta got it.
 
Wow, yeah, I just figured out how to do this, and it didn't take that long.. Scary.

Thanks for the heads up.
 
maestro1625 said:
life lesson: NOTHING you post online is really anonymous, especially on SDN. It took about 3 minutes for me to find out the real identity of an SDN poster who made one inflammatory post too many last year.
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who was it? :cool:
 
Damn you people! :mad:

I just wanted to let everyone know about not truely being anonymous. And what happens? You guys are pretty persistant in trying figuring out what the trick is! Bah. You guys make me sick.

P.S. If I were you, I would also have tried to figure the trick out. I'm proud of my fellow SDNers. Keep trying. :D
 
Considering the fact that this morning I received like 8 PMs about this from folks who are freaking out, I think I'll contact the owner and see if he can fix it to cease the paranoia - otherwise fewer people will be adding their profiles.
 
i feel paranoid now and dumb because i can't figure it out :mad: what a terrible combination!
 
luckycharms08 said:
i feel paranoid now and dumb because i can't figure it out :mad: what a terrible combination!
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actually. i just figured out a way to get mine to pop up. but it doesn't work really when i try it on others. hm.
 
Pretty sure I've got it figured out now too.


Edit: Nevermind. My method worked for luckycharms08, but not for mvenus . . .
 
trichomoniasis said:
who was it? :cool:
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a regular poster who hasn't posted in a while...thankfully. I never did anything with said information, but if it was so easy for me to do it, just think of the consequences for someone who would...
 
rogerwilco said:
Pretty sure I've got it figured out now too.


Edit: Nevermind. My method worked for luckycharms08, but not for mvenus . . .
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Don't feel too bad... Mundane only got it cause I had my undergrad listed on my profile here. No one else on the site from CO has put down the same undergrad in the same way as I have. That's why Mundane said at the start that it only works for people from big schools, not from smaller schools.
 
Yeah, I figured this out a long time ago... I thought about making my mdapps anonymous, but considering how I was able to figure out where other people went to school, I figured it wouldn't make a difference whether or not I made my school anonymous.

If you go to a school where there are only 1 or 2 people on mdapps, it's not gonna work though.
 
mvenus929 said:
Don't feel too bad... Mundane only got it cause I had my undergrad listed on my profile here. No one else on the site from CO has put down the same undergrad in the same way as I have. That's why Mundane said at the start that it only works for people from big schools, not from smaller schools.
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I KNEW IT! He cheated!:mad: I never looked at your profile for aids!:mad:

I win!:smuggrin:
 
jochi1543 said:
I KNEW IT! He cheated!:mad: I never looked at your profile for aids!:mad:

I win!:smuggrin:
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Nah, I had narrowed it down, but used the college in her SDN profile to confirm it. So yeah, you lose. :p
 
Hey people,

I understand that this "trick" has made many of you nervous. I already sent a message to the creator of MDApps yesterday, so this problem should be fixed soon.

In the meantime, I suggest the following:

1) Clear your home state on MDApps
2) Clear the undergrad college

This will prevent anybody from using the trick. I hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers with this thread.
 
I got it too. I wonder if we are using the same method.
 
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