Messing about with a found USB-Stick

So I walk into the local drug store the other day to print some photos on one of these do-it-yourself-machines.

I notice somebody's forgotten their little panda-shaped USB-Stick in the slot! - Naturally, I don't give in to curiosity but immediately inform staff about it, never to find out what's on it..............

So when I pop it into my PC at home, I find there is only about 100 KB of data on it, three pictures: an emo-couple kissing and posing for the camera. I try to do a google image-backwards-search on the pictures but am left with zero results. The file name doesn't get me anywhere either. So I'm thinking, mystery unsolved, but yay, free USB-Stick.

Yesterday I was going to use the stick for my own purposes and copy some data onto it ... that's when I hesitated and thought ... couldn't it be possible there was some deleted data on it that could be restored? I don't know about these kinds of things normally, but after some googling, I do a scan on the stick with a free program and BAM - 59 Photos restored! (along with four shitty emo-trash-metal mp3s and the entire movie "Ted" in German ... ) So over a GB of data that was still on there, including pictures of the same girl kissing another dude, probably her ex whose photo she printed out prior to her printing out the pictures with her current boyfriend.

Having so much more information at hand, I eventually manage to locate the facebook profiles of the two people in the photographs.

Now I'm thinking ... It's kinda scary how much I could mess with these people just from finding this little stick! I could post the picture of her kissing her ex on the dude's page and probably totally fuck up their relationship. I could send a fake DMCA letter for downloading "TED" and have her send me money ... But that's just nasty bullshit and I'm not gonna do that, of course.

But what I might actually do is this: Go back to the shop, print out all restored photographs and send them back to her in the mail along with her USB-Stick.

let the inner demons in you decide

just format the usb stick and move on with your life

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:50 PM, Frankie5fingers said:

lol.

how'd you reverse-engineer their facebook?

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:57 PM, david said:

 

just format the usb stick and move on with your life

I try to be more apathetic next time round!

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:58 PM, phling said:

how'd you reverse-engineer their facebook?

I had it all set in my mind - I was gonna figure out the partially displayed band-logos on their t-shirts and search for facebook-profiles from the area that had these bands added as likes ... but in the end, it was pretty dull: there was a html that was restored. She probably tried to right-click and save the picture from facebook but saved the html by accident, then deleted it right away, but it was still lurking about on the drive and simply contained her user name.

Was a bit of a letdown really, I was all set to totally go Private Investigator on the case!

I've actually done this before with another stick I found outside just lying on a wet road. That one was actually kind of impressive: It contained only blurry pictures of a horse, yet me and my friend managed to locate the exact coordinates and the farm where the photographs had been taken, merely by comparing the style of a streetlight visible in the background on streetview.

It was a long night.

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:58 PM, phling said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:50 PM, Frankie5fingers said:

 

lol.

 

how'd you reverse-engineer their facebook?

dead easy if you've got pictures that happen to have already been uploaded to facebook.

edit: OP delivered!

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:45 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

But what I might actually do is this: Go back to the shop, print out all restored photographs and send them back to her in the mail along with her USB-Stick.

This would be a nice gesture, well just the mailing of the USB would probably be enough.

quick someone get this guy a detective badge

Well ha-ha it's a little late for that sir as I've already crafted one out of toilet roll and a bit of crêpe paper, duh.

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:23 PM, joshuatx said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:45 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

But what I might actually do is this: Go back to the shop, print out all restored photographs and send them back to her in the mail along with her USB-Stick.

 

This would be a nice gesture, well just the mailing of the USB would probably be enough.

No.

Reminds me of a time I found a MP3 player on a trans-Atlantic flight...

Stop teasing, Joyrex, just leak us all the juicy Vengaboys and S Club 7 tracks already!

Well, it was originally chock-full of tracks by some guys named Aphex Twin and AFX (LOL I thought it was Eddie Murphy's MP3 player with the AFX (Axel-F) stuff), but I deleted all that and replaced it with dope tracks from Far East Movement.

Create a fake Facebook profile and use one of their photos as a profile photo and them send them a friend request.

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:51 PM, Squee said:

Create a fake Facebook profile and use one of their photos as a profile photo and them send them a friend request.

lol

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:51 PM, Squee said:

Create a fake Facebook profile and use one of their photos as a profile photo and them send them a friend request.

lol

make sure to use the same name

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:45 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

I notice somebody's forgotten their little panda-shaped USB-Stick in the slot!

 

(along with four shitty emo-trash-metal mp3s and the entire movie "Ted" in German ... )

Somehow I completely skimmed over these details earlier lol

On the subject of sherlock holming data;

If you happen to study in a conservatory where they lend out fieldrecording devices such as zoom h4n mic's to the students, you can retrieve deleted recordings from the used sd cards. Got a shit load of usable instrument recordings with the occasional band discussion in between.

  On 3/28/2013 at 9:26 PM, Djeroek said:

On the subject of sherlock holming data;

 

If you happen to study in a conservatory where they lend out fieldrecording devices such as zoom h4n mic's to the students, you can retrieve deleted recordings from the used sd cards. Got a shit load of usable instrument recordings with the occasional band discussion in between.

Undelete pics of the old boyfriend, delete the new boyfriend, and post it back to her.

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:48 PM, Joyrex said:

Well, it was originally chock-full of tracks by some guys named Aphex Twin and AFX (LOL I thought it was Eddie Murphy's MP3 player with the AFX (Axel-F) stuff), but I deleted all that and replaced it with dope tracks from Far East Movement.

Out of curiosity Joyrex, how were those Aphex Twins tracks? You don't have to go into detail, even a two word review would suffice.

hardcore

Post their photo here and then we will do MSPaint drawings of them and create a tumblr of the photos and then send them the link via facebook.

  On 3/28/2013 at 10:21 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

Post their photo here and then we will do MSPaint drawings of them and create a tumblr of the photos and then send them the link via facebook.

THIS x50000000000