60 points by cfinke 4 hours ago | 8 comments
layer8 56 minutes ago
Let the witch hunt begin!
guessmyname 3 hours ago
The tool works by querying your contacts’ names against https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q={NAME}&index...

I’d hope anyone using this tool understands that names aren’t unique. So if your mother’s or father’s name shows up in that API, it only means someone else out there has the same name. People who are into conspiracy theories tend to love software like this because it helps them force a preexisting narrative to fit their conclusions.

Search for “John Smith” → https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q=John+Smith&i...

Now search for “LoremIpsumDolor” (no spaces) → https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q=LoremIpsumDo...

And, amusingly, “••• •••” (the author’s name) appears 164 times → https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q=Christopher+...

edit: I removed the author’s name from this post, because the search results don’t really prove anything. Their first name is extremely common in the United States and returns 166 matches on its own, and their last name returns around 1,000. That’s exactly the point here: this API is doing basic name lookups, not confirming identities. Without additional identifiers (like location, email, phone number, or some kind of unique ID), these hits are essentially just name collisions and shouldn’t be treated as meaningful evidence.

ben0x539 2 hours ago
> edit: I removed the author’s name from this post

well, you didn't from the search query.

cfinke 3 hours ago
The script searches using quoted names, while these examples all search with unquoted names, which will match either the first or last name.

Searching for my name in quotes (https://analytics.dugganusa.com/api/v1/search?q=%22Christoph...) unsurprisingly results in zero hits.

saaaaaam 2 hours ago
Are we giving all our LinkedIn data to some random person? Nice try, Cambridge Analytica.
kachapopopow 2 hours ago
you run it locally, the endpoint seems to just be a search engine
saaaaaam 1 hour ago
Right, yes. I now realise I should probably have continued reading after “1. Go to linkedin.com and log in”. But when I saw that I noped away.

Which shows the power of words. If it said “1. You will need a copy of your LinkedIn contacts to run this locally - here’s how…” I would have had a very different opinion.

You can vibe code almost anything, but you’re unlikely be able to vibe code your way out of scaring people.

2 hours ago
FatherOfCurses 3 hours ago
Is your repo private?
cfinke 3 hours ago
Weird, I set it to public an hour ago and it was private again. Fixed now.
vrn21 4 hours ago
link not found btw
kittikitti 56 minutes ago
It seems as if LinkedIn removed the ability to request connections specifically. I had to request my entire archive.

Also, minor thing, there is no requirements.txt file based on the setup in README.md but I understand that it's only `requests` and it looks like even this is handled in the Python script.

In the README.md, the flag for the Connections.csv is actually `--connections`.

I'm also getting a `429 Client Error: Too Many Requests for url:` which sometimes resolves itself after a few requests for some reason. Not sure if `delay` needs to be increased.

For the sake of privacy of my own connections, I think it would be better to have an option to download all Epstein files locally (a great feature in and of itself) and then do a search.

Last edit: I got the results and it's all false positives from people who have common names. Most of the results in the search engine are based on badly done OCR from PDF's. I would have done the OCR with an vLLM, it would be much more accurate. I would highly recommend changing the search engine.

Thank you for this.

cfinke 21 minutes ago
Thanks, I've fixed the connections arg name and the missing requirements file.
wslh 2 hours ago
It seems like Epstein was connected to a lot of people around the world but not only on "layer 1" but many power layers. The Epstein case is an unique story with a lot of ramifications.
sho_hn 2 hours ago
I would assume there are other Epsteins, I doubt it's unique.