23 comments

  • guessmyname a day 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 a day ago

      > edit: I removed the author’s name from this post

      well, you didn't from the search query.

    • cfinke a day 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 a day ago

    Are we giving all our LinkedIn data to some random person? Nice try, Cambridge Analytica.

    • kachapopopow a day ago

      you run it locally, the endpoint seems to just be a search engine

      • saaaaaam a day 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.

  • layer8 a day ago

    Let the witch hunt begin!

    • cosmicgadget a day ago

      The thing about a witch hunt is that witches don't exist.

      • layer8 19 hours ago

        Let the lynch law begin, then.

        • cosmicgadget 13 hours ago

          Is that what unfriending people on LinkedIn is? You're clutching your pearls pretty hard for people who have innocently crossed paths with a sex trafficker.

  • FatherOfCurses a day ago

    Is your repo private?

    • cfinke a day ago

      Weird, I set it to public an hour ago and it was private again. Fixed now.

  • stevefan1999 a day ago

    I have no idea why do we need to have a witch hunt like this. Many people have Epstein anyway and not all of them is able to approach his inner ring (ahem circle), but you are attacking all the people that approached or interacted with him.

    • sosomoxie 7 hours ago

      I’m actually fine knowing which of my contacts interacted with a pedophile foreign asset.

    • singular_atomic a day ago

      Interesting reply

  • _345 a day ago

    what are we even doing anymore

    • nh23423fefe 10 hours ago

      moral panics are fun!! clearly you are on the wrong side of history

  • vrn21 a day ago

    link not found btw

  • kittikitti a day 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 a day ago

      Thanks, I've fixed the connections arg name and the missing requirements file.

  • wslh a day 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.

    • cosmicgadget a day ago

      It searches for your contacts in the files. Not the LinkedIn network.

    • sho_hn a day ago

      I would assume there are other Epsteins, I doubt it's unique.