In this video, we're going to be talking about unmasking users with Google Docs.
Now, this is actually a pretty simple trick and it's something they really didn't think about until
I read a Twitter post about this recently.
So the idea is if we have a Google user and we want to try and unmask them, well, how do we do that?
When we email someone with a with the Google account or we get a Google account email, we'll just see
whatever the name on the email is, say dispo games at gmail.com.
You know, some random user at gmail.com.
ET cetera.
It doesn't actually give us the actual user name.
Well, one way we can potentially unmask that is if we create a Google doc and we click on the share
button.
We put the person's username in their whatever their email address is, and we also make sure we uncheck
the notify people box before we actually send the document.
And we want to do this because we don't want them to know that we're sharing a document with them.
So once we do that, we click the share button and now we're sharing a document which should technically
be a blank document.
Don't use a document that that's something important just in case.
For some reason they find it.
So once that's set up, go back into the shared document and take a look at who has access to it.
You're, of course, going to be able to see yourself, but we'll be able to see also the person we
shared the the document with their Gmail account.
And we'll be able to see the the name associated with that account.
Now, if you're lucky that that name won't be different from the actual email address or it will be
a real name.
Now, there's no guarantee it's going to be a actual name for someone they could have put a bogus name
in.
Which we all do if we're creating the SOC Pub and Gmail accounts, for example.
But it is some information that we can potentially use and run with.
So again, it's a really simple process to kind of figure that out and it can help you with your investigation.
So when we're doing this, of course, make sure you're using a sock puppet account when you're running
these things.
Preferably have your VPN on.
For example, run a VPN multi hop for the VPN with a internet kill switch.
It might VPN drops.
Don't use an important document for this.
You don't want to have an important document like say your investigation document and you're sharing
it with a person that you're investigating.
And for some reason maybe you forget to uncheck the box that says.
Do not alert this person that, hey, I'm sharing this document with.
So use a blank document that's always the same as saying use a blank document.
And once we have the name, of course, we could try doing Google Docs.
We could do regular Google searches, we could feed that name into Mr. Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, etc..
And of course, this trick only works with Google users.
People with Gmail accounts for people that have Outlook or Hotmail, for example, You might be able
to use something like Skype.
Type the name.
Type their email address into Skype and you might be able to get a actual name from that.
So I hope this helps.
Again, it's a very simple way to potentially pull names from Gmail accounts.
I thought it was pretty useful.
It has been very useful for me.
Do an investigation on scammers and whatnot, and I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.