Thoughts on… revenge

I came across something the other day that got me thinking. On Facebook, someone’s status said “Finally admitting it… i’m gay”. Now, this person had obviously been hacked. They call it ‘fraped’, which I believe stands for ‘Facebook raped’, but that makes no sense to me, because they have been in no way sexually violated. But anyway, it struck me as a really stupid thing to put as a fake status. Let me explain the idiocy behind it.

Firstly, the person in question has a long-term girlfriend who he is always talking about on Facebook, so everybody who knows him knows that he is not gay. Therefore, saying this is a waste of a hack, because nobody is going to believe it. The choice of status is also one that everybody who uses Facebook recognises as a ‘frape’. If the person whose profile it was ever did turn gay, he wouldn’t tell the world with a quick status on social media. It also revealed straight away that the person’s profile had been hacked, so the hacker couldn’t really have much more fun with it because the owner quickly changed his password.

This whole scenario got me thinking about what I would do if I ever obtained somebody’s Facebook login details. Firstly (two firstlys) I wouldn’t do anything straight away. If you’ve got their login details without them knowing, they’re not likely to change it any time soon so give yourself at least an hour or so to think of something good to do. I would also be much more subtle with my approach. If I post a status that is obviously not true then nobody’s going to believe it and it would achieve nothing. If, however, I liked a load of obscure pages then it would occasionally show up on the owner’s news feed and he would, over time, begin to question it. Especially if I kept the login details and did a few at a time, so after a few weeks he’s suddenly thinking “Why the hell am I seeing all these statuses about Russian chocolate bars?!” The idea behind my ‘frape’ would not to humiliate the person, but to irritate them. Okay, I don’t get to see the comments from people LOLing at the status, but I would take great joy in knowing that the victim was sitting at home, staring at the ‘Photos of ducks in bathtubs’ page with a look of bemusement. You could also add people as friends, which again would unravel over time. With their new friends commenting and liking things, it would soon dawn on them that they have no idea who these people are.

I would also do a few other things whilst in possession of their Facebook login details. I would create a few events for a few weeks in the future and invite everyone. It would be important to do it in a few weeks, because if they notice it straight away they’ll just delete it, but if you do it in the future your prank can last for ages. There’s nothing better than 5 weeks down the line when they angrily mention something you’d forgotten all about. You could also send a few messages to people, but not rude or silly messages, just random things that the person might usually say, like “How’s work?” and then the owner would receive replies and become confused because they won’t remember instigating the conversation. The key thing here is to be subtle. Don’t make it obvious and out yourself straight away. If you do a few small things that unfold over time then it will have more effect.

Again, being subtle is the key. If you make a few minor changes to their profiles, they won’t notice it, but somebody reading it later will come across a line buried under all the others that says “I also like drinking my own wee, mmm tasty.” For me that’s a bit too immature, but you get the idea. Remember we’re going for something that people will believe, so something more like “I’m vegitarian.” and then maybe, just maybe, their friend’s mother will never cook them meat again.

“Why do we always have vegetarian dishes when I come to your house?”
“Because you’re vegetarian.”
“No I’m not.”

Here’s an example of something I did whilst in possession of Mike Goodwin’s phone:

goodwin facebook

To be honest, I was short on ideas there, so I thought I’d go for a bit of self promotion. Still, it got 4 likes.

Aside from social media, there is also the world of electronic mail, known by everyone under the age of 70 as email. A lot of people worry about other people seeing their emails or getting into their account. Myself, I’m not too bothered. I don’t know that many people anyway, and if anyone did send a rude email or virus from my account, the people would know it wasn’t me because I’m very polite and I would just explain to them after that I’d been hacked. I guess now I’m emailing clients at work it’s different, because a hack could ruin the reputation of the company, so I won’t jinx myself.

But if I ever got into someone’s email account, again I’d be clever about it. If I send an email to their friend saying ‘I smell like poo’ then their friend would most likely reply ‘lol’. If I emailed their boss and said ‘I’m gay’ they’d just reply ‘good for you’. I would never email someone’s boss with something rude because that could get them fired and that would be crossing the line between funny and life-ruining. So what would I do? I would go online and subscribe to random things. Again, this would reap joy over a period of time, as they slowly start getting more and more junk. “Why am I getting emails about Sainsbury’s latest offers? I don’t even shop there!” I’d also find email addresses on random websites and email asking them sensible questions. Then when the victim picks up his phone and reads “Thank you for your enquiry. We do stock Beck’s new CD and you can also order it online.” they will be even more baffled.

Then there’s other things that you can do on people’s computers that you don’t even need login details to do. The calendar is a great opportunity. A fun thing to do is to create events in there a few weeks apart and set reminder alarms for each of them. Then when they’re at work and they get a notification saying ‘Party tomorrow night’ they will begin to question whose party it is and get frustrated when they can’t remember ever being invited to a party. The best thing to set a reminder for is to call someone. If you put a reminder for a week’s time to ‘call Paul’, they will sit there for ages trying to work out who Paul is and why they need to call them. Again, you don’t get to see any of this happening, but for me, knowing it is going to happen always makes me excited and keeps me laughing. If you know the person, you could do little tests to find out if it worked, like saying “Oh by the way, did you call Paul?” a few days after you’d set the reminder for. If they realise it’s you then you can both have a laugh about it, and if they don’t suspect you, then they will start thinking about it again, so either way you win.

The same with mobile phones. What’s the point in sending silly or rude texts? Instead of wasting credit, why not add a load of made up people to their contact list. When they come to send a message and they have to scroll through 15 different Kevins, they won’t know what to think. Or take photos of random things using the camera. When they’re showing their friends some recent photos, they’ll stumble across 23 pictures of the same foot. Let’s see them try and explain that. Again with the calendar, set reminders and alarms for future events.

All of this leads me onto the idea of clever revenge. If I somehow found myself in possession of someone’s login details, I probably wouldn’t do any of this unless a) they’d previously annoyed me or b) I knew they would find it funny when I revealed it to them. But still, all of my ideas are pretty harmless. Nobody gets offended or upset or fired from their job. They just end up confused and maybe a bit frustrated. If you feel that badly then you can just tell them it was you and there was no real harm done. But me thinking like this and being clever with my schemes means that I think I’d be a really bad person to get on the wrong side of. If I wanted to, I could cause a lot of chaos.

You see sometimes in toilet cubicles there are things written on the wall like ‘Looking for a good time? Call Sarah on…’ and then a phone number. Some idiots might think that this is a genuine hooker leaving a message, but as soon as you question why a woman would be in a mens toilet in the first place, it becomes obvious that it’s just some guy trying to wind a girl up. I admit this is a fairly good prank, as the girl might then get a few phone calls from funny people asking for some funny stuff. But again, they’ve got it slightly wrong. The better thing to do – which I would do if I were seeking revenge on someone – would be to get business cards printed with the victim’s name and number on. Not as a hooker, but something ordinary like a plumber. Everybody needs a plumber. You could put them in shop windows, nobody would question it, but the victim would then get calls from people every now and then asking them to fix their boiler or fit a shower. This would be funnier to me, because instead of the victim realising straight away that it’s a hoax and getting angry, they’d just be confused. Although they would probably just say that they’ve got the wrong number and hang up, the consistency of the calls would eventually prove annoying. You might be thinking “That’s all well and good, but would you really pay to get business cards printed just for a prank that may or may not get someone a bit annoyed?” My answer is yes. When it comes to practical jokes, I spare no expense. I’ve bought food for the sole purpose of pretending to drop it, I’ve bought random tat just so I can use it as a one-time prop for a joke, I’ve bought postcards to send to people knowing full well they’ll end up lost or in the bin… If something will get a laugh (from me or them) then I don’t care.

Another print-based idea would be to print a load of ‘missing person’ posters of the victim and put them up near their home. Imagine walking outside and seeing a poster asking if you’d seen yourself recently. That would probably get more of a laugh than anything. If you wanted to be really mean, you could put them up outside the victim’s parents’ house, but I’m not endorsing that because it’s mean.

There’s lots of other things that you can do, but the main thing to focus on is to be subtle. Don’t try and humiliate the person, because that’s mean and more often than not it’s never works out as well as you expect it to anyway. But creating confusion and frustration is much more fun.

So, now you know what to expect if you ever get on my bad side. You have been warned.