FACT: USCIS MONITORS social networks..

[Amyyduck 20]

Seriously? Come on. There is tons of info on everyone just sitting in goverment hard drives now. Although I don't doubt big brother is checking out FB and the like, cancelling your account is rediculous.

Are you gonna trade your house and car for a wood cabin and a horse, move deep into the Northwest living of the land also? You could spend your time looking for D.B. Coopers cash.

This is the information age and "watching us " will only increase in the next 30 years as it has in the last which is alot. If you want to live in a box, go ahead.

[deadbird 2]

Oh I definitely posted to twitter about how much USCIS drove me to drink. Several times.

[Rob and Jill 82]

Uhh I hate to be the party pooper to the freakout paranoia here but there is a simple way to fix this.

It's called PRIVACY SETTINGS. Go set it so NO ONE can see it without your permission. Problem solved.

If you're not comfortable with that then don't make social networking sites at all.

Furthermore, you don't have to worry about the government misunderstanding something you post if you don't post negative things about your significant other ON A PUBLIC FORUM.

Edited October 15, 2010 by Rob and Jill

[Oaragahhs 2]

hi vji read alot about this....why are u scaring if they look into this thats ok..is there anything to be scare when u have vj id...comeon i dont think anythink going to be happen about vj id....we are here cuz we wants to be with our wife or husband..is that bad trying to be with....if they see us here thats good for us...all of us here getting imformation from here.... how can we do right..... i love my wife very much and i miss her alot...no matterwhat i still will be with my wife i love her alot ..i hope that they look into this ...(to uscis.... i love my wife and i miss her alot. i will do everything to be with my wife...whatever u do i will try more to be with my wife...we are human do not make anything diffrence all of us equal..white,black,asian,midditernian...or whatever who we are doent matter..just respect us as human...anything can be difference religion anything muslim,christian catalic,ortodoks.hindu,jewish,whatever that just we believe...all those thing going just one way,,,,all of our ways going to god(allah)way...we are them we are human just respect us as a human))brothers and sisters here please dont scare...but i miss my wife alot she is going to come turkey november 16 ...its bayram for muslims (holiday) i cant wait i miss her alot we see to each other everyday on the webcam..we talks alot on the phone. but i still miss her alot...take care of u vj...i hope that they looking into this....

[ajigglin 0]

This is an article my fiancé sent me this morning.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/13/5285720-feds-may-be-checking-out-your-facebook-profile

It simply left me speechless

i'm not even surprised, honestly. if companies use facebook to follow up on job candidates, why wouldn't USCIS use facebook to verify relationships they suspect are fraudulent?

very very scary stuff.

twitter and visa journey may be a bit harder because most people use pseudonyms, but it's not impossible.

[ajigglin 0]

well folks, as a result of this discussion I have deleted my facebook account. I value my privacy from big brother. Facebook says it will delete the account in 14 days. If USCIS wants to know something then they should just ask and not be sneaky about it. AS thomas Jefferson once said "a government big enough to give you what you want is big enough to take it away"

i don't even blame you. between this stuff and what happened with krystal ball (i still can't believe that's her real name), facebook is a pretty scary site to be on if you value your privacy.

I read it. I dont trust the privact settings. This is big brother. He can get around privacy settings and passwords. We have given him ultimate authority in the name of national security. I will be surprised if Big brother can't restore what I have deleted, if he really wants to.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

You don't have to post any of this info for them to be able to identify you. As I said before, all they need to do is look up your IP address and they'll have all the information they need.

This is not accurate. Your IP address is allocated to you from a pool of IP addresses managed by your internet service provider. Even people with an "always on" broadband connection will occasionally get a new IP address from their ISP. Only your ISP would know which customer had a specific IP address on a specific day and time. My understanding is that the government can only obtain that information with a subpoena, but let's assume otherwise. The IP address would only identify the account. There are six people living in my home, and we all use the same internet account. In order to identify a specific computer through that account they would have to be monitoring the packets as they travel through the network, and look for the identifier your router adds to the packet, since the IP address for every packet that's sent out over the internet will be the same, regardless of which computer it came from. Internet servers generally don't log the entire contents of every packet they receive. They only log the IP address the packet came from. The only way to get this additional information is live monitoring of the network traffic.

All of this goes out the window if you use a proxy server to access a website. Every packet is repackaged before being retransmitted to the destination internet server. The original IP address, and all embedded identifiers, are stripped out, and reinserted in packets received from the internet server before sending them back to the user. Unless the investigating agency has direct access to the proxy server (many of them are not within the US) then it would be very difficult to positively identify any network traffic with any specific account. Any tracing from either end would stop at the proxy server. If the proxy server uses encryption, such as SSH tunneling, then it becomes many times more difficult to determine what any individual user is doing, or which sites they're accessing. It becomes even MORE difficult when you use a distributed proxy network like TOR.

Anyway, the US government would only invest this sort of time and effort into investigating the internet activity of a single user if they suspected something really serious was going on. For something as relatively benign as immigration, I suspect an IO might only check to see if an applicant or sponsor had an account on a social networking site, and then scan the site for possible incriminating evidence.

FWIW, I know for certain that many consulates do browse VJ occasionally. It would not surprise me if USCIS officers did also. If you're seriously concerned that something you post might have an adverse effect on you then don't post it on the internet. The general advice most internet security experts offer is to expect neither anonymity nor privacy when using the internet.

[Gingerpants 8]

This is not accurate. Your IP address is allocated to you from a pool of IP addresses managed by your internet service provider. Even people with an "always on" broadband connection will occasionally get a new IP address from their ISP. Only your ISP would know which customer had a specific IP address on a specific day and time. My understanding is that the government can only obtain that information with a subpoena, but let's assume otherwise. The IP address would only identify the account. There are six people living in my home, and we all use the same internet account. In order to identify a specific computer through that account they would have to be monitoring the packets as they travel through the network, and look for the identifier your router adds to the packet, since the IP address for every packet that's sent out over the internet will be the same, regardless of which computer it came from. Internet servers generally don't log the entire contents of every packet they receive. They only log the IP address the packet came from. The only way to get this additional information is live monitoring of the network traffic.

All of this goes out the window if you use a proxy server to access a website. Every packet is repackaged before being retransmitted to the destination internet server. The original IP address, and all embedded identifiers, are stripped out, and reinserted in packets received from the internet server before sending them back to the user. Unless the investigating agency has direct access to the proxy server (many of them are not within the US) then it would be very difficult to positively identify any network traffic with any specific account. Any tracing from either end would stop at the proxy server. If the proxy server uses encryption, such as SSH tunneling, then it becomes many times more difficult to determine what any individual user is doing, or which sites they're accessing. It becomes even MORE difficult when you use a distributed proxy network like TOR.

Anyway, the US government would only invest this sort of time and effort into investigating the internet activity of a single user if they suspected something really serious was going on. For something as relatively benign as immigration, I suspect an IO might only check to see if an applicant or sponsor had an account on a social networking site, and then scan the site for possible incriminating evidence.

FWIW, I know for certain that many consulates do browse VJ occasionally. It would not surprise me if USCIS officers did also. If you're seriously concerned that something you post might have an adverse effect on you then don't post it on the internet. The general advice most internet security experts offer is to expect neither anonymity nor privacy when using the internet.

Okay I said that wrong, but they can still pinpoint your location through your IP if they have to(assuming you're not using a proxy which would of course complicate things).

Example: My fiance moderates a busy international website that uses public forums, recently an anonymous poster came along making serious threats (I'm unsure of the exact details of the threats but that's not the point). He as a moderator had the ability to look up the guys IP which revealed his city and country. He and one of the other moderators contacted the authorities in his area and they were able to locate him using the IP address.

Now I'm not saying the USCIS does this regularly, but they do have the means if they want to use them.

[TBoneTX 45,285]

I know for certain that many consulates do browse VJ occasionally.

Someone very recently observed, firsthand, that the CO in Guayaquil requested an interviewee's Facebook account access.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

I found another article about this, including direct quotes from the USCIS document:

http://www.huffingto...k_n_762581.html

"Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels a need to have a large group of 'friends' link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know," the USCIS explains. "This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."

The memo also suggests that agents should treat online profiles as a "cyber 'site-visit'" and look to them to spot fake relationships and other types of fraud.

"Generally, people on these sites speak honestly in their network because all of their friends and family are interacting with them via lM's (Instant Messages), Blogs (Weblog journals), etc.," advises the USCIS memo. "This social networking gives FDNS an opportunity to reveal fraud by browsing these sites to see if petitioners and beneficiaries are in a valid relationship or are attempting to deceive CIS about their relationship. Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities. In essence, using MySpace and other like sites is akin to doing an unannounced cyber "site-visit" on a petitioners and beneficiaries."

The link to the PDF dated 7/20/2010 from US DEPT of Homeland Security titled, "Social networking sites and their importance to FDNS (Fraud Detection & National Security)" would certainly qualify as verified information that USCIS monitors social networks. Thanks for the article.

[inloveVEN 46]

Whatch this article

Nytimes article

Article related

[Fandango 1,439]

The officers at the Consulate in Montreal not only read VJ, but they have also matched member names to visa applications. There are a number of Canadians who have had this confirmed at their interviews. I can find you the link if you're interested.

I'd be really interested to read that and see how they matched up member names to apps.

Thx K!

[Krikit 1,164]

I'd be really interested to read that and see how they matched up member names to apps.

Thx K!

Here's one of the threads on it: Link

There are lots of mentions of it in various threads and reviews. If you take a look at KnJ's review at the bottom of her timeline page you'll see a good example. Link

[FawkThisSite 13]

Everybody is worrying way too much. Think about it... Yes.. Maybe they do monitor this and other sites, but most of the people on here have a Facebook as well and still have been approved. I honestly wouldn't worry too much about things that you may have said BEFORE meeting the love of your life, as we all know... when you truly fall in love, your life changes, you change, and you realize what is important in the world. Don't read too far into this matter, all will be ok. Pray for the best.

[AlinaH 38]

I personally dont think its anything to worry about at all. If you're legit then what are you afraid of? I don't care if they look into my life. I have nothing to hide.