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General discussion

screen name?

Mar 16, 2004 11:30AM PST

I work in a school and I need to know if there is anyway I could find out who belongs to a screen name.
A message was sent to a teacher on paper and all we have is a screen name. I think it might be aol or yahoo. We will involve the police if necesary, but we would like to find out who belongs to this screen name without police involvement if possible. If the police are involved what steps would they take to find this person?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Valerie

Discussion is locked

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Re:screen name?
Mar 16, 2004 8:10PM PST

- What do you mean with 'screen name'?
- What's the relation between the screen name and a piece of paper a teacher received?
- Why do you think it's aol or yahoo?

Kees

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Re:Re:screen name?
Mar 17, 2004 11:40PM PST

Hi Kees,
Thanks for responding back. A kid got a IM from this screen name so we know the screen name. The kid printed out the whole IM conversation so it had the screen name on it. The kid told the teacher it was either aol or yahoo because you can instant message on either. Whole story is kid was instant messaged and a conversation took place between this kid and the screen name we are trying to find out who it is. Kid doesn't know who the other person was and that is what we are trying to find out.
Thanks
Valerie

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Re:Re:Re:screen name?
Mar 18, 2004 12:47AM PST

Val,

Depending on the amount of security measures your school has, what you ask will be extremely difficult and in most cases requires a "court order" to gain anything substantial. There are a large number "Instant Messaging" (IM) programs available, not just two like the "kid" told you. "MSN Messenger", "AOL Instant Messenger", "Trillion", "ICQ" and a variety of others are extremely common. The most important thing here is they can ALL be used on almost ANY Internet Service Providers (ISP)network. A user can use AIM on the almost any ISP, "MSN Messenger" on any ISP, or "Trillion" on any ISP, etc. You get the picture.

Even if you do find the specific ISP or the e-mail address that a "screen name" was using, most ISP's will not "give up" the actual users name without a court order. The ISP MAY have the true name and address that is used to bill the user, but then again, if a credit card is used to pay the Internet access bill, all of the user information may be false.

There are lots of possiblities. Many schools have internet gateways with firewalls or access monitoring software. Did the firewall or access software record any of this? If you have a computer/network/security expert available, you might be able to find out some peritinent information. If your concerns are serious, (terrorist threats or activities, etc.) then I advise hiring one to help you or contacting the authorities.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Few corrections
Mar 18, 2004 7:53PM PST

First it's "Trillian" not "Trillon". Second, Trillian is just a multi-protocol client, it connects to AIM, ICQ, Y!, and MSN's networks, but doesn't have one of it's own. It's like the difference between using IE and Mozilla to view a web page.