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How CIA Director David Petraeus’s Emails Were Traced (and How to Protect Yourself)
Lifehacker ^ | Tuesday, November 13, 2012 | Thorin Klosowski

Posted on 11/13/2012 8:56:48 PM PST by Jyotishi

Late last week, CIA director David Petraeus stepped down from his position after an FBI investigation revealed an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Curiously, the revelation of the affair came about using location data from Gmail. Here's how the FBI put together the pieces, and how you can keep them from doing the same to you.

How the Affair Was Revealed by Tracing through Gmail

As you'd expect, the timeline of the affair itself is terribly complicated, and to understand the email trace that lead to the outing of the relationship, we do need to vaguely understand what happened with the affair. Here's a very brief summation of the events.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the original red flag that caught the FBI's ear was a series of anonymous, threatening emails sent to Jill Kelley, a Florida woman who organized military social events. The FBI then traced those threatening emails to their origin—probably with an IP address given up by Google—to Paula Broadwell. The FBI then got a warrant to monitor those email addresses, and eventually stumbled upon another email account where Petraeus and Broadwell left drafts of messages for each other:...

(Excerpt) Read more at lifehacker.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Government; Politics
KEYWORDS: benghazi; broadwell; cia; email; petraeus; privacy; proxy; security
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To: Jyotishi
David Petraeus and his lover Paula Broadwell used a trick often employed by terrorists as they sought to keep their email exchanges secret.

That's guano.

Once the FBI knows about the account, the fact the communicants were viewing each others drafts instead of exchanging messages between separate accounts is irrelevant. They'll go to the access logs and trace the IP addresses and lay out the exchanges on a neat geographic timeline.

The critical error occurred when Broadwell sent the intimidating emails to Jill Kelley. That sort of amusement called for much higher levels of security than simply exchanging love notes on Gmail — high enough that you must assume the FBI will get the IP from which each message was sent, yet will not get you. Possible, but very inconvenient. Broadwell f'up up, pure and simple. If she wanted to intimidate Kelley, it needed to be from a totally isolated (geographically and temporally) account.

21 posted on 11/13/2012 11:08:55 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: Jyotishi

The ONLY question is WHY did the FBI get involved??? This sounds like a CAT FIGHT between to Groupies...nothing the FBI should have worried about, so WHY??? HOW did it get so far??


22 posted on 11/14/2012 12:47:05 AM PST by Ann Archy (AbORTION....the HUMAN sacrifice to the god of CONVIENCE.)
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To: cynwoody

I am almost NOT BUYING the story of the “threatening” e-mails sent between the tramps........something’s not right.


23 posted on 11/14/2012 12:50:19 AM PST by Ann Archy (AbORTION....the HUMAN sacrifice to the god of CONVIENCE.)
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To: Ann Archy

.


24 posted on 11/14/2012 12:50:59 AM PST by Ann Archy (ABORTION....the HUMAN sacrifice to the god of CONVIENCE.)
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To: Jyotishi

use homing pigeons....


25 posted on 11/14/2012 2:34:50 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously, you won't live through it anyway)
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To: Jyotishi

We cannot survive with with a lead ship class this stupid.


26 posted on 11/14/2012 2:39:47 AM PST by mo (If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)
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To: mo

“Leadership class”


27 posted on 11/14/2012 2:40:55 AM PST by mo (If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)
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To: mo

Lead Ship Makes sense too. Very heavy soft metal, easily punctured and will sink VERY fast.


28 posted on 11/14/2012 2:58:00 AM PST by The Working Man
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To: bigbob

My understanding is Petraeus and Broadwell werent actually sending emails between them but were composing emails and leaving them in draft, then each knowing the password of the others gmail would log in each day and read the drafts.


29 posted on 11/14/2012 3:12:52 AM PST by DainBramage
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To: Jyotishi

There are over a billion computers in the world, yet this web page found your particular computer. Ever wonder how it did that? Ever wonder if someone else could ‘trace’ it?

Internet anonymity my arse.


30 posted on 11/14/2012 3:18:30 AM PST by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: Yo-Yo
Yet it can be done.

How to hide your IP Address.

31 posted on 11/14/2012 3:55:57 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
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To: bigbob
Irene Kennedy would be appalled, and Thomas Stanfield would be spinning in his grave...

The question is then what would Mitch Rabb do?

32 posted on 11/14/2012 4:29:34 AM PST by glm
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To: Jyotishi

You’ve been ‘GooGled’.


33 posted on 11/14/2012 8:51:48 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
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To: Ann Archy
The ONLY question is WHY did the FBI get involved??? This sounds like a CAT FIGHT between to Groupies...nothing the FBI should have worried about, so WHY??? HOW did it get so far??

It almost didn't, based on what I've read. The FBI was indeed about to brush it off as a cat fight, but Kelley's shirtless FBI friend wielded enough influence to kick start an investigation. And, of course, once the identities of the participants emerged, it was too good not to finish. I mean, once they tied the IP to Broadwell, at most a Google search would be needed to connect her to Petraeus.

34 posted on 11/14/2012 10:17:42 AM PST by cynwoody
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To: Alas Babylon!
Yet it can be done.

I guess it all depends on how much you trust the operator of the proxy server.

35 posted on 11/14/2012 3:26:59 PM PST by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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