OSINT Toolkit: How to find a Russian
Just as failed travel blogger “KassandraSeven” made a mistake at the beginning of her LARP, so did her “real” persona.
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First of all, let’s dispense with the accusations. I am half-Russian. My grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews who came over in the pogroms which is a history I share with Susan, who runs the harmful LARP @KassandraSeven. I have no problem with the Russian people, Russian culture, or people who speak Russian. I hope they depose Putin and regain their freedom.
However, when you are hiding behind an inauthentic persona in order to attack and defame me personally, these details are relevant. Let’s take a look.
KassandraSeven Surfs Russian Websites
So, why did the idea of Russia come up at all? Here’s why. I’m unlocking this to everyone now because it’s a fascinating datapoint of an Internet Research Agency operation being executed in Russia — in 2013. It also became relevant to my investigation of weaponized professional troll @KassandraSeven aka Sue.
When I started looking into this account, the only example I could find in the past of the string “KassandraSeven” was a single 2013 repost by an account by that name on LiveJournal in Russian. It was a repost of an Internet Research Agency operation to create a QAnon like fiction about Americans adopting Russian babies. This operation was in response to the Magnitsky Act.
Now, once I identified KassandraSeven as Susan from NYC who trolls people to support her travel habit, I wanted to see if she happened to speak Russian.
You might be shocked to learn that she does!
Susan’s parents speak Russian and she grew up in a town that is famous for being a hub of Russian speakers — and Russian mafia.
I went to take a look at the oldest traces I could find and found this which positively identifies this deleted Tumblr account as belonging to Sue.
On the oldest snapshot of her brand new Tumblr, she had a few interesting links in “STUFF I LIKE.” Both of these are Russian social media websites which you can only navigate if you speak Russian. They were deleted by the next archive.
Here’s where one of the links went. Russian social media website ZIZA.QIP.RU.
The other was to Russian social media website Fishki.net which Wayback does not archive. But here is the homepage right now, pushing Russian propaganda about Putin’s war of course.
Suffice it to say, there is more.
Susan, Остановите операцию сейчас же. Чем дольше это будет продолжаться, тем больше доказательств вы предоставите. Достаточно. Thanks!
Ok, started laughing at the stupid title of her blog-world through my Lu. In high school “Lu” is what my friends and I used for “vagina.” (Yes, I’m aware that it means WC in the UK.)
Oh hi, Mike, Kassandra and other various bad-faith people: here’s Mike “ The comments from Jim's supporters on Twitter and his blog are growing increasingly messianic and paranoid - with much of the persecution fantasy directed at small-follower accounts, women, and people who have literally nothing to do with any of this. It's not okay.” (Tweet: https://twitter.com/rothschildmd/status/1500936462459551745?s=21 )
First off Mike, LOL. There’s things I absolutely don’t agree with Jim on, there’s things I don’t agree with my spouse on or friends or family. Jesus fucking Christ, dude. “increasingly messianic” — who, me? All his subscribers? It’s a substack. Folks subscribe to this, other writers. Hell, I would guess that people subbed to this also have subscriptions to The NY Times, Wapo, Motherjones, The Guadian. And other non-legacy blogs.
The level of lunacy with that tweet just tells me that your reductionist thing you have going on with that (paraphrasing) “his subscribers believe everything he says, it’s getting like qanon, or a cult”.
LMAO. Just fuck you, dude. And kassandraseven, you’ve been a vicious person when I followed you years ago. We DMd & you were bizarre and cold & I offered you support about something. You DMd me first, by the way.
Maybe there’s a reason people go after you & have for years: you’re an incredibly nasty person with a know-it-all-attitude. & NO, I don’t think you’re getting paid to be on Twitter —which makes your behavior even worse, frankly. I just think you’re a miserable person.