Blackmail is an ancient art of convincing someone to do something they don’t want based on information you have about them. Hopefully, you’ll never have to blackmail someone, but creating a file full of nefarious facts is easy to do.
just for a bit of context here: this is one of those evil week posts where you have to fight evil with evil. I learned this the hard way, as one of my friends has been collecting what amounts to a blackmail folder on all of his friends whom he affectionately calls “the file”.
we could go around in circles all day about why I’m still friends with this person, but the truth is, he’s still a nice guy, and while the blackmail file is certainly annoying (and embarrassing), overall he’s fine. fun, instead of something that will ruin all of our lives. chances are “the archive” will never see the light of day. Still, to combat this, I had to figure out how to catalog a collection of my own blackmail material. This is what I have learned.
document everything that happens with your smartphone
The first rule of thumb for compiling a blackmail file is to record everything that happens. this means having your phone ready in any potentially embarrassing situation, including bars, restaurants, amusement parks, meetings, work, or snowy (and preferably icy) days.
from there, you just have to be on the lookout to capture what’s going on. with video that’s hard, but you can record audio from your pocket without them knowing.
For photos, you have to be a little more cunning. You can pretend you’re not taking a photo (remember on the iPhone, the volume knob can be used to take a photo, just like the volume control on headphones), or download a tweak like slycam that populates a hidden camera. on toggle iphone notification center.
If you’re worried about your friend finding these images, remember to crop them to make them less noticeable until you have time to transfer them elsewhere. Christopher’s photo.
support your evidence in multiple places
The most logical place where you should take all your embarrassing files is a computer. back up those photos, videos, and recordings to your computer, as well as any cloud storage service you prefer.
We’re big fans of Dropbox for a number of reasons, but one of the service’s best features is that it automatically backs up your photos on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android (Google+ also offers this on Android). This means that when you take a photo on your phone, it is automatically saved online. It also means that if your friend demands that you delete a picture from your phone, you can do so while keeping a copy of the file.
The last step is to create triggers for other people’s photos whenever possible. one way to do this if you use instagram is with ifftt’s “new photo by specific user” filter. Every time your friend (or foe) takes a photo, you can send it directly to Dropbox for safekeeping. this is only useful if they’re likely to take silly photos and delete them after thinking about it, but it’s a good backup nonetheless.
We’ve also covered a few ways to do this for various other services so you can try to automate capturing any embarrassing photos of your subject, regardless of where they’re taken. It’s not perfect, but you’ll be able to get “liked” images on facebook or instagram automatically, as well as use a bookmarklet for random images on facebook.
create a backup plan to release the files in case something happens to you
Finally, as anyone who’s seen a cop thriller knows, any good blackmail stash has a backup plan in case something happens to it. this means that if you can’t post the documents yourself, they are automatically sent to friends, bosses or newspapers.
You can use any number of services to do this, but we like the online one because it’s automated. passmywill scans your facebook and twitter feeds, and if you don’t update for a while, it sends you an email. if he doesn’t respond, it assumes he’s deceased and sends the passwords to his trusted associates. Other services, like Legacy Locker, do something similar, but require a trusted person to verify your death before access is granted.
Either way, make sure you choose someone who can handle your blackmail file properly and, if necessary, is willing to release those documents if necessary.
some preventive measures to avoid being embarrassed
With this type of “soft blackmail,” the real concern is that these embarrassing photos, videos, or audio clips will eventually find their way onto the internet. while you can’t exactly prevent that from happening on something like youtube, you can at least lock your privacy settings on facebook from being tagged in photos.
Simply go into your privacy settings, click “edit settings” in the timeline and tagging section, and change “who can see posts you’ve been tagged in on your timeline? ” to “just me”. the photo will still appear on your friends’ (or enemies’) profiles, but at least your family won’t see it. also worth changing “who can see what others post to your timeline?” to “just me” too, in case they try to post it to your timeline.
Unfortunately, that’s all you can do, but if you have your own set of blackmail documents, the chances of your archenemy/friend releasing yours are pretty slim. just make sure they know you’re not shy about turning over those documents if you need to.
As for the actual blackmail part, we’re sure you can figure it out on your own, but we hope it never comes to that. my process is essentially mutually assured destruction, but it’s better than nothing.
This post is part of our evil week series on lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. knowing evil means knowing how to defeat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. they want more? check out our wicked week tags page.