Dating Strategy or Malware Technique?

Mike Kiser -

For every item that you can correctly categorize, add one point to your total. (Answer key below)

  1. Catfishing
  2. Dogfishing
  3. Sniffing
  4. Ghosting
  5. Rooting
  6. Benching
  7. Doppelgänging
  8. Roaching
  9. Pharming
  10. Haunting
  11. Kittenfishing
  12. Phreaking
  13. Orbiting
  14. Cracking
  15. Phubbing
  16. Breadcrumbing
  17. Stashing
  18. Spoofing
  19. Submarining
  20. Snooping
  21. Mooning
  22. Throning
  23. Wardriving
  24. Tindstagramming
  25. Vulturing
  26. Zombieing
  27. Piggybacking
  28. Social Engineering

Dating Strategy: 2 (really?), 4, 6 (my entire middle school experience both socially and athletically), 8 (is askmen.com the best source for dating advice?), 10 (cosmo is definitely the canonical source for this kind of info, and possibly originates most of it), 11 (rampant on linkedin, to be fair), 13, 15 (also useful in parenting), 17, 19 (I’m just as surprised as you that NPR covered this), 21 (again, a good portion of my middle school experience, but it had nothing to do with dating), 22 (do you need 12 steps to identify this?), 24 (just completely, completely wrong)

Malware Technique:  3, 5, 7, 9 (not the worst thing that can happen to your DNS), 18 (I’m setting a ringtone for “nuisance likely”), 23 (still one of my favorite techniques for the change of scenery alone), 27 (if you haven’t, do an internet search for Deviant Ollam’s youtube series to see an artist at work)

Both: 1 (and additional meanings as well: how is this even a thing?), 12 (Don’t Google this, trust me), 16 (old-school action – it’s what got Mitnick hooked), 20, 25 (if we’re counting media coverage), 27, and, not surprisingly, 28

Scoring Rubric:

1-10: You’re likely skilled in either the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome that is the online dating scene, or you’re a highly sought-after security mercenary. As this simple quiz shows, the Venn diagram for those two categories resembles a map of two seas that lie on opposite sides of Asia.

11-20: The sweet spot in the bell curve, also known as the normal or Gaussian or Laplace-Gauss distribution. (And yes, I may have been spending too much time looking at statistics and graphs during the last few weeks.) Bonus points will be awarded based on the number of these terms you can work into your next conference session or video call with your elderly parents, whichever comes first.

20-28: While your achievement is laudable, please note that the authorities (and your Tinder / Bumble / FarmersOnly contacts) will be notified for their own safety and wellbeing.