Unpacking the strange and perhaps unsettling story behind a series of bizarre websites starting with FaceFamous.org. Ad-free episodes & more available at: redwebpod.com Since 2020, a strange website has perplexed us. With stolen content and links that connect to other odd corners of the internet, it’s hard to understand just what is going on. Today, we discuss the mysterious website known as FaceFamous.org. Our sponsors: EveryPlate - Go to http://everyplate.com/podcast and use code REDWEB50 to get 50% off your first box. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/redweb to get 10% off your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the mysterious website FaceFamous.org?
In 2018, a strange website appeared online, seemingly mundane at first. Over time, it began forwarding to other bizarre sites. Online, rumors began to spread about its purpose, but both the website and the discussions surrounding it have since vanished. Today, we discuss the mysterious website known as FaceFamous.org. This is Red Web.
Welcome back, Task Force, to another episode of Red Web, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the supernatural. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me, hearing about this mystery for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz.
Okay, weird internet stuff. Yeah, I just don't mess with it, you know? I built my own computer. I've been building my computer for a long time, and just typing in the weird...
like i just man i don't want viruses key loggers all that kind of i just and i feel like that's where you end up um getting that kind of stuff yeah aside aside from the like you know the freaky sites um i feel like those are also dangerous to just like pick up stuff that you don't want on your computer you know oh yeah and so task force let this be a warning when you start googling stuff on your computer like be careful be careful
Out the gate, be careful. Yeah, these webs, some of them that we're going to talk about are still up and around kicking. I'm not saying that they're going to do anything, but you're totally right. You got pop-ups that happen. You got malware that forces its way in. There's QR codes now that show up in people's mailbox and they go, I don't know what this is.
And then they scan it, boom, virus on their phone. It's an unhinged world, and it's only been, what, four and a half years since we started, but this is going back to our roots, and it was so refreshing to hear you say, mm-mm, I don't mess with it, because I feel like I haven't heard that in a minute. Yeah.
Because we're back in the saddle of an online mystery, talking about a thing that you can actually go do now. You can get hands-on with it. You can get, what do you say? Tangible. Tangible with it. It's very tangible. It's a little throwback episode, kind of. It really is. It's a throwback episode. We came down here to sub-level 128 to kind of kick around our old roots. It's very dusty down here.
We haven't remodeled in a minute. And I think we got to tear these walls down, you know? We got to. I look for the squonks because I'm taking them out.
But there weren't any to be found.
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Chapter 2: How did FaceFamous.org evolve over time?
Chapter 3: What are the risks of exploring strange websites?
But with that said, as I was kind of digging into this, this was actually the year that the EU's General Data Protection Regulation went into effect. You might have heard it as GDPR. It was one of Europe's privacy policies, a blanket thing that went into effect on May 2018. And because of this, registrars had to redact most personal information such as names, emails, addresses.
So it is possible, just as a caveat here at the top, that the location of the site's owner may be different. Some of this information could be hidden. There is definitely ways now to hide the IP ownership
of a domain and it could show it as being in a different state a different city a different country yeah that makes sense because usually it was like oh this domain here it is and it's like you can get some information pretty easily
Yeah. I mean, man, this was only seven years ago, but it still somehow feels like old-ish internet. But yeah, in the wild west of the internet, the early 2000s, maybe turn of the century, if you had a domain name that you were parking or whatever, yeah, people could just go to a Whois and be like, I know exactly who you are. It's like a license plate. You can figure it all out. Right.
And that's kind of weird. So as the internet got normalized and everyone had an online presence, you know, we had killed the idea of don't put your name online. Now everyone's putting their face all over the place. Privacy came to play, which I do think that there's a need for that, right? Oh, 100%. So the last known official update to the site was on July 4th, 2020.
There have been updates and IP changes since then, I do want to say. We just don't know if these were the original creators who left, if somebody else picked up the URL, what have you. In fact, before we dive in, it is safe, I've checked it in a... What do they call it when it's removed from the internet? It's like an island computer.
It's actually built in a Faraday cage with one small strand of internet cable that then plugs it in. I checked it on that, so I know it's safe. Oh, okay. But you take your business computer, Fredo, and you go ahead and type in facefamous.org for me. Yeah! Yeah, I'm doing it right now. Oh, it's called an air-gapped computer, by the way. Air-gapped? Yeah, it's air-gapped.
It's got a buffer of air around it. Interesting. No, but seriously, though, it is safe. Please go check out facefamous.org. I want to hear your thoughts as we dive in.
Facefamous.org. Oh, guys, give me one of those. Don't pop up. Wake up. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Saying, wake up, Alfredo, dot, dot, dot. I see that you're recording Red Web. I think there's something mysterious about this website. Well, not a site. Or are you the mystery? Okay, so it's pulling some of the... Hold on a second. It sees you?
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Chapter 4: What curious content did FaceFamous.org host?
So whatever the purpose of these articles were, I'll take it at face value. It was about workplace gossip, environmental relationships, how to better position yourself in the workplace and maybe safeguard yourself from gossip. It's kind of what it's all talking about. But all of these articles were written between July 8th and July 9th of 2018.
Now, as you kind of pointed out, it does seem a little hollow. There's not a lot of flash to it. It's very basic. I'm sure they took a very simple template and started making these articles. And then after two days, it's almost like they stopped touching it. But there's no comments on any of the posts. They're all uncategorized.
And I want you to remember that because of what we're going to talk about next. But there's no categories, there's no tags, as it were. And all of these posts were made just in those two days and written by the same person, whoever the site admin is. And the website doesn't even have ads, so it's not like they were trying to turn this into a business right off the bat.
And some of the images used on the page seem to be stolen from other blog sites such as WikiHow. And so off the rip, my gut check kind of says that this is maybe a teenager beginning their foray into making a blog. Everybody starts somewhere and maybe they're just spun out after, you know, two days of doing it and no web traction.
Yeah, it was such a short time.
Yeah, but that's not really the crux of the mystery. Yes, it's a strange website. Yes, the writing's strange. But what really took Redditor attention was at the bottom of the page, the bottom of every page, I believe, was a huge list of two-letter prefixes, each followed by five asterisks. So this is going to be a little hard to describe.
I do have a visual of it for you, Fredo, so you can kind of see what I'm talking about as you pour over that visually. Again, we'll post this on social and the YouTube upload task force. This is essentially a comprehensive list of every possible two letter combination, of course, with 26 letters times 26. that leads to 676 of these prefixes, right? Jesus.
So in order, you'll have A, A, star, star, star, star, star, A, B, star, star, star, star, star, A, C, A, D, so on and so forth, all the way down to Z, Z. Does that make sense? Yes. So is the image A2? A2. Yes. So tell us what you're seeing. Jesus. It's kind of a mess. It's a mess. It's also very tiny. It's very tiny. That might be my fault. I opened it up on a 1440p monitor.
I just see a wall of it looks like text.
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