> Does anyone know how these companies, et al., actually differentiate US Citizens from Non-US Citizens? I don't remember clicking the "I'm a US Citizen box" on any website.
I think you were just trolling but if not then one of hundreds possible ways to find that:
1. get a hold of your your email (or name and then facebook / gmail snoop)
2. your email leads to your paypal account
3. your paypal account leads to your dob and ssn, bank accounts
4. your banks accounts hold information whether you are citizen or not;
- OR -
4. your ssn codification tells whether by the time obtaining the number you were citizen or not
PayPal, Facebook and Palantr has the same co-owner, P. Thiel.
But seriously I don't think they discriminate. Last thing they look at is whether you are citizen or not. Your IPs (all the one you ever used while login to any website you have an account with) can quickly tell them whether you are on US soil or not. Most likely as long as you are here, you are consider us citizen, whether lawfully or not but you "operate" on US soil so the same rules apply to you. Good example would be if you are in US as a tourist -- you still need to obey US laws and regulations.
Doesn't this mean that they are spying on you without actually knowing if you are a US citizen? By your logic, only after step 4 they actually know if you are a citizen, but they have collected a lot of data about you in steps 1-3.
I think you were just trolling, but the GP was asking a very pertinent, reasonable question specifically about companies like Facebook, Google, etc, and how they differentiate. Your reply -- ostensibly about what an organization like the FBI might do to identify someone -- is not relevant to their question at all, making it all the more bizarre that you decided to question whether they were "trolling" (apologies to all others, but that is a growing peeve of mine -- this noisy declaration of things people say as trolling).
Google knows a lot about someone, but they have no idea what citizenship I hold. They can guess, of course, but that isn't a lawful way to discriminate.
I think you were just trolling but if not then one of hundreds possible ways to find that:
1. get a hold of your your email (or name and then facebook / gmail snoop)
2. your email leads to your paypal account
3. your paypal account leads to your dob and ssn, bank accounts
4. your banks accounts hold information whether you are citizen or not;
- OR -
4. your ssn codification tells whether by the time obtaining the number you were citizen or not
PayPal, Facebook and Palantr has the same co-owner, P. Thiel.
But seriously I don't think they discriminate. Last thing they look at is whether you are citizen or not. Your IPs (all the one you ever used while login to any website you have an account with) can quickly tell them whether you are on US soil or not. Most likely as long as you are here, you are consider us citizen, whether lawfully or not but you "operate" on US soil so the same rules apply to you. Good example would be if you are in US as a tourist -- you still need to obey US laws and regulations.