Notes for season 3 episode 3, “Lady Killer“
01:29 The name of the fake credit reporting agency Finch gets the report from is “Equian”
03:29 “smartphone applications like Tinder and Angler”. Tinder was launched in September 2012, this episode would have been written mid-2013, so it had become TV shorthand for dating apps in under a year.
03:58 The team assume that the detailed dating records (on paper!) indicate a stalker, and not something like Dexter Fletcher’s Amiga owning character in “The Rachel Papers”.
05:17 The people who work for digital metadata-driven AI system seem very old school operationally. Paper maps, printed photos.
07:22 Murphy uses a service called “Vanish Text”, which deletes message contents but still keeps detailed metadata logs? Ephemeral messages were probably popularised by Snapchat in September 2011, automatic WhatsApp deletion didn’t launch until 2020.
10:24 Shaw’s fake dating profile includes “Drinks: Nightly”
12:00 Angler has a “check-in” functionality, reminiscent of Foursquare (people used to publicly record their locations long before it was a pandemic-era oppressive government plot). Apparently there were dating apps based on Foursquare, such as Singlesquare, which describes recording “sightings of single people in public venues” which I’m sure is fine.
13:18 Carter’s profile is under her own name raising the possibility that this is her actual account?