QMap, reported to be one of the most popular QAnon websites, has shut down after online fact-checker Logically published the alleged owner’s name, business PO box address, current employer, employment history, email addresses, photo, approximate age, the town where he lives, and details of his last remaining social media profile.
Logically’s editor also contacted the QMap alleged owner’s current employer, CitiGroup, to make them “aware of his activities” and a Bloomberg reporter used state records to track him down and show up outside his home.
Before QMap shut down, it was the world’s most popular QAnon post aggregator and received 7.6 million visits per month, according to web analytics service SimilarWeb.
It collected “Q Drops” that were initially posted by Q to the imageboard 8kun and collated them on-site so that they could easily be searched via keywords, dates, and tags.
According to Logically, the justification for this mass dump of the alleged owner’s personal information that preceded QMap going offline was to investigate the identity of Q. Logically’s investigation concluded that the alleged owner of QMap was not Q but all his personal information was published regardless.
The alleged owner of QMap was operating anonymously prior to Logically’s publication of his personal information and he has since scrubbed his remaining social media profiles and shut down his business website.
When the Bloomberg reporter showed up at his home and asked whether he was behind QMap, the alleged owner didn’t want to discuss QMap or the Logically report.
In order to track the QMap owner down, Logically found a now-deleted Facebook post asking for someone to translate English to Hindi on QMap with the link to apply containing an email address.
This email address was then used to find the QMap alleged owner’s developer profile on CNET. This profile linked to his apps’ websites which linked to the Google Play Store listings for these apps.
One of these Google Play Store listings contained a business address. Logically used this business address to search for business details and found a phone number that was then used to identify the alleged owner of QMap and uncover his current address.
Once Logically had this information, they were able to find his CV, his last remaining social media profile (which has now been deleted), and a photo of him.
QAnon has already been scrubbed and blacklisted from most of the major social media platforms with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok collectively deleting thousands of accounts and placing restrictions on content and accounts related to the topic.
Google Play also started to crack down on QAnon apps in May with the QMap app being one of the apps that was purged as part of this crackdown.
Statistics have shown that Facebook’s efforts have wiped out much of QAnon’s engagement.
But now, popular QAnon websites that want to operate outside of social media ecosystem in an anonymous fashion are going offline as their owner’s anonymity and employment is threatened.
