Monthly Archive for April, 2011

Zanran for Numerical & Graphical Data

Published on April 27, 2011 in Search Engines, Search Strategies and Statistics. 0 Comments Tags: , .

An excellent article about a beta search engine with promise.

Zanran – a new data search engine

… a new data search engine called Zanran – that focuses on finding numerical and graphical data.

Zanran focuses on finding what it calls  ‘semi-structured’ data on the web. This is defined as numerical data presented as graphs, tables and charts – and these could be held in a graph image or table in an HTML file, as part of a PDF report, or in an Excel spreadsheet. This is the key differentiator – essentially, Zanran is not looking for text but for formatted numerical data.”

Search Engines of the Past

Published on April 25, 2011 in Search Engines. 0 Comments

AltaVista is gone. HotBot is gone. Now AlltheWeb is gone.

Flickr Search Improvements

Published on April 25, 2011 in Social Sites. 0 Comments

Flickr has made some changes to the way search works.

Analysis, Synthesis, & Prediction

Published on April 25, 2011 in Methods. 0 Comments

Principles of Accurate Analysis and Synthesis

This article is about making predictions. Predictions are just best guesses of what is going to happen in the future based on known intelligence (information). This article can be useful for any type of prediction including military prediction, business prediction, and science prediction

Analysis is the process of breaking down known pieces of information (intelligence) into smaller pieces of information (intelligence) so that the details can be studied.

Synthesis is the process of putting the studied small pieces of information (intelligence) back together in a way that will paint a picture of possible future events.

Data analysis and synthesis should be based on facts or data that has a high order of probability of being accurate.

Read the full article

Getting a Phone Number from an Email Address

Published on April 22, 2011 in Craigslist, Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: .

You have an email address, and need the subject’s phone number.  No repository exists that correlates an email address with a phone number.  This requires some investigative work.  First, use the free reverse email look-ups to help in your search.  To find these, use the search term email reverse lookup in your favorite search engine.  Normally, these are of little use, especially with anyone who lives outside the U.S.A..

The following represents my usual process before resorting to confidential resources.

  • Check the email address in Google. Use it as a reverse email search. You may find an associated cell phone number that is still in service.
  • Do reverse email search using Pipl.com this finds content that other web crawlers miss. Go to Pipl, click the “Email” link, enter the email address. The results may display online sites and documents where that email address appears and you may find an associated telephone number at one of those sites.
  • Kgbpeople.com and SocialMention Search in social networks using Kgbpeople. Enter the email address in the “Name:” field at the top of the page, select the country in the pull-down menu and press the “Search” button. Select one of the four tabs at the top of the screen — Social networks, Search engines, Photo and video, or Personal — then review the results for a cell phone number associated with that email address.  Do a similar search using SocialMention.
  • AllofCraigs and Search All Craig’s Search Craigslist ads. It’s a handy place to conduct a reverse email search. Enter the email address in the field and press the Hopefully, you will find some ads that reveal a phone number connected to that email address.

Best Documentary Evidence

Published on April 20, 2011 in Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In Omychund v Barker (1745) 1 Atk, 21, 49; 26 ER 15, 33, Lord Harwicke stated that no evidence was admissible unless it was `the best that the nature of the case will allow’. The general rule is that secondary evidence, such as a copy . . . , will be not admissible if an original document exists, and is not unavailable due to destruction or other circumstances indicating unavailability.

The rationale for the . . . rule can be understood from the context in which it arose: in the eighteenth century a copy was usually made by hand by a clerk (or even a litigant). The best evidence rule was predicated on the assumption that, if the original was not produced, there was a significant chance of error or fraud in relying on such a copy.

Today this still applies to a large degree — that is why we normally get certified copies of public records that might be used in the future and notarize copies of documents obtained throughout the course of an investigation.

Better Presentations

Published on April 15, 2011 in Report Writing. 0 Comments

Clive On Learning has a good list of 50 tips that will help make your next presentation better, regardless of your experience level.

Pronunciation Guides

Published on April 13, 2011 in Communication, Report Writing and Training & Education. 0 Comments

8 Online Audio Pronunciation Guides That Help You Speak Words Correctly

Mispronouncing foreign or unusual English words during a presentation or during court testimony immediately signals that you are not an expert in the subject you are discussing.  These sites will  help you pronounce both English  and foreign words better.

Disabling Geolocation

Published on April 11, 2011 in Methods, Power User Tips, Privacy, Private Investigator and Search Leakage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

In a recent article about the DuckDuckGo search engine, I wrote about search leakage.  Many programs leak your location. Internet Explorer does not have a geolocation feature yet, but Firefox and its associated email program do.  Here is how to disable this annoying feature that may reveal that you are investigating a person or  company by your visits to their websites.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure-out that if he defrauded somebody in Toronto that web site visits from someone in Toronto might mean he is being investigated.

To test your browser, first go to this site, then make the changes below and revisit it to see the difference.

Firefox

• Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar without the ‘ ’
• Discard the warning by hitting ‘yes’
•Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.enabled’ or you can simply search for ‘geo.enabled‘
• Doubleclick the item and it will change from its default value ‘True’ to ‘False’
• Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.wifi.uri’or you can simply search for ‘geo.wifi.uri‘
• Rightclick the Value of ‘geo.wifi.uri’ and click ‘Modify’
• Type in ‘localhost’ and hit ‘OK’

Thunderbird

• Goto ‘Tools’
• Goto ‘Options’
• Goto ‘Advanced’
• Hit ‘Config Editor’ on the General tab
• Discard the warning by hitting ‘yes’
• Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.enabled’ or you can simply search for ‘geo.enabled‘
• Doubleclick the item and it will change from its default value ‘true’ to ‘false’

Search Engine Results

Doing a test search in Bing and Google revealed that turning off the geolocation feature changes the results rather dramatically.  All the search results in my test search went from Canada-centric before turning off the geolocation to U.S.-centric after it was turned off.

TweetWhen

Published on April 8, 2011 in Social Sites and Twitter. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Dan Zarella (@danzarrella) a Social Media expert who works at HubSpot, has launched a tool for those interested in measuring your most retweetable days & times. It is called TweetWhen.

This could be useful in some investigations involving Twitter.

DuckDuckGo

Published on April 6, 2011 in Google-Free Wednesday, Search Engines, Search Leakage and Search Strategies. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Google-Free Wednesday

Our Google-Free Wednesdays create familiarity with the new, specialised, and often more relevant search engines.  Its been a while since I have come across a  a new and worthy candidate for this honor. Today, the honor goes to DuckDuckGo (DDG).

DuckDuckGo

I like this search engine because it eliminates a lot of the spam sites that have twisted and manipulated the Google results lately.  I have previously written about encrypted search engines like Scroogle Scraper and the Encryped Google search.

DDG goes further to protect your privacy. If properly set-up, DDG (Redirect setting) doesn’t send your search terms in the HTTP referrer header to the sites you click on. Your search terms may reveal your interest to the sites you visit and this may compromise an investigation.  It also uses a version of the HTTPS Everywhere FireFox add-on for its secure site connection. However, to ensure your first search is secure you may have to first enter a “dummy” search to get to HTTPS version.

DuckDuckGo also operates a Tor exit enclave, which means you can get end to end anonymous and encrypted searching by using Tor & DDG together. That means if you’re on Tor, and you access DDG, you’ll likely exit through the DDG relay and get service much faster. Tor can be slow, but this should speed it up a bit if you’re searching using DDG. Only DDG traffic exits from the DDG relay.

The lack of persistent settings requires the use URL settings like this: “http://duckduckgo.com/?kh=1&kn=1&kp=-1″. Once you are at the properly set-up DDG homepage, drag the URL to the bookmarks toolbar.  Use the bookmark to launch DDG with your settings. When you click on the bookmark you will find that you are at the normal HTTP homepage. Enter a dummy search to be certain all your searches are encrypted (HTTPS) and not leaking data to the sites you visit through the referrer header.

New Standard for Privacy on Ontario Work Computers

Published on April 4, 2011 in Canada, Courts, Forensics, News and Privacy. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I think R V. Cole, 2011 ONCA 218 will become the leading case on an employee’s expectation of privacy on a work-provided computer. This appeal was a partial victory to a Sudbury high school teacher charged with possession of child pornography. The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that police violated his Charter rights when they searched his laptop without a warrant.

A search of Cole’s computer by the high school’s IT staff found sexually explicit photos of a Grade 10 student that he acquired from the student’s email account. The laptop was then turned over to the police and searched without a warrant. The proceeds of the police search were excluded while the IT technician’s search was proper as it was for the purposes of maintaining the school board’s network and the laptop.

Justice Karakatsanis wrote for the Ontario Court of Appeal which found the employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his laptop based on the following factors:

  • he had exclusive possession of the laptop;
  • he had permission to use it for personal use;
  • he had permission to take it home on evenings, weekends and summer vacation;
  • there was no evidence the board actively monitored teachers’ use of laptops;
  • the school board had no clear and unambiguous policy to monitor, search, or police the teacher’s use of his laptop.

This seems consistent with the prevailing case law regarding the recognition of an employer’s right to govern the use of their systems through policy, but it also recognises the rising privacy expectations of employees in the personal use of an employer’s system.

Searching AROUND(x) Google

Published on April 1, 2011 in Search Engines and Search Strategies. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

The AROUND(x) Operator

A common complaint about Google was that there was no proximity search. Most people think that you cannot find thisword within x words of thatword.  Wrong!

Google supports an undocumented search operator called AROUND(x) that works as a proximity search. To make the operator work properly, you must write it in all capitals and place it between the words. It will return results with variables of the words such as plurals, etc., as is normal for Google. This may be used with other operators within normal Google search syntax, for example you might add the site: operator.