Archive for the 'Dirty Tricks' Category

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Ten Private Investigators Indicted

Published on December 7, 2007 in Canada, Dirty Tricks, Ethics, Privacy and Private Investigator. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Ten private investigators were indicted on December 5, 2007,in Seattle, WA, by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The alleged defendants collected information via pretext from the I.R.S., Social Security Administration, various State Unemployment Insurance Departments, private financial institutions, banks, pharmacies and hospitals. The alleged defendants fraudulently posed as the individuals about who information was sought.

If this is true, they broke Rule #1.

Washington State requires a Private Investigator to be licensed. However, it seems that BNT Investigations and the three named individuals in Washington state might not have state-issued Private Investigator’s licences. I don’t know the licence status of the others.

This type of behaviour is not new. In Canada, this issue was, in part, dealt with during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Confidentiality of Health Records in Ontario, Canada, by Mr. Justice Horace Krever.

The Royal Commission heard from over 500 witnesses, including private investigation firms, insurance companies, hospitals, and others. During 1976 and 1977, the Royal Commission found evidence of hundreds of successful efforts to acquire health information from Ontario hospitals and doctors under pretext.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada admitted to the Royal Commission that its members had gathered medical information through “various sources” without the authorization of the patients.

Several investigation companies went out of business due to the Royal Commission exposing their activities.

Where there are clients willing to pay for this improper and unprofessional behaviour, there will be providers of such services.


		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				A Spy in Your Pocket
			


			
						

				Published on November 30, 2007 in Communication, Dirty Tricks, Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Privacy, Security and Surveillance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .			
 
			
					


		

						
An article entitled Stalked by a cell phone: Who’s spying on you?  warns of the danger of downloading software to your cell phone, connecting to the Internet from a mobile phone, and the dangers of letting it get out of your sight.


Update: See this at:


http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=9346833 and


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyKcoDaofg

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Spammers pose as private eyes to spread malware
			


			
						

				Published on November 25, 2007 in Dirty Tricks, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Privacy, Private Investigator and Security. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .			
 
			
					


		

						
Commtouch, an Israeli security firm that specializes in protecting e-mail integrity, says that it has detected a new malware outbreak that is spread through e-mails claiming to be from private investigators. According to Commtouch, the e-mails tell recipients that a private investigator has been recording the recipients’ phone calls and that an audio file of one of the calls is attached to the message. When unwitting recipients download the “call” to their hard drives, their computers become infected with malware…


Some common subject headings for the malware e-mails include “I’m monitoring you,” “You’re being watched” and “The tape of your conversation.” Commtouch says that the malware is sent in the form of a password-protected, compressed file that appears to be an MP3 sound file.

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Reputation Management
			


			
						

				Published on September 16, 2007 in Dirty Tricks, Reputation Management and Search Engines. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
A growing proportion of our research is directed at reputation management efforts. It is very easy for someone to put up a Web site or Blog that libels a company or person anonymously.


I found two excellent articles about companies that claim to erase, or at least push lower in the search engines results, negative comments about a company. The first, is on an MSNBC Blog called The Red Tape Chronicles and the second is on Forbes.


I have no idea about the effectiveness of these services, but they represent an interesting concept.

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Dangerous Googling
			


			
						

				Published on June 29, 2007 in Dirty Tricks, Espionage, Methods, Private Investigator, Surveillance and The Investigator's Computer. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
Google accounts present a serious risk to employees who use them in the workplace. Google accounts allow you access to Gmail and another interestng feature, your search history. Unfortunately, your Google account does not time-out.


Now imagine you’re at work. You sign-on to your Google  account and check your mail and use Google Reader to check some RSS feeds. You are then called away from your desk. You don’t sign-off, afterall, its only Google. Well your collegue drops by and decides to do a search and check his mail. He searches for a prostitute for tomorrow evening and checks his Gmail and finds yours.


Your collegue has now added some interesting entries to your search history and read your mail. My Yahoo presents a similar risk.


This leads me to think of some interesting oportunities that this offers if I set-up virgin Google and My Yahoo accounts and place them on an unattended PC.

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Rumors
			


			
						

				Published on April 30, 2007 in Company Research, Dirty Tricks, Reputation Management, Social Sites and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .			
 
			
					


		

						
I’m a firm believer in letting other people do my research. Why should I do ‘original’ work that has already been done. When we do research to assist reputation management a lot of work has been done for us by rumourmonger and rumor debunking sites like Snopes. However, some malicious rumors originate with jealous competitors and radicals and require extensive research to identify the source, intent, and motive.


For instance, rumors that one company or other is owned by the KKK or one CEO or another donates money to the Church of Satan have circulated for decades. However, the Internet have given such rumors wings.


Companies can be destroyed by malicious rumors. A soft drink marketed to minorities in northeastern US cities, was almost bankrupted by a rumor that the drink contained a chemical that would make black men sterile.


Rumors can put lives at risk. In 2005 a rumor spread by cell phone text messages caused violent riots in Pakistan. The rumor was that men would loose their manhood if they shook hands with a foreigner.


In Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay (Auburn House Publishing, 1985), the authors suggest a public and forceful denial of the rumor as soon as possible by using solid evidence backed by experts. Sometimes the expert evidence is expert research that debunks the rumor.

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Dirty Tricks
			


			
						

				Published on April 26, 2007 in Dirty Tricks and Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
In an article entitled Dissing the competition through dirty tricks! Arthur Weiss cites an article that illustrates how a campaign of dirty tricks might unfold. The cited Times Online article is very educational.


More recently, the Canadian insurer, Fairfax, was the target of a campaign of malicious disinformation from a group of Wall Street Hedge Fund managers. The company is now suing them for $6 billion – claiming that their aim was to manipulate the market by creating uncertainty about the company and its future. These include a variety of dirty tricks – false emails and letters, espionage attempts and more.


The main actor accused of conducting the dirty tricks campaign was Spyro Contogouris. Googling “spyro contogouris” brings up more than you might want to know. Especially the claim that Contogouris was working for the FBI.