Tag Archive for 'background investigation'

Implications of Organised Spam Taking Over Google

Manipulated Search Terms

Huge amounts of money is being spent to manipulate highly competitive search terms in Google. I’m not talking about the normal link-building or link-buying and other normal efforts. The trend is related to criminal organizations trying to sell counterfeit goods through the US search results, and to a lesser degree, the results for UK, France and Germany.

The spammers do this through keyworded anchor-text heavy links provided by automated forum and blog spam along with hacked websites. These gangs create such large numbers of these sites and links that Google is having quite a hard time catching up with the spam. The Caffeine update that ranks sites faster may be degrading overall search quality as this trend seems to go back only 7 months or so.

Lessons

  • Don’t trust what you read on the Internet; it may be planted data
  • If you don’t find anything interesting on the first few pages of Google, then you’re doing it wrong!  Set-up the search preferences properly and make them persistent.
  • Press releases and promotional websites are not a source of reliable data
  • The Internet is not a “neutral” source. Fact-check and evaluate everything you find.
  • The Internet is only one research venue

DIY Research is Not Practical

Over the last two years we have seen a DIY trend really take hold due to shrinking budgets. This has appeared in the areas of Due Diligence and Background Investigations particularly. This is false economy because the DIY Researcher doesn’t recognise changes like those described above, let alone what to do about such a distortion of the results.

The solution may be as simple as using OptimizeGoogle directed at a version of the search engine that does not implement Google Instant or it may mean conducting the search using a proxy in another country.  If you don’t understand how to do this and why you should do this, then don’t give money to somebody based upon your research.

Botched Background Investigation – Part II

A few weeks ago I wrote about a botched background investigation of a former FBI and CIA Intelligence Analyst who entered into a sham marriage to gain citizenship. It turns out that she had ties to Hezbollah.

Now a US Marine Captain has plead guilty of helping the potential Hezbollah operative gain citizenship in the same way she herself did. Read Hezbollah: Signs of a Sophisticated Intelligence Apparatus to see how an incompetent background investigation can have far-reaching implications.

the cases demonstrate that the FBI, CIA and Marine Corps all failed to detect this web of sham marriages when they conducted background investigations on the women in question, especially since the marriages were within the seven-year investigative window required for Prouty’s FBI clearance and Spinelli’s enlistment in the Marine Corps. A full field background investigation should have been able to determine the nature of the sham marriages, given that the women never lived with their purported husbands.”

Botched Background Investigation

An ex-FBI & CIA agent with a brother-in-law linked to Hezbollah pleads guilty to database searches, raising questions about the security of top secret files in the war on terror.

The case raises questions about hiring practices and background checks by two of the nation’s most security-sensitive and secretive agencies… “It’s hard to imagine a greater threat than the situation where a foreign national uses fraud to attain citizenship and then, based on that fraud, insinuates herself into a sensitive position in the U.S. government.”

It seems she got somebody to marry her so she could become a citizen. The background investigation did not uncover this, nor did the polygraph examination that the US government places so much trust in.

Since this news broke it seems she held some very responsible positions and her brother, along with Prouty’s sister and others, was charged in 2006 by the U.S. attorney in Detroit with tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash… and to route funds to persons in Lebanon with links to Hezbollah.” The sister is currently serving 18 months in a federal prison.