Do you KnowEm?

Billing itself as a brand protection program, KnowEm allows users to check the availability status of a username across various social networks.  KnowEm currently searches over 340 different social network sites in 15 different categories including blog platforms, photo sharing networks, bookmarking services,  and travel sites to name a few.  For a fee, KnowEm will enroll you with your chosen username at these 300+ sites so you can “Grab your name before someone else does.”  This article from the Washington post provides some insight as to why companies (or even individuals) might want to use this service.

However, KnowEm has one great feature that investigators can take advantage of for free.  Anyone can search for a username and check the availability status of that username across all the sites monitored by KnowEm – completely free and without the need to setup an account.  If you have a known username for the subject of your investigation, in less than 30 seconds you can see if that username is in use at any of those 300+ sites.  A great tool to quickly narrow your research.  Go here to try it out.

Social (Media) Stratification

A recent study by Nielsen (referenced in this CNN article) indicates that social networking sites may magnify social and economic  stratification.  The study suggests that less affluent people tend to be users of MySpace, more affluent users are on Facebook, and the most affluent are on LinkedIn and Twitter – although researchers did notice significant overlap – where users are registered on multiple networks – particularly between Facebook and LinkedIn.  While MySpace captured an early lead in the social networking race, more educated and affluent users jumped ship and headed to Facebook.  Consider this sobering statistic - Percentage of users with a six-figure salary:

16% MySpace | 23% Facebook | 38% LinkedIn

Why the disparity – particularly between MySpace and Facebook?

A lot of it has to do with the disparate beginnings of MySpace and Facebook, said Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of Mashable, a blog about social media. Facebook originated at Harvard University and was limited at first to students at approved colleges before opening itself to the public in September 2006.

MySpace, on the other hand, had a “come one, come all” policy and made a mad dash towards monetization, Ostrow said. “They used a lot of banner ads without regard to the quality, and it really diminished the value [of the site] for the more tech-savvy demographic.”

These are factors for the investigative researcher to take into consideration when querying social networking sites.

NodeXL: Free Link Analysis Tool

Maybe not as powerful and as polished as some of the other commercial products on the market and used in the intelligence analysis space, NodeXL is definitely the best bargain at zero dollars.  Microsoft’s visual link analysis tool (fomerly known as .NetMap) is an Excel 2007 template for viewing and analyzing network graphs, along with a set of .NET Framework 3.5 class libraries that can be used to add network graphs to custom applications.  Check out the details here.  Thanks to Deborah Osborne at Analyst’s Corner for the tip.

Wikipedia for Spies…

This article in Time discusses the progress of Intellipedia, a wiki-based mult-agency intelligence sharing platform.  I wrote briefly about it back in January.  It’s interesting, although not surprising, to hear that the Intellipedia proponents faced stiff opposition in getting the project approved and then received resistence in implementing it.  ”‘There’s been pushback throughout the whole process,’ says [Intellipedia developer Don Burke]. Initially, analysts who were asked to participate said they were too busy or just preferred the old, proprietary databases managed by individual agencies.”  Sounds all too familiar.

Analysis Paralysis

It seems as though there are an ever-increasing number of companies billing themselves as purveyors of data analysis software – particularly for purposes of intelligence analysis and fraud investigation.  Companies like SAS, i2, Centrifuge Systems, Chiliad, Aster Data Systems and Tableau Software - just to name a few – have all crossed my radar recently.  It’s interesting to watch these companies branch out.  It seems that many of the got their start as academic projects or government funded/targeted corporations but they are now expanding into the private sector with gusto.  With all these tools to choose from, I think I need a tool to help me select one.  But, I’m all in favor of competition.  Let the games begin.

Privacy

Great post by Schneier:  Privacy in the Age of Persistence.  As an investigative researcher, I’m thrilled by the ever growing content cloud on the Internet.  Every day, there is exponentially more information to search through – all of it potentially useful for an investigator.  But Schneier raises some good points about how communication is shifting and “conversations” are becoming more permanent and what that means for privacy in the long run.  Big implications here.

Information Integration Program

The Wall Street Journal published an encouraging article about the integration of various intelligence networks in the federal government agencies.  When there are captive silos of information that cannot be shared easily across organizations, the capacity for effective analytics is severely hampered.  It’s shocking to read that today’s intelligence analysts can search only 5% of available information.  This solution proposes to give them access to 95%, accounting for security clearance.  An ambitious effort for sure.

Facebook Skeletons

In a relatively short period, my wife has become addicted to Facebook.  She commented to me last night that she was devastated when one of her “friends” had scanned and posted and old picture from junior high school.  Of course, the nifty tagging feature allowed all of her “friends” to learn about the picture as soon as it was available.  [You can see a creative implementation of the feature in a NY Times photo of the recent presidential inauguration, where many of the attendees in the photo have been tagged.] 

Other than being mortified about others seeing such an out-of-style hairdo, the damage was relatively limited.  But, this got me thinking about Alan Pruitt’s recent comments regarding Online Identity Management. Fortunately, if you’re the one being tagged in a photo, Facebook gives you the option of removing the tag.  But even still, the photo remains online for everyone to see.  

Suddenly, that college trip to mardi gras is starting to seem like a bad idea.  Social media and Web 2.0 technologies are connecting people and information in ways that were never possible.  While this is a great innovation, it also brings with it a new set of responsibilities for managing – or at least being aware of – your online identity.

Sneakey

Read an article yesterday about a new technology developed at the University of California, San Diego that allows someone to take a photograph of a key, and using some relatively simple modeling software, recreate a working duplicate key. The researchers proved the effectiveness of the concept by photographing a set of keys from a distance (nearly 200 feet away) using a telephoto lens. They also tested the technology using lower resolution photos – like pictures from a cell phone. The researchers admit that the technology has been available for some time but think that several factors may be worth pointing out: the process is relatively simple for someone with programming knowledge and the cost of the required software and equipment is now inexpensive. Interesting vulnerability. You might want to check out the original press release or the project page.