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.

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.

Pipl

Billing itself as “The most comprehensive people search on the web” Pipl is a pretty neat tool.  The big advantage of this search tool over other more common ones is that Pipl searches deep web databases to compile data matching your queries.  The results are sometimes surprisingly detailed.  Pipl searches some popular social networking sites as well as email addresses, pdf documents, webpages and whitepage listings.  I found it worthy of addition to my bookmarks.

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.

Lifehack: Gmail Favicon

I’ve recently become a follower of the Lifehacker blog.  I picked up a copy of Upgrade Your Life to read on the plane during a recent business trip.  I found that I had dog-eared so many pages of cool tips and tricks, it would have been easier to just rip out the few pages that didn’t seem useful.  So, if you haven’t been reading it, here’s a link to a recent helpful tip.  Gmail users that use the Firefox browser (with Greasmonkey) can turn the Gmail favicon into something more useful than a picture of an envelope.

Emporis.com: Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

Empois.com is a self-described “large and free-to-use website about buildings.”  That’s true.  They host a massive database with information on buildings (large and small) in over 60,000 cities.  Much of the content comes from public records, vendors, and research companies but Emporis.com also solicits information from it’s user community.  You can browse cities for the tallest buildings and view details of each.  The database hosts varying levels of detail about specific buildings but it generally includes the year built, a photo (popular buildings have anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand photos), the architect and builder information, number of floors, and bordering streets.  Sometimes lat/long geodata is provided as well.  Another cool feature is that the database contains information on buildings currently under construction and even projects that were planned but abandoned or put on hold.  Great resource to add to the online investigator’s toolkit.

Internet Archive

Ever wish you could go back in time and see what that website used to say last week, month, or even (gasp) last year?  That’s eons in the blogosphere.  But, there is one tool in the online investigator’s arsenal that shouldn’t be overlooked.  The Internet Archive Wayback Machine collects and indexes sites across the web every day, and stores those pages for future reference.  With over 85 billion pages, the index is huge and contains all manner of web flotsam.  They now also index moving images, texts, audio and other web content.    Biggest advantages:  1) the archive takes snapshots of indexed sites over time and saves each one so you can see changes, and 2) it’s free.  Biggest drawbacks: 1) it doesn’t contain the entire web so the site/page you’re looking for may be missing from the index, and 2) the platform is finnicky and sometimes media (like images or flash) does not save or load properly making some pages hard to make out.  But overall, this can be a great investigative tool, especially when the subject of an investigation makes changes to a website/page during your the period of your investigation.

Google StreetView

Most readers are probably familiar with Google StreetView.  It’s a great investigative tool but has received negative attention in recent months due to privacy concerns.  This week, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that tech-savvy law enforcement professionals in MA were able to use StreetView as an investigatory tool in a kidnapping case.  After receiving cell phone coordinates suggesting that the kidnapper might be in VA, investigators used Google StreetView, satellite view, and maps to give them a sense of the location and which buildings were nearby.  Since the cell phone triangulation data they received couldn’t pinpoint a location, they had to make some assumptions about the subject’s whereabouts.  But using these tools, they identified a nearby motel.  Their hunch proved correct and the suspect was taken into custody and the 9 year old victim is back home.

Such tools can be a tremendous resource for investigators.  In addition to Google, other companies offer similar tools. For example, Microsoft’s Live Maps “Bird’s Eye View” also provides great imagery.

Social Network OSINT

Tamara Thompson recently published a great article in the December issue of Law Technology News regarding the use of social networking websites during due diligence research on people and companies.  The article is particularly good because it describes effective search techniques that investigators or researchers should use when searching social media sites like MySpace, Facebook and others.  

You can read more of Tamara’s great tips on her blog at PIbuzz.com.

Gender Analysis

A free gender analyzer is availble from uClassify.  It claims to determine the gender of a website or blog author.  Self-repored (non scientific) accuracy statistics seem to be around 60%.  Thanks to Sources & Methods for the tip.