Money Laundering is a global problem - facilitated by dodgy or non-existent companies. The United Kingdom is now the number 1 location for setting up such "off shore" companies. This Guardian article shows how easy it is now to set up fake companies - and defraud people out of millions or hide money or worse.

How Britain can help you get away with stealing millions: a five-step guide buff.ly/2LSHJ7p

A couple of years ago, I was researching a company. One of the two shareholders was a company named Hughes Ltd - which doesn't exist in the UK. When the change requiring the naming of "Persons of Significant Control" was enacted, Hughes disappeared and the real "director" was named. (In fact even this was not true. The person named had changed it as he had narrowly escaped prosecution for a £1m fraud involving car sales. Presumably he wanted a clean start although his son, working for the same company, used the original surname - and also liked cars with photos of him alongside fast ones.

I reported the company - which I strongly suspect to be involved in a Ponzi scheme defrauding the elderly. Sadly, as no crime had YET been committed nothing could be done or has been done (although one director has managed to get himself a £2m dividend on reported sales of £7m - and much lower profits - probably by taking from money put in trust by clients. So until people realise they cannot use the service they think they have purchased nothing will be done.

#fraud #OSINT ... See MoreSee Less

15 hours ago  ·  

TapClicks Acquires Marketing Intelligence Provider iSpionage buff.ly/2xHsupK #CompetitiveIntelligence

iSpionage is a key tool for monitoring online advertising along with Spyfu, Buzzsumo and other related tools. ... See MoreSee Less

5 days ago  ·  

Forecasting isn't easy. Why it’s worth reading crazy-sounding scenarios about the future. Even if they don't come true, they can shape thoughts and so business strategies. The Economist discusses 3 approaches to anticipating the future (buff.ly/2LbDUux) with scenario planning - including a possible view of Europe in 2024 after the USA walks out of NATO. ... See MoreSee Less

6 days ago  ·  

Do a search on Arthur Weiss and you may find information on a hairdresser, teacher, endocrinologist or the director of Mission Impossible films. That's legitimate - we all share the same name. However it also shows how search results can be manipulated by pushing one Arthur Weiss higher than the others for any particular search. Just make one Arthur Weiss site more search engine optimised and that one will appear above the others.

This approach is being used to hide unsavoury and criminal reputations online. Reputation repair consultants create fake profiles / sites pushing negative client information to the bottom of search results. Overcoming such SEO exercises is crucial for #OSINT. You can do this through targeted key words e.g. including a town or country or profession or associated names so that more specific results appear. It's much harder to hide a name completely for such targeted searches. The example given for a currently jailed payday loan scammer shows how this works and why a targeted search would avoid the reputation repair attempts. ... See MoreSee Less

7 days ago  ·  

The Wayback Machine (archive.org) has added a new beta feature named “changes” to help users identify content changes on a specific URL over time. The tool would highlight the content additions and deletions in yellow and blue.

This enhancement will make it much easier to see how a site has developed or what has actually changed over time and so makes archive.org not only easier to use but more powerful as a research tool also..
buff.ly/2X56kI7 #SEO ... See MoreSee Less

1 week ago  ·  

People Who Can Admit What They Don't Know Tend to Know More. Research led by Elizabeth Krumrei-Mancuso showed that those who were "intellectually humble" tended to know more than those who weren't.

This should also apply for organisations. Excellence in #CompetitiveIntelligence goes along with an ability to know what you don't know - and then try and find it out. Companies who think they know it all are likely to have major blindspots preventing them from spotting what they actually don't know, as they will think they do know it. buff.ly/2LAvBrl ... See MoreSee Less

2 weeks ago  ·  

Tools and websites for checking facts online - some useful links and approaches although one significant error. Google does not do proper Boolean searching. If you want Boolean search you need to use Bing.

I'd also recommend Bing image search as in many ways it is better than Google as you can paste in an image and also zoom in or select parts so making it more powerful. Yandex image search is also better for finding faces.

The article does Amnesty's citizenevidence.org (although not attributed - it talks about the YouTube video analyser which is just one part of this site that offers much more in including other Exif viewers other than Jeffrey's one mentioned). Sadly Facebook strips out the exif data so you can't do much on FB images. However other images - always worth checking and geocoding them. (If taken with a proper camera other than a mobile phone camera it should say this but usually no geocode data). This site also allows you to learn how to do search videos buff.ly/2Nx9eGe

One example of the power of using advanced search on e.g. Twitter is buff.ly/2Nj75O2

#OSINT #FakeNews #CompetitiveIntelligence ... See MoreSee Less

2 weeks ago  ·  

Twitter is one of the best sources for #OSINT and for finding out what competitors are thinking about and planning.

To use twitter for competitive intelligence first identify who to follow - the competitor and their people. Set up a list so you can keep this all in one place.

Using Tweetdeck can make the search process much easier - and you can add in keywords so you also pick up customer comments, praise and complaints.

Tweetdeck offers much more to make searching twitter easy. This guide from Bellingcat gives tips - for everything including searching for anything posted in or near your competitor's premises, and much more. ... See MoreSee Less

3 weeks ago  ·  

Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos famously lived alone in a Los Altos, CA mansion and expensed the rent. Holmes, who has since been charged with massive fraud, also refused to fly commercial and at one time reportedly had a security team of 20 (not to mention being a fount of strange (in hindsight) inspirational quotes like one she gave at her 2015 Pepperdine Commencement Speech: "Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire").

In fact, there is a tendency of unsavory startup founders and venture capitalists to show their hands by spending funders’ money on blingy nonsense and frills. The Theranos story is the top startup fraud - but not the only one. Here are the tales of 17 massive startup frauds - and why / how they were exposed. (Not all involve the founders spending excessively. Some involved plain lying e.g. The Honest Company's dishonest labelling!
#Fraud #Startup #Marketing. ... See MoreSee Less

1 month ago  ·  

The AI 100: Artificial Intelligence Startups.

The most promising 100 AI startups working across the artificial intelligence value chain, from hardware and data infrastructure to industrial applications.

CB Insights Report looking at top 2019 Unicorns, Start-ups in various R&D stages and with most US patents. Best funded start-ups, and more.
buff.ly/2muD4Km #AI #ArtificalIntelligence #StartUp ... See MoreSee Less

1 month ago  ·  

Every few months there's a report of a new #DarkWeb search too for advanced OSINT research.

Of course there's the HiddenWiki - essentially a directory site. Then there have been others - most come and go. Grams, Torch and even Onion.city. DuckDuckGo is also there for searching the Dark Web (as well as being one of the best privacy secure search tools on the regular web).

Now DarkSearch claims to be "The 1st Dark Web search engine" ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

The OSINT-ification of ISIS on the #DarkWeb.

The DarkWeb is well known as a place to purchase drugs, illegal pornography and much more and so has an unsavoury reputation. Increasingly it is also a place where terrorists recruit and encourage supporters to fund them.

@z3roTrust gives an outline on #OSINT and TOR - and then looks at how TOR's Onion sites are used to hide terrorist activity. More importantly he shows how the terrorists can be tracked. ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

You've used #OSINT techniques to track hackers who've broken into your system. Is it OK to get your own back by hacking back into their processes… or is it too big a risk? Should Companies be Allowed to ‘Hack Back’ after a #Cyberattack? A blog post by Matthew Rosenquist buff.ly/2ReLJ2p| ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Cyber Security is a new business function and a new industry has arisen around it to protect businesses from data breaches & more. A blog from @Magoo suggests how the industry & risk measurement may develop - over the next 50 years! buff.ly/2vTwwLa #CyberSecurity ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

79% of businesses admit that their organization is adopting emerging technologies faster than they can address related cybersecurity issues - Accenture #Strategy Survey 2019.

Accenture's report on how to survive #DigitalTransformation & related #change states that:
“Relentless change is the new normal. And digital technologies are redefining the way the world works and lives.
Technology is increasingly indivisible from the business, and frictionless interactions, pace and security must be the everyday currency.
Business and government leaders must transform their organizations to ensure relevance, efficiency and competitive advantage.” ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Social Media competitor research - how to monitor competitor activity e.g. Facebook adverts for brand / company #competitiveIntelligence

When monitoring competitor activity it should now be standard to look at social media activity. This includes what (& where) competitors advertise, and what they (and their employees) say. Monitoring Facebook, Twitter, etc. are starting points. This SearchEngineLand article gives ideas on some of the things that can be monitored although it misses out lots of more advanced approaches e.g. keyword popularity, site popularity and it ignores sites like spyfu.com and ispionage.com. ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Want to post something in secret to the #CIA or apply to become an agent when living in a hostile area. Now you can - as the CIA has launched itself on Tor, the Anonymous Internet buff.ly/2VHHWQj

Tor was largely created through funding from the United States government in the 1990s and early 2000s, including from the Naval Research Lab and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and so has always had a US Government involvement. The anonymity service has been open source since its public release in 2002, and it transitioned to being overseen by a nonprofit, dubbed the Tor Project, in 2006. It guarantees anonymity and so is a the tool of choice for #cybercrime, porn, cryptocurrency shopping and getting around China's firewall.

The CIA's involvement shows a recognition in TOR's potential for secret communications - one reason it was created in the first place. ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

OSINT Collection Tools for Pastebin (Source: @JakeCreps blog) buff.ly/2JsY5m8 #OSINT

[Note: Pastebin.com is a useful too to store text and items for cutting / pasting e.g. computer code and much more.] ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

A review of @ICI2019 - the Institute for Competitive Intelligence's (@Institute_CI) annual conference.

Please add in bits I missed or comment on other talks.

It was a great conference & Luxembourg was a great venue. (Back to Bad Nauheim for 2020 :))

www.linkedin.com/pulse/institute-competitive-intelligence-2019-annual-conference-weiss ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Google appears to be experimenting with an option to show less relevant search results when it finds only limited results.

This appears to be a way to ensure users get results - although the search results precision has been changing for years. For example, a search for two terms which should be an "AND" may only show one term (with an option to force the other term - as Google states that one term is missing beneath the results). Most users won't appreciate this and so this appears to be a way of ensuring that users are made aware of problems. However it's another reason to look at alternative search options e.g. Bing, DuckDuckGo or even Yandex.

Search skills are becoming even more important as #Google plays around with what it shows to users. Of course the aim is still to keep people - and get them to click on ads (i.e. how Google gets its money). If this is rolled out, it should help drive more cash to Google's door. buff.ly/2vHRg81a (Source: SearchEngineLand) ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Tracking a Hacker with OSINT buff.ly/2E9NXuQ

An #OSINT case study exercise showing approaches to tracking a website hacker. (Note: this is not a real case - but shows techniques & approaches that could work). It looks at clues in the hacked landing page, and basic searches to identify the probably culprit. ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Google's tracking of users by location, app usage, web-activity is a boon to crime investigators - as it can show where an individual was at any time from their phone. It's also a threat to individual privacy and at last, Google has decided to allow auto-deletion for location, Web activity, and app usage data. The new option, launching soon, promises to auto-delete usage data but it won't cover all activity.

It's been possible to switch off location tracking. The new option allows for a rolling 3 or 18 month deletion of the data.
buff.ly/2ZQAIsj and buff.ly/2J6N8Gx #Google ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

Google is giving users back some control over their data & is introducing a feature in account settings that will allow users to delete location, web and app activity data automatically. The tools will become available in a few weeks
buff.ly/30fWK84 #Google ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

A Guide to all Google options and related sites from Search Engine Land ... See MoreSee Less

2 months ago  ·  

5 Myths About Strategy buff.ly/2KOSgBF

A Harvard Business Review article presenting 5 strategy myths, why they are plausible and why they are wrong. For example:

1) Strategy is about the long-term. Sounds plausible but the reality is that if your strategy doesn't change you have problems. Strategy needs to reflect change.
2) Disruptors change strategy all the time. That's common "wisdom" used to explain Amazon and other tech giant's dominance. In fact, Bruce Henderson,BCG's founder, explained the ‘Cut price and add capacity’ approach to business used to by the tech giants in the 1960s.
3) Competitive Advantage is dead. Sounds plausible when leading companies keep getting beaten. In reality competitive advantage should not be about one all-powerful advantage, especially if not sustainable in the long-term Instead you need to build multiple advantages...

And then there is a myth relating to not even needing a strategy - just needing to be agile, or a myth emphasising the importance of a digital strategy above all else...

A thought-provoking read whether or not you agree with all the conclusions.

#CompetitiveIntelligence #CI #Strategy ... See MoreSee Less

3 months ago  ·  

LinkedIn adds celebrate, love, insightful and curious reactions to spur more engagement buff.ly/2UhcyDi

The move makes LinkedIn more Facebook like but also is a real plus in making #LinkedIn an even better business #SocialMedia platform.

The new options allow more meaningful business responses - asking for more information (curious) or praising in a way a Like cannot do (insightful). ... See MoreSee Less

3 months ago  ·  

Google Adds Two New Syntax for Date Search?

Google allows date searching via a form on the tools menu. Two new commands - Before:date and After:date make things much easier. #Search #Google #OSINT ... See MoreSee Less

3 months ago  ·  

How to Be a Better Web Searcher: Secrets from Google Scientists

A basic guide written by Dan Russell and Maria Callegaro of Google. Worth sharing as not every searcher realises that to be a great searcher involves more than just entering a few keywords. #search #research ... See MoreSee Less

3 months ago  ·  

Many years ago - before Microsoft acquired LinkedIn - Linkedin offered lots of search operators making advanced searching easy. Sadly these disappeared and now searching LinkedIn requires lots of tricks to get the best out of the database.

Making things even harder, many search options are only available to premium members who pay for access to advanced options. Nevertheless there are a number of mostly undocumented operators that allow searchers to find more.

BooleanStrings has created a tip sheet giving mostly undocumented or lesser known operators that can really help for advanced LinkedIn searching.
buff.ly/2rkDrdA
#CompetitiveIntelligence #OSINT ... See MoreSee Less

4 months ago  ·  

LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for uncovering intelligence on individuals business life. Whether for #CompetitiveIntelligence or #OSINT, knowing how to get the best out of #LinkedIn is crucial.

There are lots of tricks - many of which I've taught in AWARE's Open Source Intelligence workshops (e.g. buff.ly/2Tk5025). Bellingcat has recently brought out an excellent guide for investigators covering lots of tricks for getting more out of Linkedin - from undocumented / hidden operators to using Google to find out more. They also warn about fake profiles (although not my personal favourites at buff.ly/2TqdR29, buff.ly/2TkOjDD, buff.ly/2YfQITJ and a few others that are similar).

@Bellingcat's Investigative Guide To LinkedIn is at. ... See MoreSee Less

4 months ago  ·  

In recent years disruption has become the battle cry of business. Disruption occurs when an innovation creates a new market and business model that cause established players to fall. We love the ease of taking, sharing, and storing digital photographs — a disruption that led to the demise of both Kodak and the once ubiquitous film market. Millions of us benefit from Uber’s driver-on-demand service, even as it displaces existing taxi companies.

But is this the only way to grow? Another approach is what authors of Blue Ocean Shift, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, call nondisruptive creation. This offers a new way of thinking about what’s possible. It highlights the immense potential for creating new markets where none existed before. This is creation without disruption or destruction. All the demand generated by this kind of innovation is new.

Most companies remain stuck in the mindset that in order to create you must disrupt or destroy. Nondisruptive creation breaks the existing frame on innovation and growth and allows for a much broader view of how they are generated. It expands the conversation about where real opportunities reside.
#Strategy #growth #innovation #disruptiveinnovation ... See MoreSee Less

4 months ago  ·  

One of my favourite blogs is the Farnam Street blog - and the latest post is an example of why I like it. It's an explanation on why diversity is so important - and should be encouraged. Although not mentioned, it explains how the USA became the global power that it is, and why Israel looks like bing the 4th country (and smallest) to land a spacecraft on the moon.

When a society encourages a diversity of opinions you get creativity. Creativity is not just needed for the arts but for all life and to solve all problems. The blog starts off with a question: what should mankind do if a large meteor was spotted heading directly for the Earth, that would wipe out life in the same way that a meteor ended the large dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Would it be wise to select only a handful of people from a single organisation to solve the problem or should as many ideas as possible be encouraged. The answer is that mankind is unlikely to be saved if only one or two people look at the problem. It needs a range of ideas and a process to evaluate them to select the best ones.

The same applies for all problems. In the workplace, a business selecting employees that all match a specific template is less likely to be successful in comparison to one that encourages diversity. As Farnam Street write:

"Diversity is necessary in the workplace to generate creativity and innovation. It’s also necessary to get the job done. Teams with members from different backgrounds can attack problems from all angles and identify more possible solutions than teams whose members think alike. Companies also need diverse skills and knowledge to keep a company functioning. Finance superstars may not be the same people who will rock marketing. And the faster things change, the more valuable diversity becomes for allowing us to adapt and seize opportunity."

This also applies in biology. A monoculture is less likely to survive as it becomes more susceptible to disease that will wipe it out. Organisms need diversity so that they have the resilience to survive whatever happens. Some may die but the species will continue.

The trouble today is that diversity is often spoken about but in reality people seek out people who look, think and work like them - rejecting those that don't. We see this in people calling to block immigration, and the move to political extremes. In social media we reject those that write divergent opinions - who then seek peers who agree with them. This then becomes self-fulfilling. (As an example, a recent post from a Brexiteer in the UK claimed that people have all moved to supporting Brexit because this person did not know a single person who would vote to remain in the EU. All they were really saying is that their peers all think and write and speak the same - and (unsaid) if they don't they will be rejected as odd). ... See MoreSee Less

4 months ago  ·  

Might A.I. Spell The Death Of Search?

A Forbes essay (buff.ly/2tDLjb6) quotes David Seuss of Northern Light as suggesting their new product offers an AI alternative to search. Northern Light was, pre-Google, a major search engine. I was a fan and it offered something different. It was then acquired & the new owner destroyed it. (This has happened to other search engines too). Seuss bought it back but if Forbes is correct, he seriously misunderstands the risks of letting AI find information based on knowledge of the user. All this will do is increase the biases we see already where the average user lives in a "filter bubble" ignoring information that is contrary to what they believe.

Yes! I could see AI helping out for queries such as "Find me the cheapest flight to…" or "Who is the USA President?" However what about if the question is changed to "Who is Venezuela's President?" That will require much more explanation: would a brief summary report really answer the question. Then make it even more complex & ask about the Israel-Palestine conflict, vaccinations, or "Is a vegan diet healthy". A user's pre-conceived view will lead to greater bias & for the professional searcher it spells disaster. #search ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

Chrome Plugins that let you find Email Addresses & Phone Numbers in Under 30 Seconds #OSINT ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

How to catch a catfisher - a case study and a great example of #OSINT being used to track down a bad-guy. ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

5 months ago  ·  

NATO Group Catfished Soldiers to Prove a Point About Privacy.

NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence tested whether they could manipulate soldiers into divulging intel about a large-scale military exercise. Stage 1 was to uncover as much information as possible using #OSINT - Open Source Data - including participants. Stage 2 was to see if this could be used to influence participant behaviours - including setting up fake Facebook profiles.

The answer was that it was possible to influence behaviour and gather intel - and the cost was trivial.

buff.ly/2GTIKJI

Although the article does not mention it, it is known that malicious third parties have tried to use social media to influence serving soldiers. Seven months ago it was reported that Hamas had set up fake social media profiles to entrap Israeli soldiers - using sports data, dating apps and similar. This shows that the NATO experiment is important in proving how even those supposed to know the risks still can get caught.
buff.ly/2MH5Pz9 ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

Disinformation and ‘fake news’:
The UK Government's report has now been published. It calls for a compulsory ethical code for tech companies, a regulator to police code breaches, requirement to remove harmful & false information & more. #fakenews #ethics ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

I've used the Kodak vs Fujifilm story as a case study. It's a really important example showing how to change....

The course advertised is not cheap but Osterwalder is the originator of the Business Model Canvas which is one of the best analytical tools for the last 20-30 years. Especially for looking at new opportunities. ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

Crowdsourcing images give police the edge for catching criminals.

Europol is posting images from paedophiles, culled from the dark web, and asking for public help to identify them, enabling the police to track the criminals down. ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

A great list of #OSINT tools / techniques / tips.

The Best Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Tools and Techniques ... See MoreSee Less

5 months ago  ·  

Strategic Foresight vs. Competitive Intelligence buff.ly/2HANkPi

Both Strategic Foresight & #CompetitiveIntelligence are needed - but is there a difference. Does effective #CI lead to strategic foresight or does it work the other way around?

Although this article states that CI is aimed at short-term forecasts & analyses it gets it wrong by suggesting that you first need a broad understanding of the future - and then CI for tactical reasons. This misunderstands CI. CI is not just about competitors but the overall business environment. Only by having a full understanding of the business environment can you have the intelligence needed to anticipate the future - i.e. to gain strategic foresight. Both are needed - and CI is the first step. ... See MoreSee Less

6 months ago  ·  

Identifying fraud through the font usage.

When researching #fraud the writing style, signature, logos used and much more can be clues. An often overlooked element is the font used in the forged document.

In Canada recently a fraudster got found out by preparing fraudulent documents using Microsoft's Calibri font, and dating the documents for a time before this font came into use.

Checking the fonts on a PDF document or actual document can give a clue to when it was actually typed - allowing a document to be dated. There are often other clues too. I frequently look for a 4-point type (or smaller) date indicator on brochures commonly used by companies to date such documents. Most would usually miss such clues - but in an investigation they can be crucial in creating a timeline.
#OSINT #investigation ... See MoreSee Less

6 months ago  ·  

2019 and the Evolving Role of OSINT buff.ly/2FG0vf1

Recently a highly disturbing video emerged of an atrocity - where armed soldiers executed two blindfolded women with their children. BBC Africa investigated to find out where the murders took place and by whom. The initial suspicion that it was Cameroonian soldiers was denied by the Cameroon government. Multi-faceted #OSINT research looking at background details in the video allowed the identification of precise location and approximate date and time and then the individuals responsible who are now about to go on trial.

The example shows the full power of using open sources in investigations - and demonstrates why such research is necessary in today's world. ... See MoreSee Less

6 months ago  ·  

How to Detect Fake News in Real-Time. buff.ly/2VtSrDB
How it happens, why and how to stop it.

The challenge to stopping #FakeNews isn't technical. It's operational willingness by the tech company leadership. Stopping fake news is down partly to cost, partly belief in the importance of free expression and partly fear of getting it wrong i.e. censoring articles. However it looks like the tide is changing and the tech companies are recognising the moral imperatives for blocking fake #information and are looking at solutions. #Facebook #Google ... See MoreSee Less

6 months ago  ·