data2know.com Data INTERNET & ONLINE INTELLIGENCE Information Knowledge

Volume 1, Issue 1 Summer 2000 Introductions Are in Order In This Issue Welcome p.1 ata2Know is brought to you by member that Internet sites change Introductions p.1 Hetherington Information Ser- often and unpredictably. vices LLC. You are encouraged to pass this Hetherington Saves D Client $10,000 p.2 Cynthia Hetherington, MLS, is newsletter around to your friends president of Hetherington Informa- and colleagues. You can copy it, or Should You Beware of tion Services LLC (HIS, LLC). Ms call Data2Know for another copy. Flesh-Eating Bananas? p.2 Hetherington has been working with However, copyright law prevents Industry Undercover p.3 private investigators and law en- your posting any of the articles on forcement professionals since 1993. your Web site or using them in your New to the Net p.4 Using her traditional training in li- own newsletter. Please call A data2know publication brary science, combined with over 15 Data2Know if you need more infor- years of computer experience, she mation about this policy. r has found a niche in the investigative Welcome to industry assisting members of the Meet Cynthia— Data2Know trade in online and Internet research. Since 1998, she has been lecturing to Upcoming Conferences elcome to the premier State and National private investiga- Cynthia Hetherington speaks at con- issue of Data2Know, the tion and police associations about ferences and seminars on the topics WInternet & Online Intel- online research. She is also an active of competitive intelligence, business ligence Newsletter. We have contributor to continuing education research, investigator resources, In- taken the best minds in the in- programs, and conducts all-day semi- ternet tracking and more. Here’s a formation business and have nars on Internet tracking, business re- schedule of her upcoming lectures. focused their expertise on the search, and online intelligence. Visit investigative industry. the www.data2know.com Web site June 17th—National Association Without adding to the al- for a complete biography. of Legal Investigators in Colorado ready burgeoning pile of pro- For this newsletter, Cynthia has fessional journals and trade decided to work with BiblioData, a July 11th—Long Island Chapter, well-established publisher in the magazines undoubtedly dou- Association of Certified Fraud field of research, to assemble the con- bling as your coffee table, we Examiners tent. BiblioData publishes the news- mean to follow this three-rule letter The CyberSkeptic’s Guide to In- August 24th & 25th —Indiana State quota: “Be Brief, be Brilliant, ternet Research. The various authors and be Gone.” & Local Police Continuing Educa- of the articles are research profession- tion on Internet Investigations This newsletter will show als, using the Internet as one of their up in your mail quarterly with tools. Cynthia has chosen articles for October 10th—Iowa State Police serious professional content this newsletter that she feels will be about online and Internet re- Association Continuing Educa- of particular interest to her clients. tion on Internet Investigations r search. Let us share with you She does, however, want them to re- this free newsletter about the latest Web sites of interest, pub- lic records online, and database services. r Hetherington Information Services, LLC —Cynthia Hetherington PO Box 360 201-925-3795 Email: [email protected] Elmwood Park, NJ 07407 201-794-3025 (fax) [email protected] www.data2know.com Hetherington Information Services LLC Saves Client $10,000! by Cynthia Hetherington etherington Information Services LLC (HIS LLC) re- At this writing I’m tracking down cently saved a Florida PI over $10,000 of his own in- a person who has been posting bad Hvestment money. Solicited by a ‘too good to be true’ news for a company on a Yahoo bulle- con artist, the local PI contacted me and said, “Do a little tin board. Since PI’s have a hard time background search in the newspapers on this fellow, Cyn.” getting log files from companies without the legal pa- Overnight I found enough damning news stories with titles perwork the ISP’s require, we have to find legal and cre- such as “Ex-Convict Launches 63-City Seminar Tour.” For ative ways to track down and capture the identity of the three years, he was known as federal prisoner 29501-[xxx] originating poster. Let me stress “LEGAL” here. Under to his probation officer in New York. The ex-convict was no circumstances does HIS LLC compromise their name, an expert con artist who could entice even the savviest of the names of their clients, or the industry. We are here to business persons and investigators. A fast search on his prove that this work can be done with enough technical name saved my client a $10,000 investment. know-how and persistence. Hetherington Information Services LLC can be your Who Wrote that Email? backup when you are too busy to conduct your own litera- The biggest increase lately in our business has to be ture searches, Internet background checks on individu- online tracking. Many investigators aren’t prepared for the als, and in-depth business research. Many investigators new venue of email tracking and online undercover work. are uncomfortable sitting in front of the computer for I spend a good deal of my time now tracking down nefari- hours on end conducting Boolean queries against expen- ous emails and newsgroup postings. The investigators no sive databases. HIS LLC is fully equipped to handle these longer have to turn away technical cases because they are sorts of online investigations. Our rates are reasonable, not equipped to handle the time and technical costs. and turn-around time is usually next day. Call us today!

Should You Beware of Flesh-Eating Bananas? by Ruth Orenstein

o any of the following sound fa- usually, in this case, in the form of a Chain Letters miliar? Beware of flesh-eating warning. If it appears enough times, A chain letter, strictly speaking, Dbananas; Disney will give away people start to believe it. The story asks you to send something to some- free trips if you sign the email track- always happens to “somebody else’s one in the hopes you will get some- ing list; women in Afghanistan are friend’s cousin,” not to the writer thing back yourself. You are sup- being maltreated. These are some of the himself. posed to forward it to everyone you chain letters and hoaxes that have been going around the Net. continued on page 4

Hoax Viruses Sites that Track Hoaxes, Legends & Chain Letters The Department Virus Urban Chain of Energy’s Com- Site Hoaxes Legends Letters Extras puter Incident Advi- Symantec yes no no Discusses definitions sory Capability site www.symantec.com/avcenter (CIAC) claims, “we McAfee yes no no Glossary, calendar of “strike” dates find that we are http://vil.mcafee.com for real viruses spending much more time de-bunk- Hoaxkill yes yes yes Will send mail to all addresses who www.hoaxkill.com got chain letter warning them about hoax ing hoaxes than han- dling real virus inci- CIAC yes yes yes Computer security articles dents.” http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html

Kumite yes no no Specializes in analyzing virus hysteria Urban Legends www.kumite.com/myths Urban legends are a form of collec- Korova no yes yes Investigates the background of the tive mythmaking, http://korova.com/virus/hoax.htm message 2 www.data2know.com — Internet & Online Intelligence SUMMER 2000 I N D U S T R Y U N D E R C O V E R BUSINESS/FINANCE TECHNICAL/MEDICAL Online Banking Report Resources PubCrawler http://www.onlinebankingreport.com/resources http://www.pubcrawler.ie Listing of true Web banks and the 100 largest Web Provides a free alerting service that scans daily up- banks. Search by name, location, service provider, type dates to PubMed (medical literature from the National of institution and whether the bank is Internet-only or a Library of Medicine’s Medline database) and GenBank traditional bank with Web accounts. Links to fee-based (DNA Sequence database). Use Boolean search strategies newsletter on Online Banking industry. View archived to formulate saved searches. Get results delivered daily tables of contents for free. to a Web page or email address.

E-Commerce Times Regsource.com http://www.ecommercetimes.com http://www.regsource.com Portal for ecommerce. Links to news with real-time Offers regulatory information on drugs/biologics and headlines updated 24 hours per day. Updated financial medical devices. Sources include warning letters, regu- and stock price info on the “E-Commerce Top 10.” Spe- latory forms, Federal Register notices, and adverse event cial Reports on topics of interest including privacy, trust, reporting. Links to many international regulatory sites. politics. Also includes case studies on “Success Stories” News section reports on company, financial and indus- in the ecommerce world. try news. NEWS/MEDIA LEGAL/GOV’T Ananova The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) http://www.ananova.com http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/index.html Even if you don’t want to go to the Web to listen to The NRC wants to provide more timely, detailed, and news read by a manufactured humanoid image, you understandable information on nuclear power plant should spend some time at this site—far from speedy, safety performance assessments. Detailed information but full of tidbits of hard and soft news and humor from includes explanation of the revised reactor oversight pro- the British perspective. Voice-activated by RealPlayer, cess, list of scheduled public meetings, and FAQ. you can read sections on Business, Politics, lots of Enter- tainment, Sport and Funny Old World. Selected headlines Employment Discrimination and text from today’s British newspapers; site search by http://wwwsecure.law.cornell.edu/topics/employment_ words, phrases or natural language, with relevance or discrimination.html date sorting and limits by date; register for email alerts The Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School on multiple preselected topics. Check out the A-Files, has a comprehensive overview of employment discrimi- “her” personal pages, for some inventive spoofing by this nation laws, as well as links to federal and state statutes, latest news personality. Spawned by Britain’s Press As- the Department of Labor, federal agency regulations, fed- sociation, now at http://www.pressassociation.press.net, eral and state judicial decisions, and other employment Ananova is reportedly for sale for US $400 million. law topics. INTERNATIONAL INFO INDUSTRY

The Online Resource (THOR)—Foreign Growth and Geography of the Internet Governments Matthew Zook’s Page of Domain Name Data http://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu/vlibrary/reading/govdocs/ http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~zook/domain_names foreign.html This site is an interesting collection of resources for Sponsored by Purdue University Libraries, THOR finding out which countries have the most Internet use, contains links to foreign governments around the world. domains by state and global distribution of domain names. Everything International—Philadelphia University http://faculty.philau.edu/russowl/russow.html Domain Statistics Links to numerous international business, education, http://www.nsol.com/statistics and research sites. Topics include Country & Regional Created by Network Solutions, site is graphically-in- Data, Product Classification Systems, Company & Indus- teresting source of domain statistics. Under “fun facts” try Data, International Organizations, and more. Very cur- they state that each customer purchases an average of rent; links are checked about every 10 days. 1.9 domain names.

SUMMER 2000 www.data2know.com — Internet & Online Intelligence 3 Beware Flesh-Eating Bananas continued from page 2 NEW TO THE NET know, but not send money or goods. The Women in Afghanistan message is an example. This message de- These sites have been checked and contain useful, updated, scribes the horrible treatment of free and authoritative information. women in that country. So, what is the problem? The facts in the message New Trademark Search Site more. You will get chills up your may be true. The plight of the victims http://tess.uspto.gov spine on viewing the actual typed may be genuine. But, it is the Inter- The U.S. Patent and Trademark pages on which these momentous net message itself that is false. The Office has introduced a pilot version events are recorded. originator of the message is likely not of their new database for searching there any longer, and there is no ex- the trademark literature. This site Occupational Outlook Hand- piration date to the message. The will eventually replace the current book 2000-2001 message acquires a life of its own and site. The aim is to have the general http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm circulates forever. In addition, the public be able to search and retrieve The year 2000 edition of this message generates so much reply trademark application and registra- handbook from the Bureau of Labor mail that the servers at the originat- tion information, using the same text Statistics offers career information, ing institution can’t handle them. and image database provided to ex- working conditions, training needed, Often the email account of the origi- amining attorneys at the USPTO. earnings and job prospects. You can nator of the message is then can- Presently updated weekly, but soon search or browse in HTML or PDF celled. Therefore, adding your name to be updated daily. formats on this redesigned site. to a list is useless; there is no one there to receive it. Supreme Court Launches Web Pulitzer Awards 2000 When I receive an email letter of Site http://www.pulitzer.org/2000/ this type, I check it on http://www. http://www.supremecourtus.gov 2000.html hoaxkill.com. If my mailed item is On April 17, the Supreme Court The year 2000 Pulitzer Prizes for listed there, I break the chain with- started a new Web site that allows achievement in American journalism, out a single regret. (If it’s not listed, I users to read the court’s decisions on letters, drama and music are listed on reread the message and then usually the day they are released. The site this site. View the list of winners, bi- break the chain anyway.) r presents the Court calendar and ographies, list of jurors, searchable schedules, opinions and docket, as archive of all winners since 1917. well as bar admissions and informa- tion on visiting the court. Business and Technology News Satire Hetherington Information 500 Fastest-Growing Private http://www.satirewire.com Services, LLC Companies This satire site focusing on busi- PO Box 360 http://www.inc.com/500 ness and technology news started in Elmwood Park, NJ 07407 Inc. Magazine features their an- December, 1999. At the end of April P:201-925-3795 F:201-794-3025 nual list (1999) of the 500 fastest- they changed their name to growing private companies. You can SatireWire; they were called FNWire. Using integrity and intelligence to sort search for winners from prior years, Be sure to check out the Charts. through the data, accumulate infor- read articles about each of the com- mation and create knowledgeable Internet Fraud Complaint business solutions. panies, see company overviews. Search by year, company name, key- Center (IFCC) https://www.ifccfbi.gov Working in the area of: word, state or product. ♦ The Federal Bureau of Investiga- Email Tracking tion (FBI) and the National White ♦ Internet Background Checking Vietnam War Declassification Collar Crime Center have just ♦ Online Research Project opened a site for consumers and ♦ Library Research http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/ businesses to report suspected fraud ♦ Competitive Intelligence exhibits/vietnam/vietnam.htm committed over the Internet. The site The Ford Presidential Library launched in the middle of May and Special this quarter! has released 30,000 pages of newly still has parts under construction. Save $50 on a Business declassified material about the When it is finished, an interesting Vietnam War. Contains fulltext, Background Check—just page will be Statistics, where you will photos, page images, press releases, be able to view statistical data about mention this ad. helicopter pilot radio transmissions current fraud trends. r (in text), Cabinet meeting minutes,

4 www.data2know.com — Internet & Online Intelligence SUMMER 2000