For international due diligence and investigative research, I’ve found Investigative Dashboard to be a wonderful resource: Investigative Dashboard (ID) has been developed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the world’s leading cross border investigative reporting organization. OCCRP designed Investigative Dashboard as a transnational collaborative effort to help journalists and Read More
Searching the Past
The Internet Archive has received a lot of attention recently, and if you haven’t read this New Yorker article, I urge you to do so. If you’re not already in love with the Internet Archive, you will be after reading that piece, as well as this one titled “Never Trust a Read More
Tips and Tricks for Finding Email Addresses
For a recent project I had to scour the Internet for email addresses of corporate executives. You’d think this would be a relatively easy task. After all, work email addresses are public information, and executives have assistants to sort through and filter their communication so they’re not inundated. But I Read More
More Photo Fakery
A while ago I wrote about photo fakery and the problem of verifying hoax images. Here’s a great roundup of 86 fake photos that went viral in 2014. Many of them were spread (as real) on Twitter by @HistoryInPics. The company behind the popular account recently raised $2 million from Read More
UK Investigative Research Resources
FreePint, an excellent site for research and information management resources, news, and reviews, runs a regular feature called “My Favourite Tipples,” usually written by a practitioner with expertise in a particular research niche. The latest post is by Neil Smith, a UK investigative researcher, who identifies a few indispensable tools for Read More
Photo Fakery and the Challenge of Verification
Another week, another fake photo making the rounds in social media and raising outrage and/or hilarity. This time it is a photo of a gold toilet said to have belonged to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Problem is, the photo has been around since at least 2012, and while the Ukrainian Read More
What House of Cards Teaches Us About the Value of Good Research
Warning: some spoilers ahead! I’ve been watching House of Cards, and like a lot of people, I’m morbidly fascinated by Frank and Claire Underwood’s evil machinations as they connive and kill their way to becoming the most powerful couple in the free (ha!) world. One thing that has struck me Read More
The Ethics of Social Media Cyber-Sleuthing
Without a doubt, social media and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and countless others have become indispensable tools in conducting background investigations, due diligence, employment pre-screening, and other types of investigations. Pursuit Magazine recently had a good two-part series that covered not just pointers to some lesser-known social Read More