How to Find an Email Address
October 27, 2016
Like any marketers, search engine optimizers must reach out to potential clients, and valid email addresses are important resources. Now, Search Engine Journal explains “How to Find Anyone’s Email Address in 60 Seconds or Less.” Anyone’s, really? Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration.
SEO pro, Joshua Daniels discusses six techniques to quickly find an email address. He writes:
If you’re a specialist in SEO or link acquisition, then you’ll know that generic email addresses are as much use as a chocolate fireguard when it comes to outreach. You need to develop personal connections with influencers, regardless of whether you work in PR or SEO, it’s always the same. But finding the right person’s email address can be a draining, time-consuming task. Who has time for that?
Well, actually, it’s not so difficult, or time-consuming. In this post, I’m going to walk you through the exact step-by-step process our agency uses to find (almost) anyone’s email address, in 60 seconds or less!
For each suggestion, Daniels provides instructions, most with screen shots. First, he recommends LinkedIn’s search function paired with Email Hunter, a tool which integrates with the career site. If that doesn’t work, he says, try a combination of the Twitter analyzer Followerwonk and corporate-email-finder Voila Norbert.
The article also suggests leveraging Google’s search operators with one of these formats: [site:companywebsite.com + “name” + contact] or [site:companywebsite.com + “name” + email]. To test whether an email address is correct, verify it with MailTester, and to target someone who posts on Twitter, search the results of All My Tweets for keywords like “email” or “@companyname.com”. If all else fails, Daniels advises, go old school—“… pick up the phone and just ask.”
Cynthia Murrell, October 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Trending Topics: Google and Twitter Compared
October 25, 2016
For those with no time to browse through the headlines, tools that aggregate trending topics can provide a cursory way to keep up with the news. The blog post from communications firm Cision, “How to Find Trending Topics Like an Expert,” examines the two leading trending topic tools—Google’s and Twitter’s. Each approaches its tasks differently, so the best choice depends on the user’s needs.
Though the Google Trends homepage is limited, according to writer Jim Dougherty, one can get further with its extension, Google Explore. He elaborates:
If we go to the Google Trends Explore page (google.com/trends/explore), our sorting options become more robust. We can sort by the following criteria:
*By country (or worldwide)
*By time (search within a customized date range – minimum: past hour, maximum: since 2004)
*By category (arts and entertainment, sports, health, et cetera)
*By Google Property (web search, image search, news search, Google Shopping, YouTube)
You can also use the search feature via the trends page or explore the page to search the popularity of a search term over a period (custom date ranges are permitted), and you can compare the popularity of search terms using this feature as well. The Explore page also allows you to download any chart to a .csv file, or to embed the table directly to a website.
The write-up goes on to note that there are no robust third-party tools to parse data found with Google Trends/ Explore, because the company has not made the API publicly available.
Unlike Google, we’re told, Twitter does not make it intuitive to find and analyze trending topics. However, its inclusion of location data can make Twitter a valuable source for this information, if you know how to find it. Dougherty suggests a work-around:
To ‘analyze’ current trends on the native Twitter app, you have to go to the ‘home’ page. In the lower left of the home page you’ll see ‘trending topics’ and immediately below that a ‘change’ button which allows you to modify the location of your search.
Location is a huge advantage of Twitter trends compared to Google: Although Google’s data is more robust and accessible in general, it can only be parsed by country. Twitter uses Yahoo’s GeoPlanet infrastructure for its location data so that it can be exercised at a much more granular level than Google Trends.
Since Twitter does publicly share its trending-topics API, there are third-party tools one can use with Twitter Trends, like TrendoGate, TrendsMap, and ttHistory. The post concludes with a reminder to maximize the usefulness of data with tools that “go beyond trends,” like (unsurprisingly) the monitoring software offered by Daugherty’s company. Paid add-ons may be worth it for some enterprises, but we recommend you check out what is freely available first.
Cynthia Murrell, October 25, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Half of the Largest Companies: Threat Vulnerable
October 24, 2016
Compromised Credentials, a research report by Digital Shadows reveals that around 1,000 companies comprising of Forbes Global 2000 are at risk as credentials of their employees are leaked or compromised.
As reported by Channel EMEA in Digital Shadows Global Study Reveals UAE Tops List in Middle East for…
The report found that 97 percent of those 1000 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies, spanning all businesses sectors and geographical regions, had leaked credentials publicly available online, many of them from third-party breaches.
Owing to large-scale data breaches in recent times, credentials of 5.5 million employees are available in public domain for anyone to see. Social networks like LinkedIN, MySpace and Tumblr were the affliction points of these breaches, the report states.
Analyzed geographically, companies in Middle-East seem to be the most affected:
The report revealed that the most affected country in the Middle East – with over 15,000 leaked credentials was the UAE. Saudi Arabia (3360), Kuwait (203) followed by Qatar (99) made up the rest of the list. This figure is relatively small as compared to the global figure due to the lower percentage of organizations that reside in the Middle East.
Affected organizations may not be able to contain the damages by simply resetting the passwords of the employees. It also needs to be seen if the information available is contemporary, not reposted and is unique. Moreover, mere password resetting can cause lot of friction within the IT departments of the organizations.
Without proper analysis, it will be difficult for the affected companies to gauge the extent of the damage. But considering the PR nightmare it leads to, will these companies come forward and acknowledge the breaches?
Vishal Ingole, October 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Twitter: A Security Breach
October 21, 2016
Several years ago, the Beyond Search Twitter account was compromised. I received emails about tweets relating to a pop singer named Miley Cyrus. We knew the Twitter CTO at the time and it took about 10 days to fix the issue. At that time, I knew that Twitter had an issue.
I read “Passwords for 32 Million Twitter Accounts May Have Been Hacked and Leaked.” I learned:
the data comes from a Twitter hack in which 32 million Twitter accounts may have been compromised. The incident and the news comes from a rather unusual source that lets you download such data and even lets you remove yourself from the listing for free.
No word about how many days will be consumed addressing affected accounts.
Stephen E Arnold, October 21, 2016
What Lurks in the Dark Web?
October 20, 2016
Organizations concerned about cyber security can effectively thwart any threats conditionally they know a threat is lurking in the dark. An Israeli SaaS-based startup claims it can bridge this gap by offering real-time analysis of data on Dark Web.
TechCrunch in an article Sixgill claims to crawl the Dark Web to detect future cybercrime says:
Sixgill has developed proprietary algorithms and tech to connect the Dark Web’s dots by analyzing so-called “big data” to create profiles and patterns of Dark Web users and their hidden social networks. It’s via the automatic crunching of this data that the company claims to be able to identify and track potential hackers who may be planning malicious and illegal activity.
By analyzing the data, Sixgill claims that it can identify illegal marketplaces, data leaks and also physical attacks on organizations using its proprietary algorithms. However, there are multiple loopholes in this type of setup.
First, some Dark Web actors can easily insert red herrings across the communication channels to divert attention from real threats. Second, the Dark Web was created by individuals who wished to keep their communications cloaked. Mining data, crunching it through algorithms would not be sufficient enough to keep organizations safe. Moreover, AI can only process data that has been mined by algorithms, which is many cases can be false. TOR is undergoing changes to increase the safeguards in place for its users. What’s beginning is a Dark Web arms race. A pattern of compromise will be followed by hardening. Then compromise will occur and the Hegelian cycle repeats.
Vishal Ingole, October 20, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Twitter: Hitting the Character Limit
October 19, 2016
I read “Why Twitter is Dying.” I liked the write up. Unlike some of the twits twittering about the throttling of Twitter, the write up delivers useful analysis.
The article points out that some big names do not want to buy the darling of the Sillycon Valley set. Why? The author offers three possibilities:
- Either someone is trying to pull down Twitter’s price so that they can buy into it cheap or possibly take it over, salvage it.
- It is certainly not growing at a pace comparable to that of its new challengers.
- Today’s Twitter so very different from what they had originally signed up for that they are switching out.
Okay, MBA analysis. I circled in passionate purple this passage:
But worse than what the politicians have done to Twitter is what business has done. Sponsored trends and paid-for tweets are the biggest turn-off on today’s Twitter. What was once the world’s most charming flea market has now been hijacked by big business. With Trump loudly trumpeting his views to his 12 million followers, how can you hear the voice of the Dalai Lama who, in any case, speaks in hushed whispers? This brings me to my last question: Have we lost the ability to build and sustain new utopias? The virtual worlds we build are eventually becoming an exact replica of our own dystopian society. In the fall of Twitter lies that tragic realization.
Twitter reflects the modern world. Who would have guessed amidst the Kardashian-, Trump-, and other important matters of today?
We tweet headlines of the stories in Beyond Search. I know from examining usage reports, no one in the mass world cares much about the topics I find interesting. Some folks will miss Twitter if it flames out. Geofeedia is but one example. Then there is the business model. I know, “What business model?”
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2016
Fama Technologies: HR Gets Social
October 19, 2016
I read “The Tech That Hiring Managers Are Using to Screen All of Your Social Media Posts.” The “all” is a bit of an annoyance. There are social media posts which commercial enterprises may have some difficulty accessing. A couple of quick examples include forum comments placed in Dark Web discussion groups, certain encrypted messages, and content posted under a false identity (sock puppet or legend).
Moving on, the write up points to a company doing business as Fama Technologies. I circled this passage as a key point:
Los Angeles-based Fama Technologies has software that automates social media and web analysis to help companies make hiring decisions. The company uses artificial intelligence to pick up on any “red flags” that exist within a person’s online persona.
The idea is that before a person gets hired, companies are apparently now figuring out that looking at social media provides useful information. My thought: Why the big rush? Social media’s been around for more than a week or two.
What’s the cost of the Fama system? Subscriptions ring the cash register between $15,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
The company, according to the write up, has raised $1.7 million.
My goslings tell me that filtering “all” social media will require lots of money and some nifty work arounds. Mapping a false identity to a real person can be a difficult task. And there is that “all” notion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2016
Artificial Intelligence Is Only a Download Away
October 17, 2016
Artificial intelligence still remains a thing of imagination in most people’s minds, because we do not understand how much it actually impacts our daily lives. If you use a smartphone of any kind, it is programmed with software, apps, and a digital assistant teeming with artificial intelligence. We are just so used to thinking that AI is the product of robots that we are unaware our phones, tablets, and other mobiles devices are little robots of their own.
Artificial intelligence programming and development is also on the daily task list on many software technicians. If you happen to have any technical background, you might be interested to know that there are many open source options to begin experimenting with artificial intelligence. Datamation rounded up the “15 Top Open Source Artificial Intelligence Tools” and these might be the next tool you use to complete your machine learning project. The article shares that:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest areas of technology research. Companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon are investing heavily in their own R&D, as well as buying up startups that have made progress in areas like machine learning, neural networks, natural language and image processing. Given the level of interest, it should come as no surprise that a recent artificial intelligence report from experts at Stanford University concluded that ‘increasingly useful applications of AI, with potentially profound positive impacts on our society and economy are likely to emerge between now and 2030.
The statement reiterates what I already wrote. The list runs down open source tools, including PredictionIO, Oryx 2, OpenNN, MLib, Mahout, H20, Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit, Deeplearning4j, CNTK, Caffe, SystemML, TensorFlow, and Torch. The use of each tool is described and most of them rely on some sort of Apache software. Perhaps your own artificial intelligence project can contribute to further development of these open source tools.
Whitney Grace, October 17, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Online and without Ooomph: Social Content
October 15, 2016
I am surprised when Scientific American Magazine runs a story somewhat related to online information access. Navigate to read “The Bright Side of Internet Shaming.” The main point is that shaming has “become so common that it might soon begin to lose its impact.” Careful wording, of course. It is Scientific American, and the write up has few facts of the scientific ilk.
I highlighted this passage:
…these days public shaming are increasingly frequent. They’ve become a new kind of grisly entertainment, like a national reality show.
Yep, another opinion from Scientific American.
I then circled in Hawthorne Scarlet A red:
there’s a certain kind of hope in the increasing regularity of shamings. As they become commonplace, maybe they’ll lose their ability to shock. The same kinds of ugly tweets have been repeated so many times, they’re starting to become boilerplate.
I don’t pay much attention to social media unless the data are part of a project. I have a tough time distinguishing misinformation, disinformation, and run of the mill information.
What’s the relationship to search? Locating “shaming” type messages is difficult. Social media search engines don’t work particularly well. The half hearted attempts at indexing are not consistent. No surprise in that because user generated input is often uninformed input, particularly when it comes to indexing.
My thought is that Scientific American reflects shaming. The write up is not scientific. I would have found the article more interesting if:
- Data based on tweet or Facebook post analyses based on negative or “shaming” words
- Facts about the increase or decrease in “shaming” language for some “boilerplate” words
- A Palantir-type link analysis illustrating the centroids for one solid shaming example.
Scientific American has redefined science it seems. Thus, a search for science might return a false drop for the magazine. I will skip the logic of the write up because the argument strikes me as subjective American thought.
Stephen E Arnold, October 15, 2016
Image-Based Search Technology Gains Steam
October 10, 2016
If you need to do a bit of smartphone photos clean-up, now is a good time. More websites are integrating photo-based search technologies according to Pinterest Will Let You Snap Photos To Find Real-Life Products Online. This piece from Forbes explains camera search will be available in the coming months and will allow users to snap a photo of, for example, a purse they see someone else carrying down the street, and find similar products on Pinterest. They’re calling these products “buyable pins”. According to the article,
Users make 130 million visual searches on Pinterest per month and about 2 billion total searches. Now, more than 10 million products can be purchased without leaving Pinterest from more than 20,000 retailers, up from 2 million products when “buyable pins” launched about a year ago. When a user sees a product on Pinterest, they are two times more likely to buy it in-store. And if a merchant promotes the pin, users are five times more likely to buy the item in person, the company said. In testing “buyable pins,” Pinterest said a third of purchases made on the web were first discovered on mobile. More than 80% of users access Pinterest on mobile devices.
Some applications for this search technology, may not be well-poised to monetize this, but according to a survey cited in the article 55 percent of respondents already consider Pinterest as e-commerce. Currently, the platform sees itself as a “bridge between inspiration and making it part of your real life.” This is essentially the role of any brick-and-mortar shop amenable to window-shopping. So, while it may work, we certainly can’t say the strategy is new.
Megan Feil, October 10, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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