WEB CLUES

Information may be gathered using Google or other search engines, using either the company name or a personal name. Information may be in the form of a personal web site, their company web site, media mentions of the person or more. It is always worth a quick search, as it is often surprising what can be found online. Although most people will search for just names (company or personal names) to find out information about them, sometimes you can get far more information by searching for terms ‘associated’ with your subject separately to the names themselves. For example you may search for just a phone number, usually in the quotes syntax:

“0405 *** ***” to ensure a full string match. This may bring some other reference to this number, for a website which is not connected with that name. In effect it is a type of reverse search where we look for ‘other’ references to an entity by using their phone, address or other information which is linked to them - rather than their name.

Your subject may be claiming they can’t work and all your general searches may result in nothing of interest. Perhaps they are telling the truth? You try one more time and discover that both their mobile number and home address are listed on a web page advertising casual gardening services. Of course they have not put their own name on this web page, so you couldn’t have found it if you were looking for ‘them’ (i.e. their name) yet we have found them indirectly, and now discovered they are actually working from home! You may also have a common name like “B Smith” which would be a difficult web search term which would result in a million matches. By searching for the phone number online however, we may for example find a reference to “B Smith” as finishing third in the Randwick Runner group’s monthly surf run – a casual event which lists competitors and their finishing times, and we see Mr Smith has his mobile number there as one of the contact people, which is how we were able to locate this particular web page from the million other web pages that include “B Smith”.

Using any other means, it may take a lot of work to discover he is involved with a running group, yet now we have a good lead on him, and his ‘bad back’ claim is starting to look a little dodgy. It's also worth mentioning that these ‘indirect’ references to subjects are usually the best to use when approaching them under pretext. It would be easy to turn up at the running club one evening on the pretext of fitness, and then use this to approach the subject and engage them in a casual discussion to gather intelligence. He is far more likely to talk to a fellow runner at a meeting, than to some stranger who has knocked on his front door at home or rung him without a targeted pretext.

© Chris Cooper

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