Investigator's Toolkit

5 Free Ways to Track Online Leaks of Information

Investigations manager Brandon Gregg explains how to keep an eye on intellectual property using Monittor, Limewire and other free tools

By Brandon Gregg

Google

No search for data would be complete without Google. The company's proprietary collection of websites and vast arsenal of tools give it the fourth and fifth place on the list. The power behind Google's server farms full of processors, crawling the web for information, makes Google.com one of the first places to look for leaked information. However, unlike addictomatic, the information can easily be overwhelming without the right combination of search tricks.

Using a recipe of basic and advanced search features can greatly narrow the number of results returned and give you better data. Instead of searching for Acme Company, use "Acme Company" in quotations or narrow your results with more details like "Acme Company" "Confidential Handling" to find any leaked company documents with "confidential handling" in the metadata or headers. Check out Google advanced search or search for "Google Hack Lists" for more tricks like finding your company's IP CCTV cameras and password lists. (See also 4 Google Searches to Run on Your Own Company)

Google Alerts

Once you have narrowed your search and tested it out, use Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) to make Google work for you. In this example I have setup two searches in Google Alerts, the first is a simple search to specifically search Myspace users postings about ACME : "Acme Company" site:profile.myspace.com and a second more complex search looking for any Acme file on free file sharing websites: Acme (rapidshare. | megaupload. | sharebee. | mediafire. | slil. | sendspace. | turboupload. | speedshare. | depositfiles. | massmirror.com | ftp2share.com| zshare.net). To setup, make sure to search narrow or specific topics, Acme alone might provide too much invaluable data. After you have picked a good search, simply paste in your term(s), select Comprehensive, select how often Google should search (I use As-It-Happens), enter your email and soon you will be getting information sent directly to you. ##

Brandon Gregg is a Corporate Investigations Manager

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