It’s a great feeling when you find yourself being part of a great team. Brought together for a common goal, working towards a target, an achievement. Day by day working alongside your comrades achieving each milestone, constantly learning and evolving, enjoying the work.
Time ticks along and friendships grow as you fight on in the trenches together, still delivering, often under tight deadlines with limited resources, yet you hit the targets and the client is pleased. They hired a great team.
But everything must come to an end. Projects complete. Budgets run out. Priorities change. The team is disbanded and everyone goes to the four winds. Temporary ronin until a new master calls, a new team, a new challenge.
Some of us keep in touch. The occasional comms. A brief how are you, where are you working these days? Not the same as when you were in the trenches together working on that fun project up against the clock, delivering, with a happy client.
Nothing remains forever.
Here’s to all those great teams out there. Enjoy the flow while it lasts.
Category: people
Data brokers
Data about us is so valuable that companies now offer cheap or free services in return for collecting data about us. If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many free email providers, or free streaming services, it’s because you are the commodity, or at least the data you generate is.
Data brokers make a living by collecting all this data about you and building a profile linking data from various sources. This profile data is organised and analysed and then sold to whoever can make use of it.
Examples of some of the data collected includes:
Your name, contact numbers, email, and address
Age, gender, and other physical attributes
Employment status, income band, credit status
Geographical region for home, work, and travel
Political beliefs, religion, marriage history, dependants
Patent and copyright data, businesses owned
Property and vehicle ownership
Social media membership
Club and organisation membership
Digital entertainment subscriptions and viewing habits
Web surfing usage
Fitness and health tracking
Data brokers, also known as Information brokers collate all this data and sell it to anyone that can make use of it. There are some restrictions to what they can collect, store, and sell, depending on the country they operate in and where the individuals the data is about resides, such as GDPR in the UK.
The data can be scraped from public sources and then combined using bespoke software or AI. This may introduce errors. Individuals can submit freedom of information requests to brokers requesting details of what information is held about them in their database. In some regions you can then request to have this data removed known as the right to be forgotten.
Some data brokers have been hacked due to lax security practices. They are an attractive target as they contain consumer data that is useful to malicious actors that do not wish to pay for it nor wish to be identified as having access to it.
The main types of data broker are:
Marketing and advertising
People searching
Financial information
Personal health
How much info do data brokers have about you?
Mythos and Wraith
When I first started creating software for the Commodore Amiga demo scene many many moons ago I did so with two friends known as Mythos and Wraith.
Between us we wrote code, created graphical artwork and digital music, which we assembled into productions known as intros and demos. It lasted a few years then we went our separate ways. I continued for a few more years with other groups of individuals before hanging up my scener hat altogether.
I started wondering what they are up to today, how did their lives turn out? Did they end up with a career in technology as I did, or switch to something else? Are they married with kids? Are they even still alive?
I toyed with the idea of utilising OSINT to track them down so I could answer these questions and maybe even say hi. I can’t remember their real names, only their aliases, but I still have all my Amiga files and a copy of WinUAE, so digging out their names and addresses from back then shouldn’t be too difficult. From there I could use public info and social media to hopefully locate them today.
But why? To see if I could? To satisfy a passing nostalgic thought?
I’ve come to realise recently that people come and go. Throughout your life friends and acquaintances will come into your life, stay a while, then move on. And that’s ok. We are not meant to hold on to everyone we meet, forever, despite Facebook’s original business model. You as a person will change and develop and what connected you to someone at one point in time may no longer be a part of you and if you were to meet that person today you may find that you have nothing in common and would not be friends.
I decided to move on and not dwell on the past. To be thankful for the good times and the memories and to look to the future. Leaving the past in the past.
To Mythos and Wraith I wish you the best wherever you are.
Who called me
Who called me
When you work with computers and possess at least one certification in cyber security, you tend to have friends or family that call or message you on occasion asking you to trace a phone number for them as if you are some form of digital private eye.
The truth is that only the authorities with the assistance of the telecom providers can legally do that. All these websites that say they can trace any number in the world for you are lying. They are just scams after your money. At best they have scraped open source content for numbers and can tell you the network provider, country of origin, and anything that is available online for free. Maybe they’ve concatenated and absorbed phone directories and public domain phone number repositories. They certainly can’t trace an unlisted number for you.
That said, if the number does have a footprint of some kind in the public domain then there are ways of finding it. Using Google Dorking to scour search engine data may uncover something useful. Governmental company registration databases that are open to the public may also reveal data. Whois records, club memberships, company websites, etc.
The phone number is just a character string. Play with the format when searching. For example if you were called by 07709 123456 and you are in the UK you could search for exact string matches of:
07709 123456
07709123456
7709 123456
7709123456
44 07709 123456
44 7709 123456
4407709123456
447709123456
Google for OSINT tools and techniques related to phone numbers for more suggestions.
Merry Christmas
I miss the Christmas I enjoyed as a kid.
To me it was all about family and being together. It wasn’t about decorations, lights, food, toys and gifts. It wasn’t commercial. I would probably be happy with a lump of (smokeless) coal. As long as my family was there and we were all healthy and happy.
Forget the handing out of (wish)lists and Amazon vouchers. Forget having to deal with packed town centers and inflated prices. Forget having to pay for packs of over-priced postal stamps.
A mince pie by an open fire. Playing family games and forgetting to watch the royal speech. Marking everything you intend to watch in the only copy of the Radio Times you’ll buy this year and then promptly forgetting to watch anything as planned. Having a drink or two after the kids have all gone to bed as the embers die down in the open fire and the Christmas tree lights twinkle. Remembering all the good things that happened this past year whilst ignoring the bad. Making resolutions.
So that’s the Christmas I intend to enjoy this year.
Merry Christmas all!
Gig economy
I’ve started watching this YouTube channel called London Eats. Not sure why. Maybe because I find it relaxing?
This guy zooming around the capital in the dark making food and parcel deliveries on his electric bikes and scooters. It got me thinking about the gig economy. How these workers don’t have a traditional employment contract, but are paid a fee per job.
After four hours of work this guy earned less than minimum wage and called it a good night. How? Less than minimum wage? Is the gig economy a way for employers to hire cheap labour? The apps these workers use must take a cut of the profits although they do offer meagre bonus payments if you work harder, faster, completing more deliveries within certain time periods.
The London Eats guy augments his meagre earnings by filming his shifts and turning them into quality viewing. He also confesses to having a day job so his shifts only need to be a few hours. He also sells swag from his channel and has sponsorship from various companies. So he’s making ‘his gig’ work. But I’m curious how others are faring from this industry, being paid per delivery.
I guess it’s nothing new. In my youth I worked for a company that paid me 1p for every flyer I delivered. If I could deliver one a minute that’s 60p an hour! Sounded great as a kid needing to augment his pocket money, but even with inflation an adult wouldn’t do it. Explains why so many of us were school age delivering those flyers. Child labour.
The gig economy is here to stay. It makes sense for the employers as it’s cheap labour. And as there appears to be no shortage of willing workers it must be profitable enough for some. Or maybe they just like working when they want to, being by themselves travelling around the city listening to their tunes going door to door, having no in-person boss.
Hustling
Instagram is full of people pushing products and trying to show complete strangers how amazing their lives are, but there are some nuggets of wisdom on the platform. I don’t post myself, I just have a sock puppet account I use for OSINT purposes, which if I’m honest I may also use just to browse.. on occasion.
One thing I’ve learned from Insta is how much some people really hustle. By hustle I mean work hard at promoting their brand, their products, their whole reason for being.
For example just look at The Rock or Mark Wahlberg. They both post multiple times a day pushing their products and movies. If you didn’t have Insta you may only hear about their occasional movie and catch a snippet of news about them and probably think they have it easy, make a movie, collect the millions, repeat, right? With thanks to Insta you can actually see how much they are hustling. Up in the early hours each day hitting the gym, then promoting their clothing / alcohol / sports nutrition products, then doing interviews and photoshoots, followed by attending events for further networking opportunities. It looks exhausting!
These two are constantly hustling. And they are not the only ones. Check out Arnold and Stallone. Both in their 70s still hustling like crazy. Like a duck swimming we have this picture of these celebrities in our minds that everything is easy for them on the surface, but Insta pulls back the curtain and shows us how crazy active these people are underneath, working at maintaining their image and brand.
Take a look at sports personalities and fitness models. In the gym multiple times a day, promoting their classes or courses, doing photo shoots and training videos, attending events and working hard to promote both their image and what they are selling.
It may be full of cat videos but there are still nuggets of wisdom on Insta.
Don’t ask do
Sometimes you just have to make decisions, take the initiative, go with your gut. Don’t live a life in the shadow of others, asking what they are going to do, what are their plans, what are they going to wear, what time they are planning to turn up, and so on. Be the leader, the doer, the ones others follow.
Create your own mantra.
Take action, make decisions, don’t wait on others. Don’t ask, do.
There’s nothing for you in the past
There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.
Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.
It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.
Thoughts on LinkedIn
Musings on LinkedIn.
I’ve been using LinkedIn for many years and I keep changing how I use it. Below are just a few of my notes on how I’ve made use of the social network for work and networking.
– You don’t need to get to 500+ connections. There’s no game or points that you win if you do.
– You don’t have to connect to everyone you meet. Quality over quantity!
– If you’ve connected to someone and the only way you can contact them is through LinkedIn and they don’t respond to any messages over a period of 3 months, remove them as a connection. If you can’t communicate with them or introduce them to anyone then what use are they? Unless you want to follow their posts that is. Quality over quantity.
– People change jobs. Sometimes often. If you are using LinkedIn to connect to people in a certain field or industry and a connection changes to something you have no interest in, consider dropping the connection. It may sound mercenary but this is LinkedIn not Facebook.
– If you want certain people to reach out to you or be reminded of your existence without appearing to reach out first, look at their profile. LinkedIn will tell them you looked and your name will appear in their notifications list.
– You can silence spammy connections.
– You can subscribe to interesting newsletters and unsubscribe when they become boring.
– You can follow interesting people and companies and unfollow when they cease to provide whatever made you follow in the first place.
– LinkedIn is not for stalking but it is useful for OSINT.
– People post too much information. People leak sensitive data!
How do you use LinkedIn? Any tips?