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Asset Searches and Company Names: Tips on Tracking and Naming Companies

Some people just like privacy, but others form companies with a view to concealing any link between that company and themselves. If you are hiding assets from creditors, that’s a plus (for you, not the creditors). Picking a company name can…
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The Changing Face of Privacy for Investigations

We always like to say that when we find out about a person, we do so without invading their privacy. That can still mean we find out a lot of things about them that they would rather keep secret, but those facts are derived from what we can…
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How to Improve Your On Line Security (Even if People Know Your Phone Number)

The New York Times published in interesting piece this week that was among its most popular: I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have. In it, the paper’s personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen explained how much information people…
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Lessons from the Kardashian Stickup

This blog may be one of the few publications in the Western world that has never written the word “Kardashian,” but that has now changed. In the stories about the robbery in Paris of Kim Kardashian we found numerous issues that touch on…
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How to Improve Your Privacy by Staying Off Databases

A reader of my new book, The Art of Fact Investigation, suggested that for the next edition there should be a chapter about legal ways to “hide from snoopers, private and public sector. I am probably not the only one who was thinking as I…
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The Apple Fight: Before Arguing About Privacy, Define Privacy

The current fight between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is trying to execute a search warrant in a criminal matter, has been framed by Apple and its defenders as a battle over privacy. Apple is not arguing that the information…
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A Boon for Investigators We’d Happily Live Without

We’ve written plenty before about Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten,” under which governments tell Google and other search engines to take down links to legal, public documents that are deemed embarrassing or inconvenient…
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Cell Phone Pinging and Probable Cause

The next time an investigator tells you he can legally “ping” someone’s cell phone to figure out where they are going, run away fast. We’ve written before about the illegality of getting a friendly phone company employee…
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Europe’s Right to be Forgotten: Full Employment for Investigators

If anyone wondered what the practical side of Europe’s new Right to be Forgotten would turn out to be, here it is:  In less than a month since a court in the E.U. decided Google links were substantial information and could be scrubbed…
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The E.U. Google Decision: Big Brother Gets to Play Favorites

The on-line world is abuzz today with news from Europe’s highest court that Google will have to start removing links to certain information that some judge or bureaucrat decides is irrelevant. Even if it’s true and lawfully posted,…