Information contained in social media profiles like Facebook and LinkedIn can be valuable sources of background, investigative, and evidentiary information for attorneys.

Details of these changes can be found in the Addendum page for The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet.

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The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet, 2018, 14th Edition Revised just hit the warehouse and is ready for ordering (by credit card or check). Although this 2018 edition is "only" a partial revision of the 2017 14th edition, it includes major changes to numerous important resources (from the redesigned PACER Case Locator and CourtListener's RECAP Archive and the re-designed LinkedIn site, to more details on how to search Google Scholar, and new places to find Judicial Profiles, plus much more).
 
This will probably be the LAST year that we are revising this book, so order by midnight Friday, November 30 and use discount code newsletter to get your copy at a discounted price of just $49.95 (the book regularly retails for $64.95) plus shipping.

This is a special discount for newsletter subscribers only.

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In our in-person CLE seminars and online webinars, we have long taught legal professionals how they could conduct these email and phone number searches themselves to locate background and investigative research information on subjects using the search box at the top of Facebook pages (when you are logged into your own account). These searches were particularly useful in locating Facebook profiles where users had adopted a pseudonym for their profile (or had a common name leading to too many results) but had used a known email address or phone number to open the Facebook account. As of now, those searches no longer retrieve results.

Now, using the search box to search for the email address that an individual has associated with their Facebook account no longer retrieves any “People” results (see illustration below). Facebook will not even retrieve profile results for individuals you are “Friends” with on Facebook.

Instead of searching through the member database for the email address you’ve entered, Facebook now treats these searches as full-text searches. The site (attempts to) locate the email address you’ve searched for as text in publicly available posts. In the example in the illustration (below), the email address search results seen are displayed only because Carole included her email address as part of the text of the posts that were returned.

The same is true for phone number searches.

In an announcement on its site, Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer explained, how "malicious actors" had "abused these features to scrape public information" from Facebook profiles.

"Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. So we have now disabled this feature. We're also making changes to account recovery to reduce the risk of scraping as well," he added in the post.

The post went on to detail how the company has limited access to various types of information, including:

• Search and Account Recovery
• Facebook Login
• Events API (Application Program Interface)
• Groups API
• Pages API
• Instagram Platform API
• Call and Text History
• Data Providers and Partner Categories
• App Controls

These changes are designed to limit the amount and type of information third-parties can share into and retrieve from Facebook pages.

Despite discontinuing these searches and methods of accessing profile information, the non-Facebook-affiliated search tool at SearchIsBack.com does still retrieve worthwhile relational search results (utilizing Facebook’s now also-discontinued Graph Search API). It’s unclear how long it will continue to function, however.

The post Facebook Kills Search Features Useful for Background and Investigative Research appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet features extensive reviews of the best investigative and background research resources available for free (or at low cost) on the Internet.  Unlike others guides which present sites as little more than a list of links, this book offers tips on how to effectively use those sites and includes hundreds of screen-shots to illustrate step-by-step usage of many of the sites discussed.  

“The book is meant to be a guide for anyone who needs to conduct investigative and background research on the Internet but doesn’t necessarily have a big budget to do it,” said Levitt. "It’s designed to be a reference book; it is not meant to be read cover to cover,” she continued.  “As a law librarian, I have tried to organize this book the way researchers think by keeping like topics together. There are a number of concepts and search strategies that are applicable to numerous types of research we discuss in different chapters. Therefore, some strategies appear in more than one place in the book to keep the back and forth “page flipping” to a minimum.”

Because the vast majority of sites discussed in this book are freely available on the Internet, many of these resources could be located through Web searches if a researcher had the time to conduct those searches, sift through all of the results, and test out the sites until they had culled down the millions of potential sites to a list of the most credible, relevant, and useful. That’s where the authors of this book come into play: they’ve done the test searching and sifting for the reader so now they can learn about the most credible, relevant, and useful sites and how to quickly master them.

“The book offers something for researchers at all levels,” added co-author Rosch. “It starts off at the beginning laying out Web browser functions that some Web users might be less familiar with,” he began. “It then lays the groundwork of how search engines locate and retrieve the information we are searching for before it moves on to discuss more sophisticated search techniques and then how to apply those techniques to other Web sites to locate the information we're looking for.”

This new edition also includes a much longer chapter on how to locate hard to find Social Media profiles and how to use the information posted in Social Networking profiles as a powerful investigative research tool, a source of background information, and evidence.

Additionally, it includes more detailed recommendations for locating and using free public records, investigative research sites, and people finder resources available for free on the Internet, as well as lawyer/law enforcement-restricted low-cost pay services, such as TLOxp.com.

The cover price is $64.95. Quantity discounts are available on purchases of 10 or more copies from the publisher’s web site (http://www.netforlawyers.com/products).

The authors, Levitt and Rosch, have been internationally recognized CLE seminar speakers--full-time since 1999. They have been best-selling ABA Law Practice Division (ABA LPD) authors since 2003. Their areas of expertise are: Internet investigative, legal, and social media research; social media ethics; Google search; and Google cloud Apps. Together, Mark and Carole have authored hundreds of Internet research articles and co-authored all fourteen editions of The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet, and six ABA LPD books.

In 2013, they were both recipients of the "Fastcase Fifty" award, recognizing "50 of the smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law" and in 2014, they both became Fellows in the College of Law Practice Management, the international honor society that recognizes distinguished law practice management professionals.

Previously, Carole was a California attorney, a law librarian in Chicago and Los Angeles, and a Legal Research and Writing Professor at Pepperdine School of Law. She graduated with distinction from The John Marshall Law School (Chicago) and served on the school s law review. Since 2003, Carole has served on the ABA LPD’s Publications Advisory Board and served on its Executive Council from 2006-11. Carole is currently co-authoring the second edition of Internet Legal Research on a Budget for the ABA LPD.

Mark, in addition to presenting seminars and writing books and articles, and also blogs and tweets about legal technology issues. He developed Internet For Lawyers’ website, blog, Facebook Business page, and IFL’s online CLESeminars.com webinar division. Mark is a graduate of Tulane University. He is active in the ABA LPD and serves on its Legal Technology Resource Center Board. Mark recently completed a three-year term on the ABA TECHSHOW Planning Board and prior to that he served on LPD’s Education Committee and its State and Local Bar Outreach Committee.

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Findagrave.com offers a searchable database of gravesite locations for nearly 160 million people. The website and some of its search features were updated in November 2017.

You now can search with a partial last name and even a partial first name, by a nickname, or by a maiden name. To choose these options, click into the appropriate checkboxes.

In a test search, we entered a partial first name and a partial last name—rob levi. There was a long list of results, but one of them was the result we were seeking—robert levitt. Other search
options remain the same (middle initial, year born, year died, and cemetery location). Results can be sorted by name, death date, birth date, or cemetery name.

The amount of information in each result will vary, but most show the name and location of the cemetery, which could be useful in your search for living relatives. Once you find which city your subject is buried in, you can move on and search for that city’s newspaper database, which might include an obituary for your subject and names of relatives to search for and contact.

Portions of this post update the authors' "The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet book."

The post Changes Come to Findagrave.com appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

I had a look at my Google Search Settings today and was surprised by something I saw...or rather, something I didn't see.

Ordinarily, Google offers you the ability to (somewhat) manage when you see the page of Instant Search Results that accompanies the drop-down list of Instant Predictions that match the characters you type into Google's Search box. (See above left.)

When I visited my Google Search Settings page after a search this afternoon, I found that the radio buttons to control the setting (see above right) were missing. In fact, the setting was  missing when I checked the Settings page in Chrome today in both Mac and Windows.

At first, I was concerned that Google had taken away our ability to control this setting (while teasing us with the remnant seen above right). However, the setting only appears to be missing in Chrome for Mac and Windows. The setting is still available in versions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari (Mac) I'm running.

The post Did Google Mean to Discontinue Instant Predictions Setting appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Updated November 14, 2016

One of our favorite unofficial, free sources for dates of birth, Birthdatabase.com, is currently once again unavailable is back online. After an absence of approximately three months, the site's search form is once again became active in November 2016 and retrieving birth date results.

The URL now points to a "parked domain" type page with no original content or information.

The post Is Birthdatabase.com Gone Forever? | Update – Back…And Now Gone Again appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Dear U.S. Supreme Court website: The ABA Preview of U.S. Supreme Court Cases provides merit and amicus briefs from 2003-present. You first must choose a Term (e.g., 2014-2015) and then select from an alphabetical list by party name. Or, to quickly find your case from the long list, we would recommend you use your Find function (Control f for PCs and Command f for Macs) and enter part of the case name into the find box to be taken directly to the listed case. You can then choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

Another site that archives merit and amicus briefs is Scotusblog, but it doesn't go back as far as the ABA site--its archives go back only to 2007. However, it offers some useful features that the ABA site does not offer. For instance, in addition to briefs, Scotusblog includes the Court's Proceedings and Orders (docket) so you can follow various steps of the case (such as, DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 8, 2016, as shown in the next illustration). It also offers you the ability to set up free e-alerts to receive updates about a particular case.

To use Scotusblog's archive, choose a Term to view the list of cases for that Term. They will be listed in sitting order, so click the link View this list sorted by case name to find your case alphabetically. Once you find the case, click on its title. Then you will see a docket sheet displaying the Proceedings and Orders, listed from oldest to newest, as shown in the above illustration. You can choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

As for posting amicus briefs quickly, neither site is quite as up-to-date as we would have hoped, but they're close. For example, on January 5, 2016, we were able to locate, on each site, an amicus brief filed just the day before (January 4, 2016), but we were unable to locate a particular one filed on the same day we were searching (January 5, 2016). By performing a Google search, we successfully located the amicus brief we were looking for - posted by a non-profit agency that was interested in the case, but not a party or one of the amicus curiae. So for very recent (same day) amicus briefs, your best bet is to Google it.

The post Update to “Dear U.S. Supreme Court Web Site: Where are Your Briefs?” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

First, to pricing: A report comparing two subjects is priced at $19. You can add additional subjects at $3 per subject. The price of the interactive diagram showing the connections is $2. Note: You will first have to run a $2 search for each subject (to select the correct subject) and then add that subject to your Favorites folder.

Second, to our opinion: We’re on the fence. Our two subjects had nothing in common according to the Relationship Report.

However, when we manually compared subject one’s and subject two’s comprehensive reports to each other, we noticed that people with subject two’s last name appeared in the possible associates, possible relatives, and neighbors sections of subject one’s report. Although these names did not appear in subject two’s comprehensive report, it is still conceivable there could be a connection between my two subjects. We would prefer to see these types of possibilities in the Relationship Report so we could at least have the chance to explore further, either by more research or simply asking my two subjects (via interrogatories or at deposition) about their relationship with the people in question.

To read the brief Relationship Report user guide, see http://linkon.in/tloxpnewrelationship.

The post Update to “New Relationship Report in TLOxp” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

A German company, eBlocker, is showing an eponymous new product/service here at CES that blocks even more of that information to, "blocks all ads, stops all trackers, hide[s] your IP – and lets you surf truly anonymously – on ALL your devices." The company offers two versons of the service - eBlocker Pro and eBlocker Family. Despite their names, Pro is meant for individual users. Family offers support up to 10 simultaneous users. A company representative said that there are plans for an Enterprise version with enough multi-user support to satisfy larger firms.

The device itself is plug and play, requiring no software installation or configuration.

The company will just be launching its Kickstarter campaign on January 20. You can also pre-order the device now, at a 50% discount, on their Web site. The eBlocker Pro Pro is available for pre-order for $99 ($199 after launch) and Family is available for $129 ($249 after launch).

Once you purchase the device, the Pro version comes with one year of software updates included, with additional years available at $49.00. The Family version comes with lifetime updates - "either yours or ours," joked a company representative. On a more serious note, the representative noted that their software is often updated daily to keep up with the changes in ad tracking technology. Without the update subscription device owners can still download and install the updates manually for free...if they remember to do it.

For the more ambitious of you out there, the eBlocker software is currently available as a free download that runs on a Raspberry Pi or Banana Pi computer.

Click here for some of our other reports from CES 2016.

The post Device Offer More Anonymous Surfing, Hides IP Address | eBlocker appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.