Using Google Alerts and Twitter as an Information Gathering/Mining tool

Google Alerts complement RSS for me. I like being able to get alerts for articles as they are posted online. Technically, you only get alerted if, Google (GoogleBot) has already crawled the web page.

Sometimes, it's quite cumbersome wading through the massive data that RSS mines, and might not to get that much needed information in realtime.

It would be useful for:

- Stock Market junkies and Security Enthusiasts: Getting the latest news on a company that you have positions on, or conducting information gathering tasks as part of a penetration test
- Sports fans: To get real time results of the sporting events that they like
- Journalists: News updates in realtime, a journalists' nirvana perhaps?
- Other: Sky's the limit

On the side note on the possibilities, here's a link to an article that reports the US Department of Homeland Security tagging twitter as a "potential terrorist tool":

http://www.nationalterroraalert.com/updates/2008/10/26/twitter-terrorists-army-warns-of-terror-tweets-security-threat/

... well, there are tons of social networking sites on the net can be used for information gathering and as communication medium for both legal and illegal activities. There's nothing new about this.

Google Alerts:
"Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. We currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups."

http://www.google.com/support/alerts/

Knowing where and how your Gmail account was accessed

For people that would like to have a list of hosts and information on how their Gmail account was accessed (Web, IMAP, POP). Gmail has an activity information page that can be accessed at the bottom of your Gmail Mailbox. Clicking the "Details" link will lead you to a screen similar below:

Aside from being paranoid to check this list from time to time, it is advisable to have a complex password, even from free Internat accounts that you use.

It's also a good thing to change your passwords in a scheduled manner. Applications such as Password Safe can be utilized to save the hassle of remembering all those complex passwords.

ChangeThis Newsletter

Just giving a shout out at the folks at the ChangeThis Newsletter for the great content they constantly share with the community.

Even though they are tidbits or summaries of upcoming books or publications, the information they share is definitely invaluable.

They deliver content on a broad range of topics, ranging from Marketing, Technology, Management, Phsychology, Society, or just any idea that these group of authors have been working on.

Definitely great reads. Check them out at:

http://blog.changethis.com/changethis_newsletter/

Regarding ChangeThis:

"ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. We're on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds."

IDA Pro 4.9 Free version

I recently got word of a free version of IDA pro. Still playing with the features, and getting back my RCE-fu. Will post RCE articles if the time permits.

http://www.hex-rays.com/idapro/idadownfreeware.htm