A wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal here called “The Logic of Our Fear of Flying” does a great job explaining our irrational fear of flying using concepts from math. We all know that our chances of dying in a plane crash are much lower than dying in a car accident, and yet many
Surprise! Google is There to Make Money
A story in the Wall Street Journal Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products serves as a useful reminder for something we tell clients all the time: Google is there to make money, and if your ideal search result won’t make them money, you may get a less-than-useful result.
Google is an indispensable
How to Tell Fake News from Real
Every day now, we hear about the woes of readers unable to distinguish between “fake news” and real news, as if undependable news reporting is anything new. Readers and fact investigators have always needed to know how to figure out for themselves what to believe and what to question further.
I am proud to have
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 the work we do.
After my recent book The Art of Fact
Where the Electronic Data Are Makes All the Difference
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
–Joni Mitchell
Today’s decision by the Second Circuit that Microsoft did not have to hand over data stored on its server in Ireland should remind us all that information isn’t just “out there.” As with printed information so it is sometimes with electronic
Brexit’s Prediction Lesson for Investigators
What lesson does the Brexit vote hold for anyone conducting or contemplating fact investigation?
Don’t let confirmation bias muddy your thinking.
One of the key “Investigator’s Enemies” identified in my book, The Art of Fact Investigation, confirmation bias is what many of us tend to do when looking into an issue: we find what
Computers Come Up Short on Mapping Reality
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal about “Why the Virtual Reality Hype is About to Come Crashing Down” makes the simple point that computers haven’t caught up to all the permutations of real life to make a “virtual reality” headset experience resemble a genuine experience.
A short demo is one thing, but life goes
FINRA and Due Diligence: On-Site Checks Are Indispendible
Due diligence is all about following up on red flags, but if you don’t find them, there’s nothing on which to follow up.
Thus, our tireless refrain: turn over every piece of public record information you can about a person, and don’t leave it to others.
We were reminded of this by the story this
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 to help out with cell phone tower signal data that helps to locate people. As we wrote in
TelexFree and the Need for Investor Due Diligence
“TelexFree is already creating MILLIONAIRES and now is YOUR turn.” So read the now defunct website of TelexFree Inc., which U.S. officials ordered to be taken down earlier this month. Massachusetts company TelexFree Inc. held itself out as a low-cost internet telephone company. In reality, its founders were allegedly running a billion dollar global