People often leave sensitive and confidential information online. Sometimes this information is carelessly deposited in forums and social networking websites.
At other times, information is made available because of system errors or carelessly configured servers. In any case, search engines find it – and so can you, if you know how to look for it.
Video feeds from private security cameras, confidential medical records, personal resignation letters, and a host of other information have been unintentionally left for you to find.
useful search terms
define:imbroglio – gives you the meaing of a word
links:www.tcij.org – tells you the links to a site
phonebook:smith – lists the Smiths in the US phonebook
site:www.bbc.co.uk iraq – restricts the search to the site given
castle ~glossary – provides a glossary of the given word
site:gov – search is limited to goverment sites
advanced searching
The Google guide of advanced search techniques (pdf) will provide more detailed ways of searching for information and you can find more information on search techniques on the web, including YouTube, by searching for “Google hacking” or “Google hacks”. However, be very careful what you download as the documents could have viruses – to be safe, open any documents in Microsoft Writer or Open Office.
The searches listed below are of the most interest to journalists.
filetype:pdf
filetype:xls
filetype:doc
filetype:txt
Using this search you can look within a specific document for information, for example, you are more likely to find financial information by looking through excel files. You can use any file extension to narrow your search – jpg, wav, ppt, avi etc.
Combine search terms to narrow results further: filetype:xls “house prices” and specify the location with + London.
or exclude terms, for example filetype:doc “security plan” -guidelines will exclude guidelines from the results adding site:gov will restrict the search to government sites.
security cameras
Typing “inurl:viewerframe mode motion” into a Google search will give a list of security cameras that can be viewed.
This page is based on a training session by Mike Schrenk – November 2009.