37
head of the reputation protection group at Mishcon de Reya. ‘A lot of high-net-worth individuals don’t appreciate how they leave information behind and that it can be used against them.’ ‘A digital footprint really can represent a pool of sensitive data which could be leveraged against you,’ says Beatrice Giribaldi Groak, partner at Digitalis, a London advisory firm. It’s something we often forget, because we salami slice the amount of information we give away – a mother’s maiden name on a security question here, a birth year through a username there – without realising it can all be put together like a jigsaw to produce a fuller picture of who you are. ‘There is, at times, a sense of light- heartedness towards how much data there is out there about someone.’
When clients seeking
assistance first approach Digitalis, the firm, like many others, will often conduct a digital reputation audit. Usually the process uncovers an eerily detailed portrait of a person that the person had little idea existed in its totality online. ‘If you know what exists out there on the internet, you’re better informed,’ says Matt Lane, a director and co-founder of X Cyber Group, a cybersecurity firm based in London and Gloucestershire. ‘The more informed you are, the better protected you are.’
Step one is to come to terms with a difficult truth: the internet never forgets. If information is archived somewhere, it’s likely to be accessible to independent researchers, private investigators and journalists. Take the recently uncovered Pandora Papers, a tranche of 12 million documents dating back to the 1970s that was unveiled by a consortium of journalists in October. Some of the documents revealed details of dubious business practices dating back to a time before the internet really existed in a publicly accessible format. The revelation of the Pandora Papers is
an extraordinary event, but corporate intelligence experts often come across similar nuggets of information when conducting routine digital audits for their clients. ‘When we’re doing investigations,
[people have] featured in historic data breaches and data thefts.’ The advice, then, is to be cleaner than clean – but that is often easier said than done. ‘We are not able to give clients a time machine and allow them to undo the mistakes they made in the past,’ says Woollcott. Instead, anyone aware there could be skeletons in their closet can proactively work with companies like Mishcon de Reya to think about how to prepare if certain things were ever to come to light. One’s own actions or past indiscretions are not the only thing to consider. Pictures posted by other people – family members, acquaintances, support staff – can also prove to be highly useful for those trying to build up a picture of your life, or to understand a little more about your lifestyle, even if the
often we’ll find things going back to 2002 and 2004,’ says Colquhoun. ‘Nobody can possibly remember all the things that they did back then.’ Those long-forgotten entries somewhere in a database are the riskiest things that can be uncovered when raking through one’s digital traces, says Woollcott. ‘More often than not, if there are sexy images, or compromising images or information, the subject knows about it. But the thing that is most often unknown is the extent to which
pictures appear perfectly innocuous at first. A photo taken at a party, for example, can
reveal more than you might like – even if you are not in it. An image of your car’s licence plate can be cross-checked against databases to glean more information about your home. A selfie taken by a cleaner in the bathroom mirror of your home can give away the type of locks on your door, aiding a break-in. The family pet’s playful Instagram profile can reveal untold secrets that can all be built up to understand when you will or won’t be at home, walking the dog at the local park.
A SPATE OF ROBBERIES at the homes of Premier League footballers in the north-west of England has been linked to Instagram posts by the footballers themselves and their families. Glitzy posts showing off a recent jewellery purchase can act as a digital storefront for thieves. In April 2020, £500,000-worth of items were stolen from the city centre property of Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez. Among the items stolen were a Rolex Daytona and a Richard Mille watch. It came just months after Mamadou Sakho, who at the time was a Crystal Palace defender, lost £500,000-worth of property when his Wimbledon home was raided by criminals. Both players had shared pictures and videos of their high-value items with their millions of followers. Instagram posts are just one of
many types of what Colquhoun calls ‘data crumbs’, which he says ‘can be huge pivots for us if we’re doing an investigation, or for a hostile party to profile you, track you, or to ruin your reputation’. Sometimes these data crumbs can come from unusual places. While you may shun scheduled airline flights in favour of chartered planes for convenience and because you believe it’s less public, databases of tail numbers mean it’s possible to track someone’s travel using Osint – open source intelligence – unless they specifically opt out. Several tech billionaires are thought to have filed applications to remove the tail numbers of their private planes from tracking databases, but plenty of others can be viewed by all and sundry on sites such as Flightradar24 or Jettrack.
MADISON KETCHAM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
