Non-Obvious Ties

How many NOTs in your network? [NOT = Non-Obvious Tie]

You probably can't answer that, because the connections are...
n o n - o b v i o u s .

Ties/links/connections/relationships that are not obvious to me may be obvious to someone else, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the knowledge of those ties may not be as valuable to those those who know, than to those who do not know.

Confused? Let me share a few stories...

This afternoon I was looking through the access logs to my business web site. I saw some interesting NOTs. Two *.mil orgnaizations were visiting certain pages. Would my friends at Booz-Allen-Hamilton would find that information of great value? BAH sells products and services to DoD clients. The BAH rainmakers would love to know what military branch X and Y are interested in and what search terms they used, and what pages they spent a long time on.

Then I noticed visitors from the Dark Web [web sites that support/idolize Jihad]. I wondered... wouldn't the military folks, that visited just an hour before, like to see what the jihadi supporters were looking at, and what referrer pages and search terms they used?

Finally a third NOT, all in one quick browse of the logs. Wouldn't the Oracle business intelligence folks like to know what SAP employees were looking at, and vice versa?

My web site is not that different from thousands of other business web sites that are browsed each day by a diverse mix of concurrent visitors. If only visitor X knew that visitor Y was there and what they were looking at. Maybe a few days later visitor Z arrives and produces the same clickstream as visitor X -- what does that say about the two visitors?

Our choices reveal who we are. Our search paths give insight into who we are not... yet.

Even though though we don't know who each of these visitors are [the actual people representing their organization], their behavior reveals much about what is important in their organization and what they are trying to learn. Just like the networks of Amazon purchase data reveal interesting political patterns without revealing who the actual purchasers are, these "choice & search" networks reveal much about the organizations our individually unknown visitors are from.

Finally, a NOT story with a happy ending.

A blogger friend of mine was being stalked by someone who took great umbrage to one of the posts on the blog. The stalker assumed a Jane Doe identity and started to leave increasingly abusive comments. By checking the blog logs my friend saw the IP address of the abuser and saw that they were spending a lot of time on the site. They were waiting for the blogger to answer one of the abusive comments or for a friend of the blogger to leave a positive comment that they could pounce on.

The stalker was using his employer's network. Yes, she was a he, a quick domain look up revealed what company he worked for. The company sold financial products and services to consumers. My friend thought they would guard their reputation vigorously. My friend contacted their media relations department and explained the situation and provided them the IP address from which the comments were coming. Soon the company's director of IT Security called and explained how seriously they were taking this misuse of their network. Within a day, the IP address and the abuser's fake Jane Doe GMail address were tracked to a PC within a company branch office. Both HR and I/T approached the abuser and basically read him the riot act. He quickly admitted his guilt and pleaded for forgiveness. No details, other than the above, were provided by the company. As a former HR person, I suspect he will be very closely watched and most likely terminated at the next display of similar behavior. His opportunities for promotion and advancement are now severely limited. Dumb guy.

A similar process, to the above, is currently being used to trace the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin's YahooMail account(s). Many people think they are anonymous and invisible on the internet. Not so -- NOTs will quickly reveal what you are after, where you came from and finally, who you are.