David Merrick

Finding Personal Information with Google

David Merrick — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:38:28 +0000

How private is your personal information? As someone who spends some time with SEO and search engines, I’d venture to propose that it’s not as private as you think. The following are ways of finding public and personal information through Google. I encourage you to try these with your own name and hope that it will help you better-secure your identity.

Resume Search:
intitle:resume intext:address -intitle:reference -intitle:sample -intitle:format -template -worksheet -prospective -form -please filetype:doc

Criminal Records

Your state + “department of corrections” + name

Your state + “death row” + name

E-mail Addresses

Sometimes, you can find e-mail accounts and passwords with this search:

inurl:(service | authors | administrators | users) ext:pwd “# -FrontPage-”

or this search:

filetype:xls inurl:email

If you’re just looking for e-mail addresses belonging to a certain domain, however, try this:

allintext:@domain.name.here.com

The Pipe Character

“Jake|Jacob Smith” resume

This searches for variations of a name (Jacob, in this example). The pipe character is near the backslash “\” on your keyboard and is universally recognized as meaning “OR” in nerdy programming circles.

Google Profile Listings:

site:http://gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/

This search reveals Google’s sitemaps of every Google Profile. I’m surprised that they have even allowed these listings to be indexed in the first place, because there are thousands of them.

Credit Card Numbers:

4052000000000000..4052999999999999

Hackers know that credit card account numbers are typically 16 digits long. They also know that the first four digits in a card’s number tell a lot about the type of card, as lots of cards that share the same first four digits. For example, if a card starts with 4052, a hacker would simply enter 4052000000000000..4052999999999999 into the Google search engine. This tells Google to search for Web sites containing any 16-digit number starting with 4052.

This is actually one of the few searches that I know of that are blocked by Google. There are other ways, however, to find credit card numbers in Google by finding footprints that payment processing systems with security holes leave behind. A startup called Blippy found this out the hard way recently.

Voicemail Messages

This isn’t available anymore, but for a short time in late 2009 Google was mistakenly indexing their Google Voice customers’ voicemails. You could find them simply by searching for site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/*.

For a more comprehensive, advanced guide to Google’s operators, see:

http://www.google.com/cse/docs/resultsxml.html

For a guide to Google hacking, see:

http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/

Six Essential Google Analytics Metrics

David Merrick — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:00:15 +0000

I attended an excellent webinar on Google Analytics the other day hosted by Niel Robertson and Anna Sawyer from Trada. I’ve been using some metrics in my custom reports similar to theirs for a couple of my clients, but they had a few very insightful ones that I jotted down and implemented immediately. The combined list is as follows:

Conversion Rate and Bounce Rate
Adwords Cost per Conversion
Conversions by Source
Conversion Rate by Source
Unique Visitor Conversions
Unique Visitor Conversion Rate

Hacking CCTV Systems with Google

David Merrick — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:18:48 +0000

Here’s a quick security tip: when you set up a closed-circuit network camera security system to monitor the inner workings of your home or business, be sure and at least protect it with a password if you must expose it to the internet at all.

The following are Google searches for finding exposed network camera systems. There are thousands of them, including government traffic cameras, security cameras at colleges, police departments, freight ports, airports, bars, et. al.–anywhere and everywhere you can put a camera these days, because Google does not discriminate when it comes to weak security.

Many of the cameras have consoles that you can use to move them around and zoom in/out, and some of the systems even have the lights and other appliances hooked up to them so you can watch the employees’ surprise as you turn them on and off. Have fun, and if you’re feeling generous, add a password for some of these lazy folks–I’m sure they’d thank you later if they could!

intitle:”i-catcher console web monitor” -free -crack -keygen My favorite CCTV console. Used for office and college security cameras.
allintitle: “Network Camera NetworkCamera” Network cameras
intitle:”Axis 2400 video server” Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges, clubs, bars, etc.
intitle:axis intitle:”video server” Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges, bars, ski slopes etc.
intitle:”EvoCam” inurl:”webcam.html” Mostly European security cameras
intitle:”Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed” Network cameras, private and non private web cameras
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
intitle:”LiveView / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
intitle:liveapplet Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges, clubs, bars etc.
intitle:snc-cs3 inurl:home/ Mostly security cameras, swimming pools and more etc.
intitle:”snc-rz30 home” Mostly security cameras, shops, car parks
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/ Mostly security cameras, swimming pools and more etc.
intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main” Mostly security cameras, shops, car parks
inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
inurl:indexFrame.shtml “Axis Video Server” Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
inurl:lvappl A huge list of webcams around the world, mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg Mostly security cameras
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
inurl:”MultiCameraFrame?Mode=Motion” Mostly security cameras, pet shops, colleges etc.
inurl:/view.shtml Mostly security cameras, car parks, colleges etc.
inurl:/view/index.shtml Mostly security cameras, airports, car parks, back gardens, traffic cams etc.
inurl:viewerframe?mode= Network cameras, mostly private webcams etc.
inurl:”viewerframe?mode=motion” Network cameras

inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh Mostly security cameras, parks, bird tables etc.

intitle:”linksys wireless-g internet video camera” inurl:vr.htm

Other searches:
control/userimage.html
liveapplet
inurl:indexframe.shtml
inurl:”view/index.shtml”
inurl:”view/indexFrame.shtml”
inurl:view/view.shtml
inurl:/view/view.shtml?videos=
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh
site:.viewnetcam.com -www.viewnetcam.com
/view/index.shtml

In Title:
intitle:”live view” intitle:axis
intitle:”EvoCam” inurl:”webcam.html”
intitle:”i-Catcher Console – Web Monitor”
intitle:”Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed”
allintitle:liveapplet
intitle:liveapplet
intitle:”netcam live image”
intitle:”snc-rz30 home”
intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main”

In URL:
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis
inurl:indexFrame.shtml “Axis Video Server”
inurl:lvappl live webcams
inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet
inurl:”MultiCameraFrame?Mode=Motion”
inurl:/view:shtml
inurl:/view/index.shtml
inurl:view/indexframe.shtml
inurl:view/view.shtml
viewerframe?mode=
inurl:”viewerframe?mode=motion”
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh

Two searches in one order:
intitle:”live view” intitle:axis (two searches in one order)
intitle:axis intitle:”video server”
intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml
intitle:start inurl:cgistart
Aquarium in Dresden
Salzgitter-Lebenstedt (Germany) Shop
Advertizing (USA) somewhere in California
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg (Germany) Foucault Pendulum
Wedding in Delft Townhall?
camera linksys inurl:main.cgi
Display Cameras intitle:”Express6 Live Image”
intitle:”active webcam page”
intitle:”EvoCam” inurl:”webcam.html”
inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS”
intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl
intitle:”my webcamXP server!” inurl:”:8080″
intitle:”Network Camera” inurl:ViewerFrame
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/
intitle:”toshiba network camera – User Login”
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml
tilt intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml
intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main Page”Restrict the search to a country, specialized URL a.s.o.:

Sometimes your order gives hundreds of URLs. You can restrict your search by adding a country, a specialized URL or another message:

Add: site:nl and your search is restricted to nl (The Netherlands).

Like: intitle:”live view” intitle:axis site:nl
Other examples:

site:edu (Restricted to edu (Colleges)
site:de (Restricted to de (Germany)
site:be (Restricted to be (Belgium)
site:com (Restricted to com (com)
site:net (Restricted to net (net) and so on.

CAMERAS
Axis Cameras
indexFrame.html axis
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS”
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS 206M”
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS 210″
intitle:Axis 2400 video server
intitle:axis intitle:”video server”
“adding live video to one of your own pages a very easy task with an AXIS 2100 Network Camera”
“Live web imaging unleashed”
“Your browser has JavaScript turned off.For the user interface to work effectively”

Canon Cameras

sample/LvAppl/

MOBOTIX Cameras

control/userimage.html

JVC Cameras

“V.Networks [Motion Picture(Java)”
“Control the Pan/Tilt and move to the Preset Position”

FlexWatch Cameras
/app/idxas.html
“Saving & Retrieving Mode”

Panasonic Cameras
/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion

Sony Cameras
intitle:”sony network camera snc-ml?
intitle:”sony network camera snc-pl?
intitle:snc-cs3 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:”snc-rz30 home”
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/

Toshiba Cameras
“TOSHIBA Network Camera – User Login”
/home/homeJ.html

WebcamXP Software
“my webcamXP server!”

Links (images behind the URL):
http://200.76.65.165/view/index.shtml Computershop Germany
http://eyet-tech.homeip.net/view/index.shtml?videos=one
http://mozart.amadeus-hotel.com:81/view/index.shtml?videos=one Hotellobby Haarlem, The Netherlands
http://camera.buffalotrace.com/view/index.shtml?videos=one Blanton Bottling Hall, Buffalo, USA
http://213.141.95.146/view/index.shtml?videos=one Computerdesk, Gävle, Sweden
http://216.66.37.162:8000/view/index.shtml?videos=one Lobby?
http://www.admgor.nnov.ru:8023/view/index.shtml
http://216.199.212.163/view/index.shtml?videos=one Awards shop, Pompano, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA
http://64.21.226.243/view/index.shtml Woodland Resort Bait Shop (Fishing), Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA
http://207.59.215.18/view/index.shtml Biesse America E-Channel, woodworking systems and plants, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
http://osteriaecucina.axiscam.net/view/index.shtml?videos=one Osteria & Cucina (Paticceria), Genoma del Friuli, Italy
http://160.36.60.7004/view/index.shtml
http://office.vermason.co.uk090/view/index.shtml
http://65.7.199.200000/view/index.shtml
http://webcam1.ttu.ee/view/index.shtml Tallinn (Estonia) Technikaüli
http://88.247.218.2/view/index.shtml
http://8.10.120.42/view/index.shtml NOC (?)
http://87.245.84.101:81/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi Schaffhausen (Switzerland) Brasserie Bahnhof
Poolcam at Nes-café (Amsterdam). Click view to see the match at Windows Media Player
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=4511 Passage near museum? USA
http://www.space.com.mx/ Welcome desk Space.com.mx, Colonia La Pax, Mexico (webcams), with Galeria AXIS cams
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=3888 George Washington University Radio poop, Washington DC, USA
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=3808 Synergy Online, Westport, Connecticut, USA
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=3740 University of Maine, USA, stairs
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=3440 flower shop, Japan
http://www.opentopia.com/showcam.php?camid=3273 computer control room

How to Edit a Public Google Map

David Merrick — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:13:04 +0000

I was looking for a new apartment for when I go back to school, and wanted a listing of all apartments in the area. Thankfully, someone had already mapped out every apartment complex in a Google Map. Unfortunately, however, I also wanted the prices associated with those, but was not able to edit the listings to include them. I worked around this by downloading the map data and uploading it into my account, essentially making a copy of the public map that I could edit. Here’s how to do this:

Open the public map on your screen.
Copy the URL and paste it into a text editor (like Notepad if you’re on Windows).
Add “&output=kml” to the end of the URL.
Copy the new URL and paste it into your browser.
You’ll be asked where to save the KML (map data) file. Choose a location and download it there.
Back in Google Maps, go to “My Maps”–>”Create New Map.”
Click “Import,” then upload the KML file that you just saved.
Save the map, and now you’ll be able to edit your copy of the public Google map. Enjoy!

How to Use Google as Your Own Free Content Distribution Network

David Merrick — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:42:04 +0000

With prices falling on hosting costs and Google placing more SEO value on site load speed, Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) are rapidly becoming more relevant and practical. In this article, I’ll show you how to leverage Google’s App Engine servers into your own free CDN!

What is a CDN?

Wikipedia is a great resource for reading more about CDNs, but the way that they work is to basically keep a copy of your site or your site elements (images, scripts, css, etc) on several servers around the world. When a visitor arrives at your site, the CDN determines their location and loads the files from the nearest server. This helps to:

Massively boost your site’s load speed.
Take the demand off your server by acting as a reverse proxy.
Increase your SEO ranking, because Google is placing more value on load speed.

Why the Google App Engine?

For 3 reasons:

Google provides developers the capacity for creating 8 applications on their platform. Each of these has a quota for free bandwidth that tops out at 1gb up and 1gb down per day. This is far more than most site owners will ever use (and if you need more, you can purchase boatloads more from Google on the cheap), for free!
A proxy app called mirrorrr was written a couple of years ago that is perfect for tweaking into a reverse proxy. Once uploaded to Google Apps, it will load from Google’s CDN by default.
The icing on the cake is that Google allows you to map any app to your own domain. So instead of “david-cdn.appspot.com,” my CDN runs on “cdn.david-merrick.com” (On top of other things, this makes it appear as though my network and site are much larger and more legit!).

How do we do this?

It’s very easy to do because I’ve done most of the work. So, after a couple tweaks, this should take you about 10 minutes to do–no programming necessary. Note: I am presuming you’re using WordPress for your site.

Follow these instructions on how to setup your own web proxy server, but before you upload the app to your developer account, modify the “mirrorrr.py” file’s code by adding the bold text below to represent your website’s URL:

if base_url in MIRROR_HOSTS:
      logging.warning('Encountered recursive request for "%s"; ignoring',
                      mirrored_url)
      return None
    logging.debug("Fetching '%s'", mirrored_url)
    try:
      response = urlfetch.fetch(mirrored_url)
    except (urlfetch.Error, apiproxy_errors.Error):
      logging.exception("Could not fetch URL")
      return None
    if base_url != "your-url-here.com":
		return None

(This will restrict anyone from accessing anything except for your domain with this proxy, which conserves your bandwidth quota).

To get WordPress to load all scripts and CSS from the CDN is a simple process. If you’re using the Thesis theme, just add the following to your custom_functions.php file (be sure to change the bold text to represent your URLs). If you’re not using Thesis, just use the functions.php file in your current theme’s directory.

function check_cdn_exclude($url) { //Exclude your admin pages from your CDN
	$my_cdn_excludes = array('wp-admin');
	$ref = $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"];
	foreach ($my_cdn_excludes as $exclude){
		if (preg_match("/{$exclude}/", $url)>0) return true;
		if (preg_match("/{$exclude}/", $ref)>0) return true;
	}
	return false;
}

function filter_cdn_elements($url) {
	if(!preg_match("/AppEngine\-Google/", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])){ //To prevent recursion from CDN redirecting to itself
		$my_cdn_old_urls = "your-url-here.com";
		$my_cdn_new_urls = "your-google-apps-url-here.com/" . $my_cdn_old_urls;
		if (check_cdn_exclude($url) ) return $url;
			$url = preg_replace("/{$my_cdn_old_urls}/", $my_cdn_new_urls,$url, 1);
	}
	return $url;
}
add_filter('style_loader_src','filter_cdn_elements');
add_filter('script_loader_src','filter_cdn_elements');
add_filter('theme_root_uri','filter_cdn_elements');

Optional: To map the CDN to your own domain, follow these instructions (If you look at my source HTML, I have mine mapped to “cdn.david-merrick.com”).
And you’re done! If you have any questions, comments, tips, etc., leave them below! Note: I realize that this script doesn’t load images. Once I figure out how to hack the WordPress API a little better to add that feature, I will add it to this post.

How to Automate Your Adwords Editor Login with Autohotkey

David Merrick — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:49:09 +0000

I love Adwords Editor, but I hate logging in every time I use it because my password is so long that I have to open a browser, log in to Lastpass, copy my password, and then paste it into the login box. I can understand the security considerations by Google, but still prefer to avoid tediousness and repetition when I’m trying to get work done. Here’s my solution:

Download and install Autohotkey.
Create a new file on your Desktop called “AE.ahk”.
Right-click the file and choose “Edit Script”.
Paste this into the file and replace “your-password-here” with your Adwords password:
```
^!s::
Send your-password-here
```
Close your text editor and double-click the script to run it. Now open Adwords Editor and press Ctrl-Alt-S when prompted for your password. You should see it typed automatically for you and be able to log in.
Optional: To be more secure, copy this script to a USB drive on your keychain and only run it from there.

How to Install Cacti 0.7.8d Plugin Architecture on Ubuntu 9.10

David Merrick — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:53:48 +0000

Original Problem: My ISP is fast but they limit my monthly bandwidth.

Original Solution: Cacti is an excellent network monitoring tool, so I decided to use it along with its Threshold plugin to monitor my home network via my hacked WRT-54GL router (DD-WRT firmware) using SNMP and send me an e-mail alert if I overused bandwidth in the past 24 hours.

New Problem: The Cacti install went well on my VMWare Ubuntu 9.10 box, but getting the Plugin Architecture running to support the Threshold plugin was an 8-hour, red-eyed nightmare because of terrible documentation on how to do this on my particular setup.

New Solution: I ended up manually hacking the source code and tediously editing, testing, and repeating until it started working. I’m posting this mostly for my own reference because this was such a pain to set up, but I hope that it’s useful for you. If it doesn’t work on your setup, leave a comment below and I’ll help out as best as I’m able!

Note–I’m presuming your setup is the same as mine, which is:

Ubuntu 9.10
Apache2
PHP5
MySQL
Cacti 0.7.8d

If you haven’t installed Cacti yet, follow this step-by-step Cacti guide on UbuntuGeek.com.

Let’s get down to business:

1. Backup Cacti settings and database, just in case:

#cd /usr/share/cacti
#cp -R site site_backup
#mkdir database_backup
#mysqldump -u root -p cacti > database_backup/cacti.sql

Back it up again to your home folder (I mis-typed a command and deleted all my files accidentally at one point):

#exit
$mkdir ~/cacti_backup
$sudo cp -R ./* ~/cacti_backup

2. Patch the Plugin Architecture onto your Cacti install with this guide. Instead of downloading the version that he specifies, however, download this one, rename it to “patch.zip”, unzip it, and continue with the instructions in the guide.

3. From around line 201-205, comment out these lines like so:

//include_once($config["library_path"] . "/functions.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_constants.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_arrays.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_settings.php");

4. From around lines 213-222, paste in the lines between “Start New Stuff” and “End New Stuff”:

/* include additional modules */
include_once($config["library_path"] . "/functions.php");
//Start New Stuff
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_constants.php");
include_once($config["library_path"] . "/plugins.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/plugins.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_arrays.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_settings.php");
//End New Stuff
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_form.php");

And you should be good to go! I hope it helps, and if not, please post a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

PS: If you are still having problems with your install, try this older (but still relevant) guide.

2 Simple Ways to Get a Real Person on the Phone

David Merrick — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:22:38 +0000

As we’re all painfully aware, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems are overused as a bad substitute for real customer service. Here are two simple ways to get around most of the ones you’ll ever encounter:

Fonolo: A free service that has pre-programmed the dial sequences for hundreds of companies. Simply choose which department you want to reach, enter your phone number, and Fonolo will call you when there’s a human on the line–no waiting.
GetHuman: To get past the more niche IVRs that Fonolo can’t, simply type in the name of the company you’re trying to reach. The results are created and curated by the site’s users, making it easy to find the shortest wait time to get a person on the line for almost any company you’re likely ever to have a problem with.

Do you have any services/tricks that you use to get around IVRs? Post a comment below!

Piggybacking Google Apps Proxy Servers for Free

David Merrick — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:54:21 +0000

Thanks to an excellent post on Digital Inspiration, dozens of people (myself included) have set up proxy servers on their Google Apps developer accounts that you can now access freely and easily, as most of them didn’t think to tweak their security settings to protect from getting indexed in Google’s search results: http://goo.gl/pDR4.

Remixing the Web, Part 2: Using Yahoo Pipes

David Merrick — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:44:46 +0000

Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Pipes is the Swiss-army chainsaw of remixing the web. It pulls in data from any web pages, spreadsheets, or RSS feeds that you choose and can filter, extract information (like prices or e-mail addresses), overlay it on a map, and much more. I’ve used it to:

Geolocate Craigslist apartment listings in my college town, overlay only the ones within 2 miles of the university on a map, and give me an up-to-date RSS feed sorted by the lowest price.
Monitor social media conversations on every popular social networking site, filter for keywords that include my client’s company, and export them to an RSS feed that they can easily subscribe to.
Compare prices of any item on eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist in real time.

These are just a taste of what you can potentially do with Yahoo Pipes, and the best part is that the interface is so intuitive that it’s easy and quick to get started–no programming required.

If you’re interested in learning more, these free and easy-to-follow tutorials will get you up and running in no time:

Dawn Foster’s Yahoo Pipes video series.
http://www.mrspeaker.net/2007/02/10/yahoo-pipes/
O’Reilly’s “Pipes and Filters for the Internet”

And you can check out the examples above and more at my Yahoo Pipes Page.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=2ndkDkLB2xGOIvh6HxeTaQ