So I was listening to Think on NPR last week and they had a story about the book Start Up Nation. The book is about Tech innovations coming out of Israel. The part I found most interesting was about a company called Fraud Sciences. The company was started by ex-Israeli military who used to track down terrorists. The software system they created is used to combat fraud on the internet. Here's the basic idea. If you run an internet website like say Ebay and someone registers on your site you'd really like to know if that person is "real" or if they are using a made up identity. If they are using a made up identity then most likely they are going to try and use your site to commit fraud. The Fraud Sciences software scours the internet and looks for any and all available public information on the person who has registered. If it finds lots of info, you are probably a real person, if it doesn't, hmm maybe you aren't a real person and Ebay should ask for a more in-depth identity check. In other words, "Bad guys don't post pictures of their kids on facebook." Here's an article from Business week that probably explains it better than I do. Sound like a good idea? Ebay thought so, they bought the company for $169 million. I just wonder what kind of software these guys made for the Israel to track down terrorists.
Oh also I'm going to upgrade Channel Zero this week to some new software so if it craps out for a day or so that's why.
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