Journal Entry, Week Three

Journal Prompt: List at least 3 resources that you considered but rejected for your project? Why did you choose to not use them?

 1.

https://www.sba-research.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/socialForensics_preprint.pdf

This link from SBA-research.org, had a lot of great information on social networking forensics, and I was sad to have to let it go.  The reason that I decided to toss this information is that upon a little digging, I found that SBA Research is a research company out of Vienna, Austria.  While there was a lot of great information in this article, I want to keep my research focused to challenges in social networking forensics in the United States.  The challenges that we face here in the states are likely different than challenges faced in other countries.  I want to make sure that the research that I do is relevant to the laws and challenges here.  

2. 

 http://csis.pace.edu/~ctappert/srd2009/a4.pdf 

This is an article that was published by Pace University and focuses on forensics tools used for social media.  While this article appears to have a lot of information, the article is from 2009, and with how fast technology changes, a lot of it may be outdated.  While I will take some leads from this article to find out what tools and practices may still be in use, it will only be used as a jumping off point and not a main source.

3.  

 http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2012/12/social-media-and-changing-role-investigators

This last one is actually an article that I didn't think I would use because it is from an online magazine, but ended up using.  At first glance I wasn't sure it was going to provide much information, but reading further into it, it has a lot of great information pertaining to social media, data collecting and privacy laws.  I looked into the magazine and it appears to be a legitimate magazine aimed at professionals in any forensics field.  The author of this particular article, Benjamin Wright, is a teacher at SANS Institute, and teaches the law of data security and investigations.  While checking out the legitimacy of this website, I also found some recent news stories that are perfect examples of cases that rely on social networking forensics such as these articles posted on the site yesterday (GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING):

 http://www.forensicmag.com/news/2016/04/how-child-predator-was-caught-tiny-clue-photo-he-posted-online

and 

  http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2016/04/teen-girl-accused-live-streaming-friends-rape-social-media

 This Forensicmag.com also offers a whole section of their website dedicated to digital forensics with the most up-to-date information on digital forensics, privacy, hacking, cyberattacks, data protection and much more.  I am excited to dig through this website although I will have to try to not get too lost in all of the information.

 http://www.forensicmag.com/topics/digital-forensics