and within the source code of Tinder the web version you can see the date of birth of the individual as they entered it on the platform so did I did a control contrl F and I searched for birth and you're going to see here you get a date of birth so I would volunteer for things like Operation Safe Escape um National Child Protection n cpf for providing ENT to help find kids help kids out of situations there's a whole range of different things some stuff we developed ourselves I mean often when people say what's the most important you know open source investigation tool I would say you know Google it's pretty useful you know it's you don't have to overthink it it sometimes two things a lot of us want security and privacy I find it really funny sometimes when I get messages like Bro you've doxed yourself because I've shown my IP address well here's my IP address notice the IP address here does that mean I've dox myself no because that's an rfc1918 address but notice here I'm not running a VPN and I'm going to now show you my public IP address so I've gone to what's my IP address.com and notice this is my IP address this is an IPv6 address and according to this I'm currently located in India now I'm cheating here because I'm using the tall browser but notice I'm actually using brave but I'm using tall not tall within Brave this is a normal Brave window but let's muddy the waters a little bit more in this example I'm not using to I'm using Firefox because toour is slow I've gone to what is my IP address.com and notice according to this this is my IP address IP version 4 address and according to this I'm located in Berlin Germany the problem with tour is it's slow but let's see how fast my browser is here so I'm going to go to fast.com Netflix website that allows me to do a speed test I don't know I think I'm quite happy with that 5 gbits per second 4.8 gbits per second that is a very good speed for getting full privacy so again notice I'm not using a VPN this is my RC 1918 address or my private IP address this is my public address which says I'm in Germany what I'm actually doing here is I'm using a Chasm workspace number one I can do secure and Anonymous research for example if I'm doing ENT I don't want people to see my public IP address or personal details about me I want to have privacy I want to be able to hide what I'm doing and in this video I'm going to talk to a number of very high-profile and very well-respected ENT researchers and get their feedback about what they do to be more private and advice from an oen point of view they all use kasm workspaces as part of their workflow I really want to thank kasm for sponsoring this video but I've actually been using kasm for a while great for privacy but from a cybercity point of you it's also fantastic because I run a YouTube channel where we have sponsors and we get email emails coming in telling us about companies that want to sponsor us the problem there is how do we know if it's legitimate link we often told in cyber security that we should never click on links on emails but in a lot of cases that's not practical in a lot of cases I want to use a link on an email and see where it takes me because the email looks legitimate all the information looks correct but I'm not sure if the email link is actually a good link especially with the Advent of AI emails are looking more and more legitimate even though they come from Bad sources and how do you know if a legitimate email user hasn't been compromised so someone could compromise one of your family members and send you an email from a legitimate email address legitimate email account but then take you to a fishing website or some other type of dodgy website so for example if I want to do research about some type of topic let's say fishing websites I can do that safely and securely from the kasm workspace I could also download malware if malware was downloaded into this km workspace that's not a problem because it's not connected to my local machine what's actually happening here in the chasm workspaces is we have total web isolation or browser isolation what we can do here is either launch just a browser or as an example a desktop which could be windows or Linux as an example and when it boots up I could decide to enable or disable the persistent profile I like to do stuff disabled which means when I close this down that whole session is gone the container is totally gone so containers are spun up or torn down as I need them so as an example here I'm running auntu once again I could open Google Chrome if I like and I could go to what's my IP address again I'll reject all cookies go to the website disagree and notice once again it's thinks I'm in Germany I'm not actually in Germany I'm in the UK but according to this I'm in Germany so now this IP address is an oracle public Cloud you could try doxing me or you know doing a Dos attack against this but you're not going to be attacking me you're attacking Oracle in that case or I mean you could try and attack this IP version 6 address which is in India again that's not going to affect me this is the power of KM workspaces you get privacy if you need to do ENT research or you just need to browse the internet privately this is a great way to do it web isolation gives you security because if you downloaded viruses or malware onto the chasm workspace as soon as it's closed down that's gone because the container is torn down okay but that's enough demos from me let me know if you want to see more about this I interviewed a number of very well-known ENT researchers and I want to get their input about tips and tricks with regards to personal safety as well as ome research but before we do that I want to thank kasm for sponsoring this video and for creating this product I've been using it once again for a while really like it it really gives me a lot of security knowing that I can click on Links at emails or I can securely browse the internet going to various kind of websites some of them dodgy doesn't matter if they're on the dark web or the clear web I can do that without worrying that my local computer gets infected everyone David bomble back with a very special guest MJ welcome thank you so much for having me MJ you've got a fantastic story I believe you did stuff with Vice you were doing I don't want to put words in your mouth but a reporter of sorts is that right and then now you're in ENT so that sounds like a really interesting Journey can you tell us about you know sort of what happened sorry go on of course yeah no no problem um so so my journey into the ENT world is is one of those kind of typical I think ENT stories where you kind of just fall into it um there was no method or or or or anything here this was all Madness um honestly I I I graduated from University with a background in English and critical theory and culture studies and all that stuff and I immediately knew at the age of like 20 years old I was like I'm going to be a school teacher for the rest of my life and and that's what I did I became a school teacher for 12 years I was a school vice principal assistant principal for a couple years as well so that was the uh the first part of my of my life and and you know I I taught school and as I was teaching school I was kind of realizing this is not what I wanted to do with my with the rest of my life you know I was sort of kind of getting into this grind and and I was not enjoying it and and a friend of mine kind of brought me back into my academic kind of career and part of my academic background was I was studying sub cultures in University so whether it was like Punk subculture got subculture whatever I I got into a friend kind of put me on this path of like hey have you ever thought about researching people who are like in like UFO Cults or they like believe in aliens have you ever like thought about this as like a legitimate path because I guess there hadn't been a lot of research done into this area and I was like you know what sure um I'll do it so I started literally speaking to people who say they were abducted by aliens no judgment if you think you've been abducted by aliens stranger things have happened uh in religion but um it led to a book ultimately uh that I wrote um about sort of the UFO subculture or or essentially what the subculture of people who who believe in sort of these these kind of esoteric things after I wrote that book um uh Vice and and I kind of got to talking the the news publication and they were really interested in this type of content and and at the time we need to remember this was sort of you know mid 2017 2018 you know we had a trump presidency we had all of this kind of you know covid had not happened yet but it was you know nobody knew it was on the horizon but you know you we sort of were in this pre- moment of of conspiracies and and qinon and all of this stuff was kind of starting to percolate uh in culture and and the UFO belief system was really intermixed in that quite quite close so Vice had a significant interest in this topic so they tapped me and and we started I started writing articles for vice um a lot about UFO Cults a lot about people who believe in UFOs I think I wrote about one gentleman who was convincing people that Trump was like a reptile alien I mean a whole you know there's a whole bunch of stuff and you know I worked on a few documentaries for vice regarding a couple UFO Cults you know some had tragic endings some were were kind of a little more silly and strange but that put me into the ENT space all of a sudden what was happening is when you start working on these deep investigative reporing pieces trying to track down money on how cult leaders earn money spend their money you start kind of going through their their their financials that you can find online you know donation uh websites like GoFundMe whatever you kind of start doing all of this ENT work um and uh fairly early on I got connected with um a guy named Justin sites and and we had never met but he's been on your at this time we had met but I started using his tool Hunley because it was really imperative that we started logging all this data that we were collecting and and I kind of got to know osen folks through kind of using hunch and asking questions um and I started of I started to kind of build up a bit of a Rolodex of people I could speak to other journalists who are in this this kind of world like investigative journalism that type of thing eventually it led me to start up our own my own news publication with a couple friends of mine um called the debrief and we we cover mainly Science and Tech where we're kind of that's the nerdy side of me that loves like Star Trek and and all that um but we we uh we also extra points for saying that yeah sorry go yes yeah listen I even got like a little was like I got a little yeah anyway long story short um we started this publication and I started kind of soft shoing out the teaching door uh and I started working for basically ENT firms in Canada so uh I started working with a a crisis intelligence monitoring firm uh based out of Edmonton and then I worked for a company based out of otwa that was doing intelligence work with the Canadian government um and that eventually led me to meet Justin in person uh because we were actually working at the same firm uh which was kind of a weird merger and um we we basically became friends and we have since kind of soft shoed into our own uh company so myself Justin uh a wonderful our wonderful CEO Kennedy Chapel as well as a few other people I can't name because they're kind of more silent Partners um but but we essentially started our own essentially investigation intelligence consulting firm called permanent record research um and currently I'm the head of investigation and Analysis there and we are uh basically doing ENT work um intelligence work investigation work fraud detection all that good stuff threat assessments whatever whatever the client needs um and and that's what I do full-time so I went from a career in teaching and writing about people who believe in aliens to doing osen full-time uh it's yeah that's the journey so your background is was teaching English literature right uh critical theory UFOs and sorry no yeah I never taught UFOs thank god um I was G say kids you know yeah um no it was mainly uh English culture studies and uh I taught ancient history as well which was actually a lot of fun like you know uh the ancient world so so that was that was the day job I mean it's unbelievable like it feels um surreal to be here now uh especially sitting on like honestly I'm on the on like the David bomble show I mean this is like a surreal moment for me um but you know to think that I was a teacher once like I can I I remember it but it was like a different life you know what I mean how many years have you been doing oen like um full-time oen if you can call it that yeah sure full fulltime like actually getting paid to do ENT work um we're looking we're going on three years as like I have been employed doing ENT prior to that the investigative journalism bit um you know developing shows documentaries podcasts that have that kind of investigatory s of journalistic concept that add another five or six so you know grand total just under a decade or so of kind of part-time ENT and then three years of of full-time o i mean the reason I wanted I wanted to ask that is I've interviewed people who've been doing OS for like 20 years or whatever I mean A decade is a long time but what would you advise people who starting out um I mean do I need to Learn Python do I need to learn technical skills what are like the most important things that you would advise yourself if you know talk to your younger self or someone who's starting out what would you advise yourself to do today if you were starting today yeah that's a that's it's tough right because I had the luxury of of a slow burn in um and and I know a lot of people who want to do this line of work they don't have that you know my advice would be to to outside of just networking and meeting people my advice would be you need to definitely have some technical skill now fortunately you know I know enough people but if if you don't know those people having the ability to write your script sometimes via python really helps knowing how to use Linux really well and knowing how to use um all those tools that exist for Linux um that are essentially free that the paid version of for like your Mac or PC is is you know 100 bucks a month or or sometimes way more right um so so um if you can utilize that kind of more dark arts material of of let's say Python and Linux and understanding those ecosystems you're going to be you're definitely going to be sort of on that on that upward trajectory because you can do a lot of stuff that just like good oldfashioned gum shoeing can still accomplish but it just takes longer right um so so that's kind of my first sort of piece of knowledge and literally I am teaching myself this stuff like right now in my old age I'm like going back and trying to figure out how to use like Linux properly and how to actually you know pull all these GitHub repositories off and start using these tools in Linux because you know I I feel like I I should know this um in between obviously working for clients which are you know paying money to our company to do work you know you have to kind of balance the education versus the professional side of side of the work but I think you know I think it's tough there's no one trajectory and I think that's kind of the weird thing and and I think there's this kind of misunderstanding when it comes to ENT you know I don't think ENT is a career per se like I don't think you can say you know I do ENT as a as a career I think you do investigations or you do intelligence analysis or you do policy analysis or you do journalism or you whatever and ENT becomes kind of part of that work right so so when we talk about you know becoming an expert in ENT or becoming a professional enter I think we just need to have a general understanding that that it doesn't mean like you can go out like you're you're not going to be like I I I am an enter on like my job title um you'll be like an investigator an analyst or analyst or whatever um yeah so but my advice would be a bit of background in those spaces would be really helpful but after that um you need a big whiteboard uh big crazy whiteboard where you can write all your notes and have red yarn everywhere and really the the the mindset of of if you don't like Puzzles if you don't like solving stuff um you don't like that kind of gum shoeing going out there and finding stuff and information and data and just the the the need to complete the puzzle that's something that you got to train into yourself um because there there'll be moments where you'd be banging your head against the desk for two weeks trying to find like a little shred of a clue somewhere and you just don't and you're at the verge of giving up you know I I've worked on stuff for six months and it's just like there's there's no way we're going to find this it's gone guys and then all of a sudden something pops up and you're just like oh my God so the gum shoe kind of Drive touch a Linux touch a python you know mile wide and an inch deep of knowledge in kind of all things and uh there you go that's the path to ENT I guess but don't take my word for it just one person here MJ question that always comes up right A lot of people watching think tools are the way um are there any specific tools that you would recommend or that you can suggest or what's your Take On Tools yeah no listen in ENT tools are essential um but you know I think for me my pitch to everybody here is is you know fundamentally one of the best tools you can have is essentially friends who have access to those tools like that so so you know I I I have yeah good friends who have access to Great tools that they can share or that they can use uh you know in exchange for something else you know what I mean like you sit around you have coffee and you like hey can you do this for me or can I do that for you you know it all works out so so you know fundamentally um there's a few guests who I've brought on the show um who who are definitely going to go over some of their favorite tools with you um you know Ru Gil and her tool forensic ENT uh as well as km which is a great um operational security tool Ray Baker um who is an amazing ENT analyst she has a a pretty cool tool she's going to show off and and obviously Elliot Higgins from Belling cat has a whole series of tools that they use that they can that they're going to talk about so so you know I think they're the ones who can get into the tool conversation uh and I'll let them take it from from from there because U they're the pros yeah so so the first person that I want to that I want to kind of introduce everyone to is Ru Gil um she's a uh ENT operator based out of Vancouver in Canada um she's the founder of forensic ENT which is a great Tool uh we use it all the time at permanent record um and and basically what it does um is is is you to capture data so that it it stays on your device like your computer forever and and essentially allows you to to uh uh retain records that are that are sort of primo and mint condition that they can't be questioned um I'll let her talk about it more but uh from from an oen perspective Ru you know she speaks at Sand's conferences she speaks at conferences all around the world um she's worked with law enforcement I can't say enough about her but she is uh she's definitely one of the earlier people I've met in this world and has been nothing but a great friend since [Music] what do you think are the most important skills or characteristics of someone if they want to be a good ENT investigator or if you were looking to hire someone what are you looking for for someone to be an oent investigator I would say critical thinking is key someone who is very persistent so if I posed a question they didn't just say like they didn't have they had ideas with how we could work around this challenge that kind of thing because that gets you thinking if somebody can get thinking about different ideas to answer a challenging question to me that's like okay they're using some skill set there that um or they're using their critical thinking to find answers and I think that's important because with open source there's many times where you'll hit roadblocks yeah but you need to be able to think critically at what you have in front of you to make sure that that investigation kind of keeps going if you can keep going with it yeah I mean is it also important to know when to give up or is it like just like tenacity is everything right I think tenacity is important but there are certain points where you do have to stop sometimes you don't want to gather more information than you need right from the Privacy perspective especially government agencies that could be looked at as an issue um so for me if I've answer the intelligence question I'm done moving on some people that are doing ENT have a certain budget or they have a time limit yeah same thing if those have kind of you've maxed out there well then you also know you need to stop at that point so yeah those are my thoughts on that it's interesting because you've mentioned like what I would call more soft skills than technical skills are you finding that like these kind of soft skills and I mean perhaps I'm misinterpreting it but like for ENT you don't need to be like a hardcore programmer or coder or something like that it's a different skill set to say someone who's prhs in cyber security or programming Etc yeah I think I mean I think everyone has a place in terms of with ENT you will have technical people you'll have non-technical yeah it's really awesome if you have a group of people where you can there's non-technical but there's somebody with a technical knowledge or experience because they bring something else to the team vice versa so that said I don't think you need to be necessarily a technical person but it really depends the type of oent you're doing because even for me I don't consider myself the tech person but I kind of grew up with computers so I I know my way around those Basics um that said there's a lot of ENT people that are highly Technical and I don't do the same type of ENT work they might do yeah I love what you said I mean it's a team right if you've got a team with different skill sets that's the best thing to have yeah I really think the team kind of mindset is the best because you have the best of both worlds and it's also like so if you're kind of comparing it to the law enforcement world if you have a police officer or an investigator and you have an analyst on the same team it's really good because you get both perspectives and that shows you different sides of how an analyst looks at things versus how an investigator looks at things and how do I get started do you have any advice like let's say I'm interested in this I mean I can obviously do o challenges you mentioned ctfs and stuff like that perhaps you can give some advice if I want to get into this any any sort of road map or like sort of a path that you can recommend yeah I I get this question question a lot honestly I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn and Twitter and other places but uh I wrote a blog post for Sans actually and I like if you Google how to get into ENT I believe that's the title it will probably take you right to that blog post within there I do highlight different things because people learn different ways as well right some people want to listen to a podcast some people want to read some people need to actually do things to learn the techniques I would say taking a little bit from each group is really important that way you kind of expand the different ways you can see the different audiences I really think if you're that new to osen it is really important to just start reading and learning about how other people are using it just to wrap your mind around how it's being used what about jobs because that's a big thing right it's fun to do ENT on the side I've been posting like photos of my holiday U and asking people where I am and that's fun but you know is there money in it yeah so there is there there are many jobs uh internationally Around the World ENT related or they have a component of ENT in it so uh there is a a group called ENT or a social media website called ENT jobs and I know they they publicize jobs internationally and they posted it on online on LinkedIn on Twitter I highly recommend if people are looking for jobs to go look at those and if some of those jobs maybe aren't in your location yet I personally if I was starting new I would look at what the qualifications are for those jobs and then I would try to go get those qualifications so some of it it might be very specific it might actually say exactly what you need some of them might be just like hey you need to take you have to be good at analytical writing or the skill set with um writing as an analyst well you can take courses all around the world and online that will teach you some of that stuff you can take our es just to it once you get some of those core competencies I think that's a starting point as well R it's great to talk about this stuff but I'm hoping that you've got a demo right I do so right now I'm in Chasm in a Chasm workspace Y and I talked about how this is great for OPC and it's great if you are an ENT investigator so you can focus on your investigation so another thing I want to mention here is within km workspace you'll see there's forensic osen so I've mentioned this tool a couple of times this is a tool that I co-founded it will help you make screen captures of online content and so if you see the interface here there's several options in terms of capturing a crit screen capturing a full page essentially you can make captures here so if I wanted to capture current screen it's going to make a capture and then it's going to go right into the case management system which is built into forensic oen and you're gonna see here here's the download and if you scroll over to the right you can download the capture and you can PDF the report so it makes it pretty intuitive pretty straightforward there are other options within forensic ENT if you hover over some of these you can see this is a video download option and you're going to see there's other insights you can get and also the case management system if you ever just want to go there all your captures will be placed under your case here so I saw you do a Tik where you downloading a Tik Tok video right yeah yeah that's uh that's exactly you can do that so if you can you can go to like YouTube you can go to Tik Tok and you can download uh the video Simply by clicking on this option here so we've tried to make it really easy so ENT people don't have to struggle and even if there's a website say it's something that uh something like Facebook if you can't do it directly with the app it will have instruction for Facebook in particular it will say follow these instructions and you can download that video another thing I want to talk about to go with the story is so we're looking at uh a Tinder profile here and what's always interesting is from the OS perspective there's so much more to sometimes some of the um platforms we look at Tinder is an example so what I did from here was click on view page source and within the source code of Tinder the web version you can see the date of birth of the individual as they entered it on the platform so I did a control contrl F and I search for birth and you're GNA see here you get a date of birth so that's not shown on the on the public facing but it's in the source code right exactly it's in the source code that's bad so wow really from o Point what are you sorry to interrupt you sorry going yeah it is good from the ENT side but from the Privacy side not so great yeah but this was that Redrum that piece things together for me um and I wanted to just do a quick demo to show you what that looked like I was wondering how you found that so if you just go back to the public profile you don't have that as a normal user if you like but it's worth looking at the um at the source code exactly yeah and how I did that was I right clicked on the photo and I just selected view page source and then I searched for birth and you're not even logged in right I'm not logged in here I'm not logged in at all just looking at certain username and that's just to show you what you can get out of looking at the source code at times wow some sites give us a lot of information and especially from the ENT perspective sometimes really useful information to piece together that puzzle that you're trying to put together just so that I understand because I always make this joke that a lot of the younger generation call me a boomer even though I'm not um just want to make sure I cover the basics so you have got a browser open to a Chasm workspace is that is that what it's called yes that's correct so that's great and you running it looks like a buntu uh it's actually it's within the chasm workspace it is the Chrome browser but the desktop version that's what's running in the background here okay great so you have got like I could use so just to make sure understand I could use like Safari or whatever my my choice of browser is to go to the chasm workspace and inside there you you've actually got a Chrome browser running and that's how you connecting to Tinder and these other ites correct that's correct and then if I understand right that browser can be set up to be nonpersistent so when you close it down all that data is lost or you can make it persistent to keep the data correct yes exactly so again from that operational security standpoint this makes this keeps it very safe so if I shut this session down it's uh I end right there and it's it's a clean start when I start again so on the forensic ENT tool those captures at the moment are being saved into the kasm workspace so you just got to pull that off the chasm workspace before you shut it down if it's not P persistent yeah so what what you'll notice is I'm logged in here into my account uh and any of the screen captures I've made they are going to go into this folder called U John Doe wanted but also they're sitting in the case management system so once you are here and you've downloaded everything you want to download these captures um create a PDF report to make sure you have it um that way that your evidence or whatever you're working on is collected and and saved somewhere so that's really important to make make sure you do that before you um close down anything so that so that's great right so if if my km workspace shut down accidentally or something went wrong and it's not persistent I don't lose my entire history of the work I've just done is that correct that's correct yeah your captures will be within your forensic ENT case management system that's where you can find it okay so that's great so I'm in Chasm that's non-persistent if if I so I can cover my trucks I can shut that down if I need to in an emergency but all the data that I've been capturing uh the screen and the screen captures and the videos and so forth are going into the forensic ENT application which I can obviously get hold of using my proper computer at home that's correct so the next person is Ray Baker she is uh probably the foremost expert on ENT when it comes to the sort of maritime sea travel she can track a boat on a cloudy day through a fog and a storm in the middle of the night uh with its tracker off I mean that's how good she is um but on top of that she and I have actually worked together on a handful of cases from from crypto scams to puppy scams to um helping her sort of uh tell stories um through through podcasting I mean you know her and I have have been working together on a few things for for almost two years now um and and she's going to go over some of the stuff she does uh and and she definitely has some interesting stories to tell in her line of work uh working on the United States and and just sort of doing investigation work for for law enforcement uh as well as private clients so she's definitely a guru in in a lot of spaces but she she she's well versed in in sort of the kind of the grunt investigation work and the nitty-gritty of like getting into the trenches and and kind of picking through pieces of Data Tracking people down um and and like I said she's she's amazing so so she's the next person I want you guys to meet [Music] so I I think the question right you mentioned you used like a Google doc or Google sheet I think is one of the tools that you used I think you showed us another tool there must be specific websites or specific tools that you're really find useful because I mean you've been doing this for a long time you've written this amazing book but um you know any suggestions for people who get started I know you mentioned like a lot of people like tools but I think if you're starting it's you know what do you do uh no taking tools I think are useful um and and that's that doesn't hinder your ability to do analysis um that's just a benefit I use one note a lot of people don't don't like don't like the Microsoft OneNote stuff I I started at my job using OneNote and now it's just second nature I don't have to think about it um when I'm at home I use Google just for ease of access um because I can have a sheets I can share it with somebody I can open a word doc I can create it in there um I also use mind maps um XM things like that I don't really pay for anything like special but uh but that's how I keep track anything that I can do quickly because I work very fast so if I can just drop stuff in make it easily readable for other people and share it out that's those are the tools that I use so that's for not taking um for research you're obviously using Yandex and Google um stuff like that or sorry engines like that for reverse image searching any other tools that you found really useful like in this case um I used a lot of domain tools so I have I have access to paid tools I didn't at first when I was starting this um because I didn't get a job in OS until 2020 so when I first started I did not use any paid tools but I check all of the tools so I I I will Google I don't have a list of tools really sure being honest I just go to Google and say like domain historical tool and then see what pops up and then I try it and then I'll try another one and then I'll try another one because they'll all give you different data so I think the key is just to creatively and explore don't get stuck in one tool try them all collect all the data and then you can pivot from all the things that you find you said you you got into ENT in 2020 is that right yes I switched I I was a graphic designer prior to doing ENT I switched into the field I started going back to school in 2019 and then around 2020 large consulting firm reached out to me on the internet they asked me to hi that's how I go my job Ray how did you go from graphic design to working for this large an unnamed firm for the moment um can you give us like did you put stuff online because why did they reach out to you specifically so when I started going back to school I went to Penn State or am going I'm still going for risk analysis security cyber security I have kids I wanted to make it worth it so I started writing blogs I was like I'm going to make this something and I I started going to conferences kind of networking uh giving talks and between the blogs and the talks I think that is when people started paying attention they do all of these companies you know they follow people online and they look for new talent online at the time I didn't know that I was just trying to I wanted to appear as an expert or start to appear as an expert in the field um so I I would write blogs to teach myself things and that's how I kind of fell into Maritime was I picked something cool that I saw in a YouTube video and I'd try and recreate it on my own and I'd write about it and I figured if I could write about it I'm I'm learning it it's sinking in and it's also creating content you know for the content machine that you have to keep marketing yourself because my background is marketing so I just pivoted it I'm now marketing myself for ENT or security at first I didn't even know what o was I I kind of fell into that too at one of the conferences I played in a trace Labs event and it just it hit right it was like the perfect thing I think for me and I I just ran with it I love that story because it's number number one don't feel that you have to be an expert before you start putting content out there number two you know document your journey and then putting stuff on the internet means that people are going to find you I love that so was your blog going to conferences but how did you so the question I think a lot of people will be asking how did you afford to like go to these conferences network with people was it mostly online or was it your your full-time job at that time or part-time job sponsor or sorry painful that kind of transition um I mostly went to bsides conferences so they're pretty low cost I I ran the the tech club at Penn State and we would get money from Penn State to kind of send our members to these conferences and I would also go out and solicit people to let us come for free so I one of the things I did at the tech club was I I started doing interviews with people so I would go out to Twitter I would pick like the bigger cyber security people and I would ask them do you want to come virtually talk to our group and they would come they would talk and that was cool we would learn stuff but at the same time I'm networking right exactly so so I'm kind of marketing myself and making connections at the same time and that's uh Patrick lavy from um layer 8 he was one of our interviews and he was like do you want to come to the ler eight conference it's an oing conference so I went to that for free and that's that's kind of I think it's an encouragement for people who want to transition into cyber security or Tech or ENT your your story is fantastic and you got you got children as well right so someone I have two small boys so the so young kids right so that even that didn't stop you no and I I was when I started school I was actually pregnant with my youngest one so I was it was a lot of stuff at one time yeah and I'm working full-time I did a lot of the hard thing with osen is you need to practice your skills so I started volunteering in order to practice so I would volunteer for things like Operation Safe Escape um National Child Protection Ser uh ncpf for providing OS to help find kids help kids out of situations um and that helps kind of hone some of those skills by helping and learning along the way so let me see if I understand this right two young kids so you've got young kids to look after as a mother you're working full-time you're studying at University and you're volunteering your time so when on Earth did you sleep I I do sleep I I I feel like I'm I don't know for my years in graphic design I I've gotten very good at like compartmentalizing my projects you know you do one thing you switch to the next it's you know out of my brain into the next one so that's kind of what my day is like you know work is this period of time school is this period of time kids is this and of course they bleed over sometimes but but I've gotten very good at like figuring out how long a task will take I I remember my wife when our kids were young I mean it's all I can say is like kudos to you because that's that's hard work that that is seriously hard work it is but I I hope that if anything I can show that it can be done another person I want everyone to meet is Elliot Higgins the living legend the founder of bellingcat the his work on uh the war in Ukraine especially has been more helpful than than people truly know um from tracking you know missile launches and and and explosions on the ground and injuries to war crimes I mean bellingcat and Elliot have really led the way in this and they have built tons of tools that allow people like you and me to to sort of Aid in that work but also use those tools for for other means um so so I think if there was a sort of grand Sage or wizard of of ENT and especially when it comes to utilizing community and utilizing your networking skills and utilizing the people you know and just generally bringing people into the ENT world uh Elliot Higgins is definitely that definitely that wizard so um he's got a few things to contribute and a few interesting tools to show [Music] off you got to tell us a bit about your background right how did you get into oen and like do you have advice for people who want to get into this yeah so um my background is not professionally anyway whatsoever it's fair to say I I started doing this as a hobby I used to do a lot of admin work work for various companies but that was not my Keen interest it was more um kind of what was going on the world I I was someone who spent a lot of time on the internet and I still do and a lot of that time we spent um kind of arguing about things that were happening in the world on various forums and back in 2010 and ear 2011 a lot of that was focused on the events of the Arab Spring and I was seeing more and more video footage being shared from all kinds of places where you know there were these terrible events happening but that footage was being often ignored by the mainstream media yeah and part of that was because they didn't know how to verify it they couldn't tell you know where one YouTube video was filmed or photograph was taken and um really in these kind of online discussions I thought well you know it's reasonable to ask the question where is this film and how do you find that answer and it turned out that by using satellite imagery available on places like Google Maps I could compare what was visible in videos and photographs and then find it in that satellite imagery and um then actually confirm where stuff was Tak and this is a Technique we call geolocation nowadays but it was you know so much the early days of this whole thing that I it was just Spot the Difference to me really with uh photos and Google Earth so give us give us the the mission for bellingcat and then how people can get involved can I work for bellat like what do you what do you guys actually do and how do I get involved so banat um it focuses on open source investigation we don't particularly focus on any topic or another we've um really been led a lot by the interest of our volun okay but a lot of that has um you know since 2014 has focused on Russia because Russia has been up to a lot of things you know across the world so that's kept us busy but if someone looks at the work of banning cat you can go to our website we have guides we have case studies along with the investigations that we do so you can pick up you know an idea of how to do things there we have this Discord server you can join and that's been very active there's lots of people on there who are digging into all sorts of things um a few weeks ago for example uh a small group group of people on the Discord server started digging into um what was behind an oil spill off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago and using things like U kind of ship tracking websites um business records satellite data a whole range of sources and methodologies they had learned from banat they were able to start identifying who was responsible for that and when we see that happening on the surf we will talk to the people like that and start turning that into actually reporting that peers on the banat website and that can be a really great place to you know get engaged and actually be involved with investigations that do turn into Publications were you a journalist no I have I'm completely selftaught I um actually started doing this around the same time as the UK phone hacking Scandal so this is when tablet newspapers in UK um started being exposed for the various activities they were doing so I had a kind of very strong sense of what was right and wrong about journalism so for me it was about being really transparent about sources especially and how much I knew as well I started this with not a lot of knowledge um you know I wasn't an expert in arms and Munitions that's something I spent a long time learning about doing research speaking to experts and learning from them directly and in my work on Syria that really became a big part of what I was doing because I was kind of tracking weapons that were being smuggled into Syria um chemical weapons and stuff like that using you know YouTube videos public sources of information often shared by many of the people doing you know involved with this kind of thing and no one else was looking there and learning those skills was something that I you know anyone can really do with time and commitment because there is so much information out there it's you know I would encourage anyone who's interested in this stuff to really get involved and take a look at what we've done at ban cat and you know learn from us if you can because that's you know part of the reason I started Belling cat I love that because you know the in the in the old days it felt like you had to get like a certain degree or certain qualification to be able to get involved in this stuff but the world's opened up right yeah and you don't have to do a massive investigation on day one even something like geating a video you know figuring out where you know certain air strike was in a certain country that can be part of an investigation that can be part of a data set you know for example when we started our work on um Ukraine after the invasion in 2022 we started up looking at videos and photographs that were being geolocated by online communities and then turn that into a data set that's now available as a public map at ukraine. bat. that allows anyone to kind of look at that data and see where all these things were happening and we know that's been used by a range of um different organizations you know NOS involved with human rights and accountability and even Dem mining efforts so kind of there are times where you want to make that high quality information that although it might not turn into a big investigation it means that it's available for other people to use we never really see baling cat as the end of a process but you know part of a process that can Branch off in many different dire actions yes so I think a lot of people will be interested in tools so the ukraine. balen cat.com is is a tool and there's some other tools you guys have right perhaps you can just talk about some of the tools that are most useful and like um you know tools that you find like save you a lot of time or expose stuff there's a whole range of different things some stuff we've developed ourselves I mean often when people say what's the most important you know open source investigation tool I would say you know Google it's pretty useful you know it's you don't have to overthink it it sometimes but we also um often run these um hacker FS for people to develop tools that might have a very specific purpose but if you're trying to do something it will you know save you hours or if not days and weeks of work we've for example developed a tool that uses open street map data to allow you to search for um features you might see in a video or a photograph so it gives you all the possible locations on open street map where that could be so if you've got like a church and it's by uh traffic lights and there a I don't know tobacco shop next to it you can put those three things in and will find you all those locations on open street map so that will rapidly kind of you know help you find where you're looking for we have other platforms that we've had developed for us so we have there's a platform we call use called at loss which is a closed platform but that's where we organize our volunteers so that allows us to create um basically tasks that can uh people can either be assigned to or assign themselves to and that could be like okay this is a video where was it filmed and they'll decate it it can be then verified by one of our staff members and then go into data set so that's you know an example of kind of the tools we use but there's there's so many different tools that are available that's why collaboration is so important because it's very hard for one person to know what everything is but if you you're working with a team of people then you've got lots of interesting ideas and tools and methodologies being shared in that team Elliot perhaps you can give us advice if I want to become like you I want to become really good at ENT I'm really glad that you shared that you know you don't have a journalist background and you just learned a lot of the stuff yourself but you know where do I start how do how do I become like you first of all don't pick a topic because you think it's what everyone else is interested in pick a topic you're interested in and it doesn't have to be walls or chemical weapons attacks it can be what's happening at the end of your street or something really specific That's Just For You Second when I started there was no guides or case studies at all about this now there's a lot you can find them on the Bing cat website um there be a to write guides and case studies but um yeah the Bap website is a really good place to start because we have a specific section for people to learn from and finally um join the baning cat Discord server we have a really active Community they're looking at a whole range of different topics just observing the conversations and what people are using as tools to identify different parts of the investigations they're doing could be useful for you when you think oh maybe I can do that on the thing I'm interested in in as well yeah so those would be my advice question always comes up right so you there's communities in ENT I'm assuming uh people I've interviewed in the past had given me some communities but what are your favorites MJS like what's benefit benefited you perhaps the most in your journey or what would you recommend people go to is it like discords is it follow people on X you know give us give us some guidance where where should I go yeah so so for me it's it's again been pretty circuitous but the the places like X or Twitter um LinkedIn you know Blue Sky all these places have fairly robust ENT communities depending on what you want to do right if you're looking for um you know just some basic skill building you're looking just to get to know people engage you know obviously Twitter is is has kind of always been the ENT Hub yeah um if you're kind of looking for more of the professional side like you want to potentially engage people who who professionally work um in investigations or intelligence work and and they use ENT a lot LinkedIn is obviously kind of the place to be for some reason in the last two years LinkedIn has like become my favorite social media and I don't know why I think it's a sign that I'm getting old didn't that and I can't keep up with the young folks on their on their new social Medias so so so so there's like LinkedIn Twitter there's kind of the usual spaces you go just to network people you know when it comes to kind of you know Discord servers um you know osen for all is a really great um uh Discord uh chat that exists I guess a room and they've got a whole bunch of sort of different rooms and and it's it's like a an entire kind of ecosystem of ENT that ranges from you know Capture the Flag tournaments to to cyber security stuff to you know like like straight up open source intelligence how do you find people on Facebook kind of thing so ENT for all is a really great uh place to go obviously Recon Village um through Defcon uh they have a nice small little Community uh the Discord server has about 400 people on it so it's not like jam-pack with thousands but but you know the Recon Village folks are great because you know these are these are people who kind of exist in that kind of strange World between sort of the Defcon cyber threat intelligence hacking world and the the oan space um so you get kind of that Dual Purpose with them right you get that that kind of straight up classic ENT but you also get the the the the sort of cyber threat actor component that you can sort of utilize as well which is really being merged like in the oan world so Recon Villages is terrific you know big shout out to them apart from that you know if you want to start getting into stuff I mean Trace Labs is always looking for volunteers to help with investigations uh I think Belling cat is always you know looking for folks who who who can potentially you know throw data their way um there's there's um I think the national like like national uh Center for Child Protection I think they have a sort of a volunteer area that you can sign up for um and essentially you can Aid in investigations for for um like human trafficking and and child protection and you know unfortunately none of that's paid but it gets you into those worlds and it gets you to meet people who operate in those worlds and again you get to share sort of tips and tricks and and you kind of learn in that organic way not you know going through a book or going through a training course not to to say those things are bad those are terrific things and if you have the time and the resources to do them awesome um but for some people they just don't right they work a day job and this is just sort of a part-time thing you know doing it and and volunteering and kind of getting your feet wet um swimming in the pool you know you pick up those skills kind of through osmosis so let's talk about books and then I want to talk about jobs are there any books that you'd recommend totally I mean um Ray Baker's book uh is terrific um I'd also obviously recommend I've got the old one but you know every enter probably has one of these uh on their Shelf at some point um and it's funny you can tell seventh edition is when I kind of started getting into this world a little Ser I've got a new newer one I think ninth yeah obviously yeah you doing this for longer I'm not you I'm not David bombal I don't get to what's it called get free swag from people um there's a shot there um so so yeah I mean you know everyone's got that you know obviously Justin sites I can't you know promote his stuff enough um you know he's a cooworker obviously and a partner so obviously I'm going to shamelessly promote his work but you know he's in the process of of writing another book as well correct so so you know but if you're into you know python coding and that type of stuff that type of stuff and how it merges with osim I mean he's got books based upon that so you know there's so much out there man I mean the internet is full overwhelming yeah it is overwhelming and don't get overwhelmed just start you have to start slow right no one became an expert ENT expert um in in like a year right it takes decades to grow and develop and figure out works and what doesn't this was one I want to ask you about what got you the job you know when you said you applied for a job I mean being a school teacher going into ENT that's quite a jump but I mean you obviously did a bunch before that but what do you think open the doors yeah so I when I I started working for a company in Edmonton and um you know I I I was at this point a freelance journalist for a while I had some like I had an investigatory sort of journalistic podcast under my belt I had two documentaries I had a couple I had some stuff History Channel that i' work on I had a whole bunch of Articles so I sort of had the investigatory journalism kind of yeah I had I had receipts um and and the job itself was actually to kind of keep going down that road they wanted to create content podcast and video content that took the ENT work they were doing and then essentially would would break it into almost a story that you could you could watch it was called the breakdown and so we created a bunch of episodes and it was literally taking you know a few points on a heat map of you know people are reporting you know a wildfire or people are reporting a shooting or people are reporting uh an explosion so we would then take that and we would kind of zoom in on it and then like ENT it out to see what actually happened that day and and how how everything was moving who was calling who you know we were listening to 911 calls and just kind of going through all of this and and turning it into a narrative that shows how you can utilize uh live kind of Crisis monitoring to to develop really robust uh threat like assessment reports um ENT reports intelligence reports whatever and we just made it shiny and cool through a video and a podcast but it was it was essentially taking the the journalism work and instead of having at the end to create an article or or or a podcast we were creating sort of these cool little videos uh and and little audio episodes that would sort of tie this all together um for for a viewer so that's what landed me that job uh I had already had the receipts I I started doing that and then you know you start doing a lot of ENT and people watch those videos and then they get interested in those videos and suddenly people start calling you being like hey I saw this you know would you ever think of this and all of a sudden you start talking to them and they're giving you advice or you're you're trading advice or you're you're giving them advice and then you're building your network which then led me to my job with the the company out of Ottawa and Justin sites and and and sort of doing intelligence work for for for the Canadian government as well as other clients so yeah it's just again the the the beauty of networking yeah I always I always hear the same thing right put your work out there yeah network with P yeah and you know don't we we discuss it here as well part time don't don't jump unless you're ready there's no you don't have to burn the ships and then go straight into this you can start slow yeah I agreed MJ you got to tell us a story surely you must have come across some mad like outlandish or really interesting story and either recently or perhaps in the past can you share something yeah totally um I've got a lot of stories and doing the line of work um like I've I have literally for a podcast uh traveled across the United States like looking for weird stuff um so so um and and because you know I never expected to find it to be honest like I I'm very much a skeptic I do not believe that there's aliens coming to Earth I don't I don't believe in any of that stuff I'm I'm very much kind of a Hardline skeptic but I I respect people's viewpoints and their beliefs so I think that's why generally people are really willing to talk to me because I'm going to hear you out and I'm I'm not going to be insulting um I will I believe you believe but I think kind of the more ente story so let's let's we'll get into kind of the the really ENT stuff um I was doing some work for vice and um there is a place in Utah called Skinwalker Ranch I'm not sure if you've heard of this place okay yeah so anyway it is allegedly one of the most sort of paranormal hot spots on the planet it has a show on History Channel of course because everything has a show on History Channel nowadays and um no offense History Channel I do work for them on occasion but he you know they they have a show on History Channel but prior to all that um prior to the show you know there was word out there that um essentially the the ranch was purchased by an unknown individual so so someone in Utah bought this Ranch from from another gentleman who we knew um but was remaining completely an anonymous basically I'm not going to tell you and that's it was bought by a shell corporation that was owned by another Corporation and essentially kind of the trail went cold and it was you know registered to a lawyer's office and not long story short I I decided like you know I wonder if I can figure out who the owner is um and vice was very much interested in being like listen if you can figure out who the owner is that would be a great story so so the ENT happened when an individual who who sort of knew the owner and was making a documentary with them and all this and the owner was still maintaining anonymity this this sort of filmmaker documentarian uh took a selfie in at one point and posted on Instagram of a private Jet and part of the selfie just past his head so like kind of like in this area you could see a couple tail numbers you couldn't see the whole thing because his head was covering most of it but you could see a few tail numbers on the back of this Jet and in the post he wrote you know with the owner of Skinwalker Ranch going to going to Utah right now or something like that so so you know you can insinuate okay we have a A Tail of an aircraft we have an individual who knows the owner of of this haunted Ranch and he's saying he's going on a playing with him to to go do it so so maybe I can figure this out so I start essentially going through tail numbers of aircraft based upon like the shape of the tail based upon like the the way the windows are set essentially I'm able to track down the type of of private jet this is so then you start looking through registrations of this jet in Utah and it led me to one place and that tail number at least the last I think two digits I had corresponded with one of the Jets that was owned by this this company and and I was like maybe so I started doing research into the owner of this this sort of firm that owned this private jet and it led me to uh the last name uh Fugal which in Utah is is very well known the Fugal are sort of wealthy family and and um Brandon Fugal was the brother of the owner of this airplane or the owner of the company that owned this airplane and Brandon Fugal he's a commercial real estate guy in Utah and and when I mean he's big he's hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth if not like nearing a billion dollars in wealth like big like Fugal is is quite wealthy um so so I was able to put together that Brandon Fugal was probably the owner of Skinwalker Ranch but I couldn't prove it and then a trailer to this documentary comes out where Brandon Fugal from sort of chest down so you can't see any any of his head or anything is being interviewed by the the filmmaker his voice is all like kind of of crispy and dark like they they blur it out so you can't you can't recognize the guy but the shirt he's wearing and the watch on his wrist is a very particular type of watch and so I was like oh man that watch ain't cheap so I zoomed in I started kind of doing some some examination of this watch and I was able to determine it's a very sort of particular brand quite expensive and so I was like you know I wonder because this all tracks right he's a rich dude commercial real estate like this all makes sense so then I start watching videos on YouTube of Brandon fuel giving lectures at like real estate conferences and there's one point where the cameraman is like there and he's on like Brandon's fugles on the stage and the cameraman Zooms in really close on the guy and fugle like picks up a water glass or a water bottle whatever it was I can't remember and he takes a sip and it's zoomed in right on this Sip and this watch and it's the exact same watch like no word of a lie it was the watch and I knew it so I did what any good journalist does is I send an email to Brandon Fugal and I was like hey I'm a journalist with Vice I'm very confident that you own Skinwalker Ranch I'm writing an article about the ranch do you want to comment well he immediately turns around and says like well hold on a second buddy like first of all you caught me second of all let's have a discussion and in exchange for not just outing him outright I was able to go to the ranch get an exclusive uh visit the place talk to his folks talk to his staff get all that and then uh I was able to release his identity in a follow-up article a few months later um so essentially I got two articles for the price of one which is always worth it when you're a journalist um but that's how I ented out that Brandon Fugal owned Skinwalker Ranch via a tail number um and a watch it's amazing yeah I love stories like that yeah it was I can't believe I did it um like I mean it was one of those moments of like and and it's a dumb luck moment of if I hadn't watched that YouTube video I I would have still probably not figured you know what I mean like the YouTube video was the cliner for me yeah so this is for everyone watching a good reason to watch YouTube videos right get paid to watch yeah you can end it out yeah um anyway yeah so it led to a lot of I listen fugal's Brandon fugle he was nothing but a gem really nice guy you know we we went to Skinwalker wrench a couple times actually for for various projects I did a podcast there as well so um you know he's a really nice guy do I think Skinwalker Ranch is haunted by some sort of paranormal deity no I don't I think it's just a ranch but it's still cool it's still a fun place to go um I've had a few weird moments there um that I can tell in another episode of this podcast if you ever invite me back um but um but I won't get into it now because we're going to run out of time something I've learned in life and I think you've mentioned it many times right you can work by yourself in isolation but you're not going to go as far as with a team or a community has that been your experience it sounds like it in the in in getting into oen yeah listen one thing I'll say is is you know when you have other people who you can work with when you have other people who you can run ideas by or throw ideas by having those extra ra sets of eyes would really help in not just putting stuff into perspective but also viewing the world in in a different way that maybe you don't view the world and suddenly it opens up new corridors of possible exploration or investigation so so you know often times you know like when I worked for example with the company Ottawa you know a lot of the folks that I work with came out of the military or the law or law enforcement sector and they view the world in a very specific way um and then I was and and a couple of us were you know from journalism or or or from cyber your other kind of lines of work or previous experience and we view the world in a very different way than than like a police officer does so so when you put us all in a room together even though you know we're all kind of chasing the same Target or we're chasing the same information we're going to kind of think about that Target or that information in really different ways and I think that the the the benefit of having a team um just like we do at permanent record which is a whole variety of people from different lines of work we have lawyers we've got hackers we have like content people we've got marketing you know we've got ex School teachers um we all like bring different ideas to the table and if you can find that kind of team right if you can find that small circle of friends in the Osan space that you can bounce ideas off of that you can say you know I'm stuck here what do you think they're going to be able to provide you sort of these different outlooks that you're going to say like oh my God how did I not see this like you're going to hit your you're going be like oh really yeah oh I'm so stupid like you know you you're going to have that moment of oh this is Child's Play all of a sudden right and and and not only that those that little group of people will have natural kind of tendrils that connect to other people in the osen community who you can also rely on for help I can't tell you how many times I have been in situations where it's like I don't know the answer MJ sorry but this guy might or this woman might you should reach out to her and they will then say hey this is my buddy MJ he's doing this casew work can you help him with this and all of a sudden it leads to a brand new connection of an individual you had didn't even know existed but they they they can Aid you so much in your research or your work and and they become like a valuable Ally um and this has happened this this has happened like hundreds of times throughout my career so so you know you can't tools skills talents you know like like the the ability to learn this stuff that just comes right you will learn you will develop skills you will develop all those things it's the that team of people that that can make or break you that's that team of team team of people who will will push you forward and and who will allow you to see sort of the world around you in a different way and give you different perspectives that all of a sudden the investigation doesn't seem so daunting anymore they they're able to provide you various lenses and the more lenses you have the more roads you can walk down I guess and then fundamentally you you'll you'll complete your task or your job or whatever it is more efficiently you it'll be better it'll be higher quality and you won't miss so many things um in in sort of the the loopholes of your investigation so that's my my my pitch here um team is is is what makes all the difference MJ anything you want to share before you we wrap up I think we you like you can tell us perhaps a bit about where you where you work like your your handles on on social media can you share a bit about like what you're doing these days and then we can wrap it up yeah there's there's definitely a few places you can find me um if you're into the more geeky sciencey Tech side of stuff and you just want to take a break from ENT uh you can find my work and my writing right now at uh the debrief dorg it's a Science and Tech publication um for all the dreamers and the weirdos out there who love to talk about space travel or how they're going to grow food on mars or you know how the Pentagon is trying to build a laser weapon I mean you know it's all that cool stuff that that that you read about in the news that you don't believe because it feels like science fiction but it isn't um so the debrief org big shout out there um we do a lot of fun work occasionally ENT articles but but this is more for the the Nerds out there um for the more ENT stuff if you want to really uh dive in with us you can find our work at permanent record which is permanent reccord research.com uh you can also find our blog at bullshi hunting.com um and we have uh some cool writing happening there a few little free ENT lessons some great reports that we're covering on some wrongful convictions and some interesting storytelling there obviously you know permanent record um we we are uh a brand new new firm uh but but we we got a lot of heart and uh we're really punching through uh way above our weight with some of our clients so if you if you're if you're looking for some uh some work let us know uh permanent record is always kind of looking for for folks uh as well as um contractors as as well as potentially clients if you're interested and you need some work done but yeah that's kind of where you can find me I'm on Twitter MJ MJ benas I'm on LinkedIn probably MJ Bas as well you can just Google me you can watch me on TV I don't know whatever you want but for everyone watching I've put links below to everyone who was on this video lots of amazing people MJ really want to thank you for you know arranging a lot of this video and sorting it out for me making my life a lot easier it's amazing how just like you said you meet one person then you meet another person and every PE person that you meet along the way you know you just learn from and so many amazing people out there thanks so much for sharing oh thank you so much it has been an honor to be here I truly appreciate it you've shared and we we limited on time you've shared quite a bit but are places that people can follow you I mentioned Tik Tok I love your Tik Tok videos where are good places where people can follow you so I'm in a lot of places online but a couple of places so to do with uh forensic ENT the app um all current posts and updates will be on Forensic ent.com however I'm very active on LinkedIn I'm active on Twitter I'm active on Tik Tok YouTube you'll find me in a lot of different spaces and is it okay if people reach out to you so let's say there's someone who's interested can can they reach out to you um um perhaps send you a DM or something or what's the best way to you know ask questions if someone's interested in this field uh if anyone is interested please reach out I'm always happy to help uh I do the best I can to keep up with my emails um but if you email me directly that's usually the best way to get in touch with me but even if you DM me on LinkedIn I will probably see that and hopefully I can eventually get to your message um but I'm happy to help if people have specific questions um all years R I really want to thank you for sharing you know it's great when I able when I'm able to talk to people with 17 years of experience and when you distill it and show us your your tips and tricks and I'll just say this I watched one of your Tik toks where you was looking at Skype and you would and you made me immediately go and check my Skype details to make sure that I wasn't oversharing so you know there's so much cool stuff that you're sharing so thanks so much for doing that thanks so much I I appreciate it and thank you so much for having me on your show and it's great to meet you likewise last thing can people reach out to you online sure you can find me on Twitter at uh wondersmith Ray I'm on LinkedIn you can go to my website um rayb baker. net and send me a message I usually respond so Ray thanks so much for sharing really appreciate you writing this book thanks so much for coming on this call and also sharing the cool story thanks for having me Elliot I really want to thank you for sharing and being an inspiration for so many people I'm so glad that you started doing this all those years ago go and you didn't you know wait like thinking you have to become a journalist or do something else but you just went and did it so thanks so much for sharing that's great thanks for having me on [Music]