4.5 Open Sources Agents

These Internet agents provide search services over the Web. There are also server-specific agents that provide services, such as security, at the server level. There are Internet agents that can serve as information-filtering agents, so that, based on the security level of users, only certain information is passed to them. There are also notification and special services agents and even mobile agents for executing specific tasks, like special alerts to wireless devices. Internet agents are computer programs that reside on servers performing specific data detection, retrieval, and delivery tasks to designated users based on preset parameters, behaving very much like intelligent robots. In this context, intelligent agents can play an integral role in the overall process of investigative data mining.

These Web robots operate using different Boolean or vector-space strategies when following links and retrieving documents, based on different prioritized methods and schemes. In fact, search agents are the most widely used Web services. Using keyword query forms, they are easy to use and provide the user an instant response and a hierarchical list of sources of information. Their indexing provides users a universe of information in an instant. In addition, some metasearch engines incorporate the knowledge of where to look for information depending on the attributes of the data, such as searching for individuals, phone numbers, physical and e-mail addresses, technical reports, public record fillings, and foreign news stories in their native language.