Doxpop - Tools for Attorneys and Public Information Researchers: August 2014

Monday, August 11, 2014

Morgan County moves to Odyssey. Doxpop users (mostly!) unaffected.

Recently the Courts in Morgan County moved to the Odyssey system. For us, the complete migration takes quite a bit of effort & expense, and won't be finished until Sept 8th. However, we work hard to make sure you don't lose access to any information during that time.

This move does not significantly affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access from JTAC to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system. Our customers' access to Morgan court information will not be interrupted during the transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition, because there will be a short period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:
  • If you use the personal calendar feature, you will see two colors for Morgan County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
  • When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
  • When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
  • If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these twice each day, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and Sept 8th. After the 8th, we'll be back to normal.
Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that JTAC add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that JTAC not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell JTAC differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Did the Russian cyber gang get my Doxpop password?

You may have seen recent news articles about hackers in Russia that have compromised over 400,000 websites to obtain as many as 4.5 billion usernames and passwords for as many as 1.2 billion distinct users.

We do not have reason to believe that the Doxpop website was compromised because Doxpop designs and regularly tests its software to avoid the particular vulnerability (known as "SQL injection") exploited by the group.

However, if you use the same password for multiple websites, we recommend that you change your Doxpop password because it may have been compromised at a less secure web site. We also recommend that you not use the same password on multiple websites. You can change your Doxpop password by clicking on the "my doxpop" tab and selecting "Change Password" near the bottom of the side menu.

Doxpop is a careful steward of the information entrusted to us by our users. We are grateful for that trust and will keep you informed of any further developments.

Thank you for using Doxpop!

Ray Ontko, President