Five Guidelines For A Good Social Networking Investigating
Business and private individuals can benefit from social media to gather information. Social media investigation can be used to skip the trace, check references, conduct civil legal investigations, and even vetting.
Five Tips for Efficacious Social Media Investigation
1. Google and Bing are your best friends.
Never underestimate the power and potential of your favorite search engine. A lot of information about almost everyone is on the internet, and many do not realize. Searching for the name of your subject might uncover surprising results.
Another search engine option is reverse image searches. An image search can reveal social profiles on media and online dating profiles as well as employers and personal blogs. There are many other resources which an image search can discover. You should use critical thinking to evaluate the results. There are scammers and phishers who take photos and create fake profiles.
2. Check Your Subject's Information Out On Social Media
Social media offers hints to a subject's location or lifestyle as well as preferences. According to Pew Research, 48% of users on social media find privacy settings confusing or difficult to understand. Many users are hesitant to share their personal details available to the general public. Investigators will first visit a public profile on social media.
Even if a subject is protected by privacy settings, public information can still be published through major platforms like Facebook as well as Instagram. Facebook's graph search could uncover amazing treasures, since many users let others view photos they've tagged in. Insurance investigators, divorce attorneys, potential employers, and debt collectors have discovered important information and evidence of a subject's lifestyle and character simply through casual, candid images uploaded to Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.
Investigators are also smart enough to look at accounts that aren't quite so personal, like Pinterest. These channels are used to communicate the location and interests of users although they are not as likely as others to divulge personal information.
3. Check out Social Media Investigations of your subject's friends
Friends of friends usually have access to private information. Also, sometimes people with public profiles can comment on photographs, location check-ins or status updates from friends who have private profiles.
A recent study found that over 50% of all social networking users will accept friend requests from strangers. Be aware that many social networks forbid false profiles.
4. Keep Screenshots of Screenshots To Protect The Evidence
Social media posts can be removed at any time, and incriminating or embarrassing content can be removed. Investigators who are smart keep a log of these posts and include the screenshot. Keep track of any important information about any posts that you find and make sure to archive it.
5. Try Social Listening Tools
Social listening tools can be used by businesses to help with marketing and customer service. Many of these social listening tools also have application for investigating. It is a lot of time to continuously search Google, Bing, and each social network for new information on your topic. However, you can automate a portion of this process using tools for social listening.