Social media can be an information mine for both individuals and companies. Social media investigation can be used to skip the trace, check references, conduct civil legal investigation, and also vetting.
Five Tips to Ensure Effective Social Media Investigation
1. Google and Bing Are Your Friends
Never undervalue the power of your preferred search engine. A lot of information about almost everyone is online, something that many do not know about. Simply searching your subjects name may yield unexpected results.
Reverse image search is another simple method to search engines. Image searches can uncover social profiles on media and online dating profiles as well as personal blogs and employers. There are many other resources that an image search may reveal. Use Social Media Investigation Service when evaluating the results, as some phishers, scammers, and catfishers smuggle photos of individuals for use in creating fake profiles.
2. Find Your Subject on Social Media
Social media provides clues about a subject's location, lifestyle, and interests. According to Pew Research, 48% of social media users report finding each channels privacy settings confusing or difficult to understand. Many users leave their personal details available to the public. Investigators first look at an account on social media.
Even if the user has privacy settings, there might still be public information posted on the major social media platforms like Facebook as well as Instagram. Facebook's graph search may reveal amazing treasures, since many users let others view photos they've tagged in. Through casual photos posted to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Instagram, insurance investigators, debt collectors, and potential employers have found useful evidence and data about the character of a subject and their way of life.
Investigative experts are also looking at less personal social media accounts, such as Pinterest. Although users aren't as likely to post telling, private information, these platforms may indicate their location and interest.
3. Check out the Friends of Your Subject' Accounts
Many people allow friends of their friends to see even private details. Also, sometimes friends with public profiles may make comments on photos, location check-ins or status updates posted by friends who have private profiles.
Recent research has revealed that nearly 50% of all social media users are willing to accept friend requests from strangers. A majority of social networks ban the creation of false profiles.
4. Keep Screenshots of Screenshots To Protect The Evidence
Since social media content is ephemeral, your subject may delete offensive or incriminating content. Investigators who are smart keep a log of these posts, including a screenshot. Keep track of any crucial information regarding any posts you discover and be sure to archive it.
5. Use tools to listen to others
Social listening tools assist companies in the marketing and customer service aspects. Certain of these social listening tools come with application for investigating. It is a lot of time to continuously search Google, Bing, and each social network for new news on your subject. But, you can automate a portion of this process using tools for social listening.