Five Strategies For An Effective Social Media Investigating

Social media can be an information mine for both individuals and companies. Social media investigation can be used to avoid trace, verify references, conduct civil legal investigations, and even vetting.

Five Tips to Ensure Effective Social Media Investigation

1. Google and Bing are your best friends.

Never underestimate the power and potential of your favourite search engine. Most people don't realize how much information is available about almost everyone via the internet. Simply searching your subjects name may yield unexpected results.

Reverse image search is an additional efficient method for searching engines. Sometimes, a search for images will reveal social media profiles, online dating accounts as well as personal blogs, employers, and a wealth of other information sources. Use critical thinking when evaluating the results, as there are scammers, phishers and catfishers steal photos of people for use in creating fake profiles.

2. Find Your Subject On Social Media

Social media provides clues about the subject's location or lifestyle as well as preferences. According to Social Media Investigations , 48% of users on social media have reported finding privacy settings confusing or difficult to understand. Many users leave their personal details available to the general public. A social media profile that is public is one of the first visits by any investigation.

Even when the subject uses privacy settings, there might still be publicly posted information on major channels like Facebook as well as Instagram. Facebook's graph search could uncover interesting gems, because lots of people allow the public to see photos they have added tags to. Insurance investigators, divorce attorneys, potential employers, and debt collectors have all discovered significant information and evidence about the character and lifestyle of a person just by looking at candid, casual photos posted on Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.

Savvy investigators also look at more private social media profiles such as Pinterest. While users are less likely to share personal, private information, these platforms could indicate interests and locations.

3. Look at Your Subject's Friends' accounts

A lot of people let friends of their friends to view even private details. Sometimes, people who have public profiles might comment on photographs, location check-ins or status updates from friends who have private profiles.

A recent study found that nearly 50% of all social networking users are willing to accept friend requests from strangers. Many social networks prohibit the creation of false profiles.

4. Take Screenshots To Preserve The Evidence

Because social media posts are infrequent, you can take down offensive or incriminating posts. Investigators who are smart keep a log of these posts including the screenshot. Keep track of any crucial information about any posts that you find and make sure to save it.

5. Utilize tools to listen to others

Social listening tools aid businesses with marketing and customer service purposes. Many of these social listening tools also perform investigative functions. It's a huge time commitment to constantly search Google, Bing, and every social network for any new updates on your subject. However, you can automate some of this using social listening tools.