Digital Investigation Applications for Social Media Investigation Tools

It will come as no surprise to anyone that social media plays a central role in the world we live in today. For something that ten years ago was virtually unheard of, social media has grown almost exponentially, to the point that almost two thirds of the UK population are regular users of Facebook. This is, as you would expect, not evenly distributed across all age ranges. Unsurprisingly, there are proportionally more 16-20 year old users, with 95% reporting to be regularly using Facebook, and 74% of 21-24 year olds. Although the growth in use of social media appears to be levelling off, it is nonetheless still growing year on year. What is intriguing is that the fastest growing demographic is the 55-64 year olds, perhaps suggesting a broadening of appeal.

Police forces, intelligence agencies, investigators and private detectives have for some time been using social media for intelligence in computer investigations. The first case of this that I came across was back in 2007; a friend of mine was working in HR for a travel agency and was tasked with proving employee misconduct. There were suspicions that this employee who was on long term sick, was perfectly able to work and, in fact, was on holiday himself. It did not take much effort to locate his page on Facebook and discover a trove of holiday photos (one even showed him on a jet-ski). This was back in 2007 when the number of global Facebook users was a fraction of what it is today.

The more social media integrates into our lives, the more information (intentionally or unintentionally) we publish online about ourselves. Users are increasingly using mobile devices to access these platforms and many users are also uploading their location. Over the last five years there has been increasing public awareness of the risks of publishing information about yourself online, however we still see that about 25% of social media users make no attempt to apply privacy settings to their profile. The 75% that do, quite often get it wrong. In addition, there are those platforms where the whole point is to publish to everyone. I have lost count of the number of cases where a user has posted something on Twitter that has had far-reaching consequences.

For more information on social media investigations, computer investigations, digital forensics, or any of CCL’s products and services, call us on 01789 261200, email info@cclgroupltd.com or visit www.cclgroupltd.com.

Author:

Nathan is a digital investigation specialist at CCL Group - the UK’s leading supplier of electronic disclosure and digital forensics consultancy, including: computer forensics, mobile phone forensics and digital investigation services, for more information visit www.cclgroupltd.com

Nathan is an e-disclosure specialist at Ccl Group, including: computer forensics, mobile phone forensics and digital investigation services.