Social Networking and Investigations: A Love Story

I don't care what kind of an investigator you are; law enforcement, fraud, matrimonial, etc. - social networking is your new best friend.  Whether it be MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, or any of the hundreds of other niche sites out there catering to a specific segment of the population, collectively, these profiles are a goldmine of information.
Oh, the stories I could tell about how social media has worked to our benefit when conducting investigations.  There was the time that we found information that a claimant was working because he was foolish enough to list his new job under the Occupation section on his Myspace profile, or the claimant that we found working because in the Comments section, one of her "friends" asked to switch shifts with her.  Then there was the guy we were following on Twitter who liked to go to bars on the weekends and tell all of his friends exactly where he was going to be.  I was even getting his tweets sent to my phone as text messages and notifying the investigator to be where the claimant was planning on partying that evening.
All of that is incredible, and sadly, doesn't fall into your lap like it used to anymore as an investigator.  Now, more than likely a subject's Myspace or Facebook profiles will be private and restricted to being viewed by only those in their network.  If the person is particularly savvy, they will even protect their tweets on Twitter (if you are lucky enough that they even have a Twitter account).  This, of course, is where the investigator's research and social engineering skills come into play.  You have to get whatever valuable information you can from these sites and parlay it into some actual results somewhere along the line. Sometimes, its just a matter of giving you a little advantage by getting a picture of the person you are looking for, other times its a hint that they leave in their status updates.  Every Once in a while, you can even weasel your way into their network and see everything.
Either way, you have to be familiar with the social networking world and internet research in order to reach out and grab these little nuggets of information.  For example, how do you find a person on a social networking site?  Which one might they be on?  Is there a difference between Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, BeBo, LinkedIn, and Twitter?  If so, what are the differences?  I'm not going to reveal everything I know about these sites all in one blog post, but suffice it to say they are all different, and different approaches to gathering information are required for each.  In addition to that, the short list above is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social networking sites, and new ones are popping up every day to serve new demographics.
In my opinion, knowing how to mine these sites for information about your subject has become an essential tool to get a surveillance investigation off on the right track.  Sure, sometimes you don't find any info about your target on the internet, but when you hit paydirt, it can make all the difference. Most of the time, you wind up somewhere in between, but more information is always better than none.
If you are currently employing the services of an investigator who you have never seen mention the results of any social networking research in a report, ditch 'em - fast.  As time goes on, more people will be using these sites, and more information in general will be floating around on the internet; if your investigator doesn't understand how to perform a Google search properly, or doesn't keep up to date on which networks a subject might be likely to use,  you're passing up information that could possibly make your whole case.
AIS - our company, routinely includes social networking research as a FREE part of the pre-surveillance check we do when opening a case, and it has served us well many times.

I would like to add, as a small caveat, that no amount of research can replace the work of a good, heads-up surveillance investigator, because that's what gets you the video evidence that you need.  However, some of us have both computer savvy and surveillance skills, and that makes all the difference.

Just FYI, the following link goes to a list of the top 10 social networking sites (by membership) in 2010 so far:
http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/

Happy hunting.