Social media profiling
Social media profiling, or social profiling, refers to the process of building a non-public profile of an individual using publicly available information from one or more social media platforms. This can include, but is not limited to, information about:
- Who a person is (their name, address, contact information, date of birth, work and education history, etc.)
- Who a person knows (their friends, family members, neighbors, coworkers, etc.)
- A person’s routine (their work or class schedule, when they attend certain events or activities)
- A person’s interests (favorite movies, music, books, etc.)
- A person’s appearance (through photos and videos)
These profiles can then be used for a variety of purposes, including both fraud and fraud prevention.
Frequently asked questions
How can social media profiling be used to fight fraud?
Publicly available information, like the information a user shares on social media, can be valuable in the fight against fraud. A business can, for example, use a social media lookup to help verify certain pieces of information about a person’s identity, or to enrich their Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes. Likewise, this process can help uncover adverse media, which might be useful in assessing an individual’s fraud risk.
How do criminals use social media profiling for fraud?
The information a person shares on social media isn’t just valuable for preventing fraud; it can also be valuable to the perpetrators, too. Through social media profiling, a criminal can, for example, find and collect information that allows them to:
- Steal a person’s identity
- Engage in account takeover (ATO) attacks
- Impersonate a person to engage in phishing or extortion
- Build a synthetic ID