Social media have grown very rapidly, and now hold a vast amount of information for digital investigations, often in the public domain, for more information visit www.cclgroupltd.com

1. Digital Investigations: 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 is
regular users of Face book. 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 Face book; this falls to 74% for 21-24 year olds. Although,
the growth in the use of social media appears to be leveling off, it is nonetheless still
growing year on year. What is intriguing however is that the fastest growing demographic is
the 55-64 year olds, perhaps suggesting a broadening of appealing?
Police forces, intelligence agencies, investigators and private detectives have for some time
been using social media for intelligence in digital investigations. The first case of this 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 on holiday himself. It did not
take much effort to locate his page on Face book 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 Face book
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 you online, however we still see about 25% of social media
users making 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.
I am sure most people are familiar with the high-profile news stories about people who
have found themselves in hot water due to their social media activities. Examples such as
Paul Chambers who in 2010 was convicted for sending what he thought would be a
humorous threat to Robin Hood Airport.
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, http://www.cclgroupltd.com/e-
disclosure/e-disclosure/.
Author is a digital forensics 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.