Some attorneys have argued that scouring social networking sites in search of a reason not to hire someone, or evidence of insurance fraud, is an invasion of privacy. But insurance companies and their attorneys argue that internet searches for public social networking profiles are similar to the informal video surveillance investigations of property-casualty claimants that are common in the industry.

1. By Michael Petrie
Going Beyond Google 2.0:
Using the internet to investigate your Work
Comp, Auto and P&C claims …
Michael Petrie, WCCC; Founder of “V.I.A.” and “DIGG-iT”; Director of Web
Research and Development, Litigation Solutions, LLC

2. Social Networks
The term “social network” was coined in the
mid 1950s by sociologist J.A. Barnes
Facilitates and promotes interactions between
people with similar interests and/or
professional interests
Depends on users being able to find and “link”
to each other
This is done by creating “profiles” and posting
text, images, videos and other information

3. Social Network Technologies
• Social network websites
• E-Commerce Sites
(Craigslist/Ebay)
• Blogging
• Microblogging - Twitter
• Location Based Social
Networking Sites
• Photo/Video Sharing

4. Quick history of
Social Networks
• Started in the late 70’s and ran through the
early 90’s
• BBS system, AOL, Compuserve
• Six Degrees - 1997
• Friendster – 2002 (circle of friends)
• LinkedIn -2003
• Facebook – 2004
• Twitter - 2006

5. According to EbizMBA the Top 4 Social
Networking Sites estimated monthly
visitors…
Unique visitors are determined by the number of unique IP addresses on incoming
requests that a site receives, but this can never be 100% accurate. Depending on
configuration issues and type of ISP service, in some cases, one IP address can
represent many users;
750,000,000 Monthly Visitors
250,000,000 Monthly Visitors
110,000,000 Monthly Visitors
70,500,000 Monthly Visitors

6. 1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Linkedin
4. MySpace
5. Google +
6. Deviant Art
7. LiveJOURNAL
8. Tagged
9. Orkut
10. Café Mom
Top 10 Most Popular
Social Networking Sites
(February 2012)

7. 1. Facebook 11. Bebo
2. Twitter 12. Mylife
3. Myspace 13. Friendster
4. LinkedIn 14. MyHeritage
5. Ning 15. Multiply
6. Tagged 16. orkut
7. Classmates 17. badoo
8. hi5 18. gaia oline
9. myYearbook 19. blackPlanet
10. Meetup 20. SkyRock
Most popular social networks
by hits (US) March 2012

8. 1. Photobucket
2. SlickPic
3. Flickr
4. Webshots
5. Dotphoto
6. Fotfi
7. Smug Mug
8. Picturetrail
9. 23 plus
10. Kodak
Easyshare
Top 10 Photo Sharing Web
Sites

9. Demographics
1. More than 843 million monthly users.
2. 483 million daily users.
3. 5,590 users per second!!! 700 billion minutes a month
4. The average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes.
5. 9,660,000,000 minutes used per day!!!
6. Facebook.com’s audience skews slightly more female t
than the online population as a whole: 43% male: 57%
female.
7. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is
connected to 90 pieces of content( pages, events and
groups)
8. 50% of users log on each day
9. There are now about 2.5 billion photo uploads to
facebook each month
10. MEDIAN USER’S AGE IS 33 YEARS OLD, UP FROM 26 YEARS
OLD IN MAY 2008
11. FASTEST GROWTH IS IN THE 35+ YEARS OLD DEMOGRAPHIC

10. • A fully filled-out Facebook profile can
contain over 40 pieces of recognizable
personal information, including
(name, address, date of birth, photos of
subjects, current and prior employment
history, activities and interests, home and
cell phone numbers, other email
addresses, friends and family, other social
networking sites, education
history, personal likes and dislikes, as
well as other related information.

11. Demographics
• Twitter has more than 1Billion tweets per
month averaging 40 Million tweets per day.
That is an average of 463 tweets per second
EVERYDAY! (5556 Tweets)
• 43% of Twitter’s users range in age from 18-
34; 27% range in age from 35-44
• Nearly 180 million unique visitors each day
• The site's growth is beyond exponential:
1400% increase in Tweets in 2009
• Twitter is on pace to process 10 billion
tweets this year
• The library of congress has stored every
single Tweet since 2006.

12. Demographic
s
• 260 million profiles, with more than
130 million active monthly users
• Majority of profiles are public
• By default, all profiles of members
under the age of 16 are set to private
• Median age of MS users is 26

13. Demographics
• Professional networking site formed
on May 5, 2003
• Over 65 million members globally
from over 150 industries, including
executives from almost every
Fortune 500 company
• 42,000 new members join every day
• LinkedIn members average age is 39-41

14. Top 10 online dating sites

15. Location Based Social Networking
sites
Does your case involve placing a party in a
geographical location? Their cell phone may have
the evidence you are looking for!

16. Foursquare
Launched in 2009 with limited availability in
only 100 worldwide metro areas. In January
2010, Foursquare changed its location model
to allow check-ins from any location
worldwide. As of March 2010, the service had
500,000 users; August 2010, nearly 3 million
users; March 2011, over 8 million users.
Foursquare explained:
http://foursquare.com/#demoVideo

17. Foursquare examples

18. Additional location based
social networks

19. Text
Images
Metadata

20. What you need to get started…
• High speed internet connection
• Access to every website
• Good working browser (Firefox, Chrome or IE)
• Google Alerts
• Video capture & converter software
• RSS Reader (i.e., Google Reader)
• Alternate email addresses
• Social network profile(s)
• Browser/Internet virus protection
• Search engine bookmarks
• Screen shot /capture software
• Time

21. What were finding…
• Multiple social • Online dating info
network groups • Financial
• Roommates, live-in information, such as
partners, and friends bankruptcies
• Marriage records Criminal records
• Birth records • Court records (UCC
• Divorce records filings, suits, judgmen
• Assets (multiple ts, liens)
property • Sex offender
ownership, planes, an records
imals, watercraft, au • Child abuse records
tomobiles • Personal references
• Death records • E-commerce sites
• Address (present and • Photos
former) • Email addresses
• Places of work • Political affiliations
• Drug associations • Planned vacations
• Videos

22. Google quick reference
http://www.googleguide.com/

23. Comprehensive Search
engines
• Search engines are algorithmic information
retrieval systems that allow searching of
massive web-based databases.

24. Specific search sites
• www.archive.org – digital library of older sites;
AKA – the wayback machine
• www.news.google.com/archivesearch
• www.thepaperboy.com
• www.wunderground.com – weather history
• www.whois.com – domain identifier
• www.godaddy.com – domain identifier
• www.scroogle.com - DOA
• www.hidemyass.com *
• proxify - Proxify is a web-based anonymous proxy
service which allows ... - proxify.com
• Online Anonymous Proxy - Online anonymous proxy
server. Online proxy ... - zend2.com *
• Proxy 4 Free - Proxy 4 Free is a free proxy list and
proxy checker
• http://studentclearinghouse.com
• http://bit.ly/ - URL shortner
• www.bump.com – CA startup

25. Specific search sites
• www.criminalsearches.com
• www.blackbookinfo.com
• www.publicrecordsources.com
• www.verifyprolicense.com
• www.courts.phila.gov/

26. Craigslist help…? Try
www.searchtempest.com
Also try crazedlist.org;
allofcraigslist.com

27. • Ebay help…?
Found a seller that’s under investigation, now
what?

28. Metadata
• Metadata -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata
• is more data about data.

29. • Monthlyof locational privacy
Loss transit swipe-cards
• Electronic tolling devices
(FastTrak, EZpass, congestion pricing)
• Services telling you when your friends are
nearby
• Searches on your PDA for services and
businesses near your current location
• Free Wi-Fi with ads for businesses near the
network access point you're using
• Electronic swipe cards for doors
• Parking meters you can call to add money
to, and which send you a text message when
your time is running out”
• Digital photos (EXIF data)
• Social Media
• Smartphones

30. • “Geotagging - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging.
• Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific
information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given
location by entering latitude and longitude coordinates into a
suitable image search engine. Geotagging-enabled information
services can also potentially be used to find location-based
news, websites, or other resources.[2] Geotagging can tell users the
location of the content of a given picture or other media or
the point of view, and conversely on some media platforms show
media relevant to a given location.”
• http://regex.info/exif.cgi - Jeffrey’s EXIF viewer
Geo spatial metadata
(Geotagging)

31. How to disable your
geotagging on your
Smartphone
• http://icanstalku.com/how.php

32. More info about EXIF (exchangeable
information) can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format
Exchangeable image file format (Exif) is a standard that specifies
the formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital
cameras(including smartphones), scanners and other systems
handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras. The
specification uses the following existing file formats with the
addition of specific metadata tags.

33. Research, collection &
documentation
• Research and Documentation and
collection Forms
• - Date and time of research
• - Criteria used
• - Results
• - Type of data collected
• - Method of collection
• - Date and time of collection

34. So I have all this public
info, now what?
• Preserve the data
• Copy links
• Print screen vs. capture programs
• Screen hunter 5.1
• Adobe
• www.camstudio.org
• www.free-screen-capture.com
• Print screen is still free
• Youtube or other video source, download
and rip

35. Proper management begins with knowing what
not to say or write
• Care must be taken when creating ESI in
any form, but especially with social
media.
- Unfortunately, while most people
understand this idea, they do
not govern their mouths or fingers
accordingly.
- Every form of ESI you create could
end up in court.
- You can take steps to minimize the
frequency of embarrassing
miscues.
- Adopt best practices when creating
verbal or written ESI.

36. How to avoid creating
incriminating ESI
• Treat social media communications as
formal, business communications.
• Use proper etiquette with all
communications.
• Avoid red flag words.
- It’s possible to find incriminating ESI
by searching for commonly used words and
phrases.
- Those conducting searches don’t need
to know details about a case, just
unfortunate words used all too frequently.

37. • Stupid • Shocked
• Huge mistake • Speechless
• Big mistake • Too late
• Dumb • Uncomfortable
• Can’t believe • Not comfortable
• Cannon believe • I don’t think we
• Serious trouble should
• Big trouble • Very sensitive
• Unsalvageable • Highly sensitive
• Just between you • Very confidential
and me • Do not share this
• Just between us • Don’t share this

38. Auto claim examples

39. Youtube and Meta
Café
Youtube Visualizer

40. Auto claim example

41. Homeowner example

42. Twitter safety

44. • Be specific when you search
• Be strategic, ask for email addresses upon
intake
• Think outside of the box (include searching
for subject’s hobbies)
• Seek email addresses from the subject &
relatives of the subject
• Use variations of names when searching
• Caution – connecting virtual dots may bring
you to offensive (adult themed) websites
• Remember the web is an investigative tool
NOT an investigation
• Document your findings
• Leave no virtual stone unturned

45. Questions? Please call me directly @ 267-
975-6880 or via email @
mike.petrie@litsol.com or via Twitter at
#michael_petrie ; or for any additional
information.