General Social Media Information Archives

What’s Your Story?

Social media background checks are useful to learn more about a person. Many services offer high level scans of an individual – some focus only on social sites while others can collect content from across the web.

One of the reasons I find social media background checks so fascinating is that it’s so much more than a scan using one or more software platforms – it’s about building a story, and from my experience, no two searches are the same.

A good social media background check starts with a scan of course – it’s a great starting place to start to paint the picture of who the individual is and what their story looks like. It doesn’t stop there though – additional manual research and result filtering is needed to be able to truly get a picture of the individual you’re researching.

In the time we have conducted social media background checks, I’ve learned many things:

Social media research for individuals is so interesting. By collecting content created by or about an individual, you can really start to get an idea of what the person is like without ever meeting them.

Individual background checks for some industries, such as Human Resources, are a bit different. When it comes to other industries, such as investigations or insurance research, it’s much more robust and, in my opinion, interesting.

No software is perfect. We utilize a suite of software programs for this very reason. We use one program as our “base” but rely on the others to fill in the blanks. The final part of our research is manual – corroborating results found and connecting some dots outside of the software programs is vital to a detailed, valuable report.

A search is only as good as the information provided. It’s amazing how much you find about someone given very little information. However, conducting a thorough search requires much more information than a first name, last name, and city of residence. The more information provided, the better the results.

Conducting social media background checks has been a favorite part of the work I do. Some stories are happy ones, while others have saddened me greatly. Either way, I know that we are helping our clients get a better understanding of the people and cases they are investigating, one story at a time.

Tenant Assured Update

Back in June, I came across the news of the upcoming launch of Score Assured, a site that is dedicated to providing social media background checks for landlords. At the time, several articles stated that the launch was imminent, but they had already started to release the first product, Tenant Assured, for use. In fact, a Washington Times reporter used the site to create a report on herself, and this is what it looked like:

When I wrote the original post on this subject, I mentioned that I wanted to follow it, as I wasn’t sure it would ever leave the ground. Do I think social media background checks are a good thing? Absolutely. Did I think the way this company was planning to go about it was the best way to do so? Nope.

And here’s why: the company wanted full access to a candidate’s social profiles. In the case of the Washington Post reporter who used the site, you can see that they asked for access permissions similar to any third party application, meaning that they can access your full set of social data.

As of this writing, the site is more fleshed out than it was back in June, but most pages still show “coming soon” and cannot be accessed. It looks like it never gained traction, or ever really got started.

With HR departments and insurance companies turning to social media for background checks, I’m surprised that landlords and leasing agencies aren’t doing this as well, though I think it’s just a matter of time. If Score Assured would change their tactics and utilize programs that can scan and collect public facing data and develop their algorithm to create a report based from that, I think they’ll have better luck.

Someone in that industry will figure it out, and when they do, it will be a great resource for leasing agents to use when reviewing tenant applications.

Will Your Social Media Soon Serve as Your Credit Score?

What you post on social media may soon play a role in your future credit and financial endeavors.

Like other industries, financial institutions and credit agencies are starting to turn to social media to assess credit risk and financial responsibility for those applying for credit and/or financial services. According to a recent article, this comes from the realization that as recently as 2015, somewhere around 26 million people did not have a credit score. Not surprisingly, a bulk of these people included Millennials, those who have not yet had opportunity to build up their credit or who are not opting to use credit cards (smart move, Millennials!).

Because it is difficult to obtain information on a person’s financial responsibility based on more traditional methods, lenders and creditors are seeking data from social media to help keep the rejection rate from being so high while also allowing those with no established history to start one.

How does this happen? Essentially, social media can be researched around an individual based on known information – their name, date of birth, and address, for example. From there, social media research can be conducted to collect public facing content an individual posts online. This is not just limited to social sites – it can include message boards and forums, review sites, and even responses to online news articles. From there, the content that is collected is reviewed for “themes” or activities that may signal an individual may not be creditworthy, or alternatively, may show signs of financial responsibility, making them a small risk to creditors.

What exactly might lenders be looking for? Depending on the type of financing an individual is seeking, it could vary.

On the most basic level, it can be used to verify information provided during the application process. It’s fairly simple to confirm employment, addresses, or other historical points of data by running a simple social media search.

Verifying employment/employment history based on an individual’s LinkedIn profile coupled with social media posts. For example, social posts along the lines of “Well this one lasted three days. Hated the place and quit” or “Just started a new job. Hope this one works out” may give some insight into an individual’s work patterns.

For those just out of college, a lender can look at past history through the college years. Did the individual work during those years? Did they do internships, join associations, etc? This may show a pattern that alludes to financial responsibility. Alternatively, a history of continual partying, skipping classes, etc. may show otherwise.

Look to past financial history: while someone may not have a formal credit score, patterns may show that a person may not be financially responsible. Content such as “Blew all my money on much needed retail therapy. Guess the phone bill will have to wait” that has a consistent pattern may make some lenders think twice. An appearance of “living outside your means” can also be problematic.

Social connections can be used as a virtual list of references: by looking at an individual’s list of friends & family on social sites, inferences could be made about who the person tends to interact with. Are these people upstanding individuals, or is there a pattern of connecting with individuals who may signal a troubled lifestyle?

There are some stepping stones in social media content becoming a standard part of a credit score, however. It’s difficult to look at a person’s social media content in a completely objective manner, and there’s also the issue of making sure laws are adhered to with regard to what can and cannot be included in a credit check. Some other considerations that need to be made:

Language to make it crystal clear to applicants that social media content can be used in making a decision needs to become standardized & included in disclosure statements when applying for loans, credit cards, etc. This should include what information can be obtained and how it will be obtained, as well as clear consent given by the applicant.

The FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) will need to be enhanced to include social media data and rules that apply specificially to that. I imagine this will take quite a bit of time, especially since social media is still new in the area of being used for legal purposes.

Education needs to be enhanced in general about public facing vs private social content. It’s surprising that this many years later, this is still an issue. However, continued education needs to happen across the board so those using social media and other online forums understand where they are posting and what can be seen by the general public.

While right now this is only starting to be discussed and used by lenders and creditors, I would not be at all surprised if this is a common practice five years down the road.

Why I Disagree With the ACLU

By now you may have heard the news swirling around about the ACLU obtaining records regarding social media data collected through Geofeedia, a social media surveillance company. The claim is that the company allowed law enforcement to target protesters and activists “of color” and thus is a civil rights violation. In response, Twitter and Facebook have revoked Geofeedia’s access to API and data collection methods.

This has sparked attention on the topic of social media content and privacy. We’ve been down this path before, but not quite like this. As more information comes to light, it should come as no surprise that this is one of many tools that law enforcement uses. While the ACLU states that the intent is to target protesters and activists, somehow potentially trying to turn this into a racial argument, they could not be more wrong.

Similar to other surveillance tools, law enforcement and other agencies are using location based social media monitoring to identify potential issues BEFORE they become a situation. The same type of monitoring is also used by marketing companies and brands in order to better understand their customers, monitor service levels at their locations in a real time manner, and enhance their marketing techniques. It doesn’t seem that the ACLU knows this, or cares that consumer civil rights may be violated too (in their opinion).

Fact is, this is the world we live in. Public data, and that is exactly what is obtained through social media monitoring sites, is just that – public. This content is readily available to anyone looking – the software programs out there (and there are more than just Geofeedia) make the process easier. They are not doing anything differently than someone taking an extensive amount of time manually searching across social sites.

If you really think about it, aren’t we lucky that there are people out there, criminals and people with intent to do real harm to others, who are stupid enough to share their plans publicly? If it’s out there, it can be identified and hopefully handled before it’s too late. If a person is posting content publicly, it is out there for the world to see; there has been enough social media education for the general public to know that, if they don’t use privacy settings, they are revoking their right to privacy by posting on public sites.

We’ve seen protests become ugly, not necessarily by the protesters that originally organized event, but instead by “professional protesters” who have the goal of inciting violence with looting, physical violence, or the like. If this can be averted, wouldn’t you want it to be? Protesting is one of our rights, and that is how it should be. Violence is not one of our rights, and having a means of proactively finding potential threats is important.

If you are one that agrees with the ACLU, think of the last mass shooting or other terror related event – what’s the first thing that people turn to in an attempt to learn more about the person involved? What did you hear first? Questions such as, “Did they post anything on social media? Were there clues that could have prevented this?” And then, if there was content that should have raised a red flag, the public angrily asks “What wasn’t this caught before it happened?” Pretty hypocritical, if you ask me.

Social media comes with responsibility, and a certain amount of loss of privacy. It is what it is. However, social sites have worked to create privacy filters so that the general public can share content within their comfort level of privacy. If people do not use these filters, then they are indirectly allowing their content to become public information.

It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses, but I do not believe the ACLU has a leg to stand on in this case. I think Twitter and Facebook made a reactionary decision based on public pressure, but I don’t think this is the end of social media monitoring.