General Social Media Information Archives

Parents: Have You Heard of Finsta?

If you’re scratching your head wondering if this is yet another social site to keep track of, don’t worry, it’s not. Well, not really.

Finsta is just another way teens and young adults are getting around public social sites. Finsta is simply another name for “fake Instagram.” Basically, this is a second Instagram account people (usually the younger set) will create with a name that’s not easily identifiable where they typically post things that they wouldn’t want Grandma or Aunt Sally to see.

Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some teens create finsta accounts simply to post things they don’t want their parents to see, or pictures that are not filtered and “at their best” but they hold some humorous value they want to share with a select few, but it may not be risque or “sketchy” posts. In other cases, it can be used for less than desired activities, such as posting racier pictures or sharing risky behavior, or, even worse, being used to harass someone online.

To get a better sense of understanding why some choose to “finsta”, you may want to read this insightful article written by a teen that talks about why they choose to create finsta accounts.

How do you know if your teen has a finsta? There may be a few ways to find out:

Take a look at their followers: often times teens will follow their finsta account and won’t be as creative as they think they are with a user name for the fake account. One example would be a girl named Julia Luckett creating a finsta user name of JulieInABucket. Other times they will use a picture of themselves as the profile picture on their fake account.

If they’re a younger teen, take a look at their Instagram account on their phone. Most times, since Instagram allows multiple accounts to be created, the teen will simply create a second account under the same email and/or mobile number. In this case, if you look at their user name at the top of the page, you’ll see an arrow next to it – that can be used to see if there are multiple accounts created. If your teen is more savvy, they may create a second account with a “throwaway” Gmail account that you may or may not be aware of. In this case, it may be more difficult to ascertain their finsta account.

If you use a regular social monitoring service, be sure to include all known email addresses and phone numbers. Don’t forget to include old email addresses, school email addresses, land lines, and all cell phone numbers (even old ones). Providing this information when using a social media monitoring service will be helpful in identifying all social accounts for your teens.

Not only does social media change constantly, but so do the way teens use it (and find workarounds in using it in different ways). It can be challenging to keep up with, but worth it in so many ways. While finsta is fairly new, it won’t be long before the next new site or way to use a site pops up. When it does, we’ll be here to tell you about it.

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.