In today’s digital age, social media platforms are not just tools for connection—they’re also treasure troves of information for investigators. One emerging area of intelligence gathering is the identification of gang activity and group affiliations through social media posts. From images and hashtags to emojis and clothing, online behaviors can paint a very telling picture.
The Digital Footprint of Gang Activity
Gang members and affiliated individuals often turn to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat to share aspects of their lives. Whether consciously or not, they frequently reveal:
Symbols and hand signs
Color-coded clothing or bandanas
Group photos in known gang territory
References to specific streets, “sets,” or rivals
Hashtags tied to local or national gangs
Emojis that replace words (e.g., 🅱️ for Blood, 🐍 for “snake” or betrayal)
These clues, when collected and cross-referenced, can offer deep insights into group affiliations and potential criminal networks.
🧠 Case Studies and News Highlights
Chicago PD’s Social Media Division has long been utilizing public Facebook and Instagram posts to track gang rivalries and predict retaliation after shootings. In one case, an Instagram Live post helped them intervene before a potential violent retaliation.
A 2022 Department of Justice investigation in California used TikTok videos to tie suspects to a series of robberies. Members of a gang had been flaunting stolen items and taunting rival groups, giving investigators time-stamped evidence and location markers.
Academic research, such as the 2017 study “Digital Gangsters: Gangs and Social Media Use in Chicago” (Papachristos et al.), emphasizes how online conflict—called “Internet banging”—often escalates to offline violence.
🔧 How Investigators Can Use This Data
For private investigators, insurance companies, and law enforcement, recognizing digital gang markers can:
Validate existing suspicions or criminal history
Link individuals to known groups or criminal networks
Discredit or verify alibis using geotagged content
Support background checks for sensitive cases (e.g., custody, employment)
Aid in threat assessment or workplace security reviews
⚠️ Key Markers to Watch
When analyzing a subject’s digital footprint, consider the following as potential indicators of gang ties:
Type
Example
🧢 Clothing
Color patterns, logo flips, bandanas
🤳 Poses
Flashing hand signs, gang-specific symbols
🏷️ Hashtags
#FreeTheHomie, #GDK, #BDK, #TrapLife
🧩 Emojis
🅱️, 🐍, 💯, 🔫
📍 Locations
Frequent check-ins at known gang areas or streets
🎶 Music
Lyrics in videos referencing violence or affiliations
🛠️ Our Role in Helping You Connect the Dots
At eChatter, we specialize in analyzing digital behavior through a combination of OSINT, SOCMINT, and proprietary tools. Our team is trained to identify not just what’s visible—but what’s implied, coded, or intentionally hidden.
Through our reports, clients gain a clear view of affiliations, patterns, and risk factors. Whether you’re investigating a person of interest, building a case, or conducting due diligence, we deliver insights that matter.
Snapchat has introduced a range of features, both functional and protective, aimed at enhancing user experience while ensuring safety for kids and teens. Here’s a breakdown of Snapchat’s features and how they are working towards protecting minors on the platform.
Snapchat offers several different features and understanding all of them can be difficult at times. We have broken down some of the most used features within the application for you.
Snapchat Terms and Meanings
Snaps are photos and videos that users can send to their friends. After they are viewed they will either instantly disappear or after a 24 hour period. This depends on the settings the user as selected within this field.
Chat is used like a text message. This will disappear after being read (unless saved by the user). The user can also send audio and video messages.
Stories is a 24-hour collection of Snaps that users can post for their friends or the public to see.
Spotlight is a public space for viral short videos, like TikTok. Users can view content based on their interests.
Lenses and Filters are Augmented Reality (AR) filters and effects users can add to their photos and videos.
Discover is a feature where users can find content from publishers, creators, and influencers.
Memories is a private archive where users can save Snaps and Stories for later viewing or sharing.
Snap Map is a feature that allows users to share their location with friends or view the location of friends who have shared their location on the map.
Streaks is a fun feature that tracks how many days in a row two users have been sending each other Snaps.
Bitmoji is where users can create personalized avatars (Bitmojis) to represent themselves in Snaps and chats.
Snapchat Features for Protecting Kids and Teens
Snapchat has taken steps to make the platform safer for younger users, particularly with features aimed at privacy, limiting exposure to inappropriate content, and enabling parental controls. Additionally, Snapchat recently rolled out a resource for educators, explaining what Snapchat is, Safety at Snap, and Educators Tools and Resources. Note, that while these new features and transparency within the Snapchat corporation are aimed at assisting in the protection of minors, there are still workarounds that teens may find accessible.
Age Verification
Snapchat requires users to enter their date of birth during account creation. If users are under 13, they are restricted from creating a standard account.
Note: Users who are utilizing this platform without the supervision of an adult can still create a date of birth that is false.
Privacy Settings for Teens (13-17)
Default Friend Settings: For users under 18, Snapchat defaults to allowing communication only from their accepted friends. Strangers cannot send messages, Snaps, or friend requests unless explicitly added as friends.
Limited Discovery: Snapchat curates and limits the content teens can access in the Discover section to avoid exposure to adult or inappropriate content.
Note: Users are still able to view “friend suggestions”. This means that if Bobby, a current friend of Sarah’s, is friends with John the drug dealer, John may pop up as a “friend suggestion” to Sarah. Sarah may feel safe adding a friend of Bobby’s since Snapchats culture is all about making friends and connections.
Snap Map Privacy
Ghost Mode: Users can hide their location from others by activating Ghost Mode. By default, users must manually opt-in to share their location.
Restricting Location Sharing: For users under 18, location-sharing features are restricted to only friends they have accepted, and public location sharing is discouraged.
Two-Factor Authentication
Snapchat offers two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of security, helping to protect accounts from being hacked.
In-App Reporting Tools
Safety Center: Snapchat provides a dedicated safety center for users to access guidance on privacy settings and how to report abuse.
Reporting Content: Users can report inappropriate content, bullying, harassment, or suspicious accounts within the app. Snapchat’s moderation team reviews these reports.
Restricted Friend Suggestions
Snapchat does not show accounts of teens (13-17) in Quick Add to anyone unless they have mutual friends. This helps prevent strangers from discovering their profiles.
Parental Control Features (Family Center)
Family Center: Snapchat introduced Family Center, a set of tools for parents to monitor and guide their child’s usage without directly viewing their messages.
View Friends List: Parents can see who their child is friends with, allowing them to be aware of connections without invading their child’s privacy.
Report Harmful Activity: Parents can report accounts or concerns directly to Snapchat via the Family Center.
Content Moderation and Filtering
Snapchat uses machine learning and moderation tools to detect and remove inappropriate content, especially in public sections like Discover and Spotlight.
Age-appropriate Content: Snapchat curates content and ensures that minors do not have access to channels or content labeled as inappropriate for younger audiences.
Anti-Bullying Measures
Snapchat encourages positive interactions by allowing users to control who can contact them and limiting the ways they can be discovered by others.
Disappearing Messages: Since messages disappear after being read, this discourages the spread of harmful or inappropriate content.
Blocking and Reporting: Users can easily block, report, or remove someone from their friends list, and Snapchat investigates reports of harassment or bullying.
Time Management
While Snapchat does not offer built-in time limits, it encourages parents to use third-party parental control apps to manage screen time, ensuring teens do not spend excessive time on the app.
Safety Education
Snapchat partners with organizations such as ConnectSafely and the Family Online Safety Institute to educate teens, parents, and educators about digital well-being and online safety.
No Public Profiles for Teens
Snapchat restricts users under 18 from creating public profiles, helping protect their content from being viewed by strangers.
Snapchat has designed a range of features aimed at providing a safe environment for teens while offering privacy control and parental oversight tools. While it continues to evolve and improve, the platform emphasizes privacy and safety for younger users by default.
At E-Chatter we strive to not only educate Private Investigators on how to search through social media platforms, but also shed light on social media topics such as this to educate parents, grandparents, educators, and guardians. Visit our website for additional information on how we and assist you and your online search efforts now.
Identifying a fake image online can be challenging as technology has made it easier to manipulate images. In a blog post from 2020, titled “OSINT Research & False Positives” we discussed how easy it was to create a computer generated image. However, fast forward to 2023, with the explosion of artificial intelligence, creating computer generated images of all kinds have taken on a life of their own.
Taking a closer look at examples of fake images can help to train your eye to look for certain traits of the image to determine it’s legitimacy. Nothing is infallible of course, but there are some steps you can take to assist in identifying fake images. In fact, next time you have some time to kill, check out “Which Face is Real” to test out your knowledge!
Signs of computer-generated manipulation
The photo above was identified as fake through Snopes.com’s fact checking. The photo was posted to a Twitter user’s feed. Snopes is a great resource for debunking fake profiles, images and news. According to the article on the site, “The photo was generated by artificial intelligence (AI), with several telltale signs of computer-generated manipulation. For examples, an area near Trump’s lower lip showed another trace of lip; the faces of the presumed Secret Service agents and many crowd members were disfigured; some heads looked more like skulls, and the flags’ coloring wasn’t consistent. Additionally, the man immediately behind Trump not only had signs of digital doctoring in his face but also his right hand.”
The photo was fake; it was not a genuine documentation of Trump arriving to New York for his booking and arraignment. The Twitter user acknowledged that fact, writing in a reply tweet, “I didn’t find this [photo]. I generated it via prompts.”
Source: Snopes.com
Systems such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney make it easy for anyone to create images to fit their narrative. The good news is that historically, AI generated systems have struggled to mimic human hands as an example. Something to keep in mind, for now at least.
“It’s pretty amazing, in terms of what AI image generators are able to do,” says S. Shyam Sundar, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University who studies the psychological impacts of media technologies. “There’s been a giant leap in the last year or so in terms of image-generation abilities.”
Tips to Identifying Fake Images Online
Look for inconsistencies: Study the photo carefully for inconsistencies or irregularities in the image. Look for blurred edges, mismatched shadows, or disproportionate objects. These inconsistencies can be a sign of photo manipulation.
Check the metadata: Most digital photos contain metadata that includes information such as the date, time, and location of the photo. Check this information to ensure it is consistent with the photo’s content.
Reverse image search: Use a reverse image search tool like Google Images, Bing Images, Yandex Images or TinEye to check if the photo has been used elsewhere on the internet. If it has been used in different contexts, it may be a sign that it’s a fake.
Consult experts: If you’re still unsure about the authenticity of a photo, consult experts such as photo forensics specialists, journalists, or fact-checking organizations.
Be skeptical: Finally, always approach photos online with a healthy dose of skepticism. Be wary of photos that seem too good to be true or those that are designed to elicit an emotional response.
Look for a Watermark: DALL-E 2 places a watermark on every photo generated through their system. The Watermark is shown below (the color bar). It is placed very small on the image. It can be removed however, so it will not always be shown.
By following these steps, you can increase your chances of identifying a fake photo online.
The world just doesn’t know what to do with TikTok. For what appears to be the umpteenth time, news outlets are covering the famous app as U.S. lawmakers work to ban it in the United States. Over 1 billion people tune in to the app monthly, and for reference that closely follows the 1.4 billion people on Instagram, 2.2 billion on YouTube, and 2.9 billion users on Facebook. In the United States alone, TikTok has over 138 million active users who spend an average of 95 minutes on the app per day. It is safe to say that this app has a very particular sway on its users, more so than any other social media platform in history.
According to the Washington Post, in 2021 the trending viral videos of people sharing their favorite books, many of them with the hashtag #BookTok, helped make 2021 one of the publishing industry’s best sales years ever. This trend doesn’t just stop at the publishing industry. Take the Stanley Big Grip Travel Quencher that was on everyone’s Christmas list this past year, it is safe to say that their sales of this viral water bottle were largely influenced by TikTok. The hashtag #stanleytumbler has over 133 million views, and the brand’s TikTok page has over 30 thousand followers. If you can believe it, the app’s influence doesn’t stop there.
In July of 2022, Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan shared internal data showing that an average of 40% of 18 to 24-year-olds in the United States go to TikTok and Instagram over Google for their search needs. This data makes many businesses wonder what the future holds in regard to consumer behavior. TikTok has already demonstrated its influence with viral videos, but what happens when users start funneling from Google over to TikTok for their searching needs? We have seen other apps such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube attempt to produce the TikTok model with Reels and YouTube Shorts, but nothing seems to beat the incredibly smart algorithm that TikTok holds.
So with all of these incredible benefits on our economy, why would lawmakers be trying to ban TikTok in the United States? TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, who is located in China, have been accused many times of accessing nonpublic data about US TikTok users which is exactly why former president Donald Trump tried to ban the app during his presidency. In a 2021 Senate hearing, a TikTok executive shared that there was a US based security team that decides who gets access to the data, and that US user data was not being handled in China. According to the BuzzFeed News, that is not the whole truth. There were 14 statements made by 9 different TikTok employees sharing that there were Beijing-based engineers that “have access to everything”.
So what does this mean for the app’s future in the US? Currently, both Democrats and Republicans stand mostly unified in their attempts to weaken the immensely popular (and powerful) social media platform. President Joe Biden approved a limited TikTok ban when he signed the over 4,000 page spending bill into law in December. The ban disallows the use of TikTok by the federal government’s employees, which stretch to almost 4 million people, on devices owned by its agencies. The bans don’t stop there, many state government’s banned the app to be used by its employee’s, but also to students and workers who are on the wifi of certain college campuses. University of Oklahoma, University of Texas, Alabama and Auburn are some of the campuses who have set forth this new campus rule.
ByteDance has created a new U.S. Based team as of this past December, to help address these trust and safety issues stating that the purpose was to “build further trust and confidence in the protection of US user data and compliance”. It has been said that President Biden is more inclined to keep the app in the market, but there is no final decision that has yet been made. This safety issue that is being discussed not only affects everyday Americans and the content creators on the app, but it may also have a lasting effect on businesses and the future of social media marketing.
Once again Tik Tok has been in the news. The app has received its share of scrutiny over the past few years. We will go into some this later in the blog. For now, let’s take a look at why it is so popular and with whom.
The app gained huge popularity during Covid while many people spent much more time at home and were looking for some entertainment. It has become an addicting app for people of all ages. The homemade videos in the app are not only fun to watch, they can be informative as well. You will find many tutorial “how to’s” from gardening to opinion pieces from individuals of all backgrounds. This is also a good reason not to overlook it when you are conducing online research on your case.
According to Hootsuite, Tik Tok was the most downloaded app of 2021, with 656 million downloads. That was more than 100 million downloads than its runner up, Instagram. Tik Tok is the 6th most used social media app in the world as the chart below shows.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2022 Report
“The Chinese version of TikTok is called Douyin, which is number eight on this list. Douyin is actually the original app launched by parent company ByteDance in September 2016, who rolled out TikTok for international audiences in 2017. There are small differences between the two apps, but they look and function almost the same way.
Douyin boasts 600 million daily active users (most apps use monthly figures). When the two apps are combined, they reach fourth place on this list, ahead of Instagram and WeChat.” (Hootsuite)
Tik Tok Controversy
Like other social media apps, Tik Tok has had quite a bit of controversy. Back in 2021, a viral hoax about school violence spread rapidly across TikTok, alarming parents and children. Other hoaxes and harmful content, like videos promoting rapid weight loss, have proliferated on the platform and drawn criticism. (Hootsuite).
Tik Tok has addressed these issues by updating their Community Guidelines. They are committed to removing dangerous content from their site.
Most recently, the app was in the news again. It has been revealed that Tik Tok can track users as they visit other sites through the iOS app. The scary part is there is no way to know if they are storing this data and if it is being used somehow. Whenever something like this happens, it is always best to assume they can gather your data and act accordingly.
Priyadarsi Nanda of the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Electrical and Data Engineering said collecting information about keystrokes closely resembles the behaviour of keyloggers, a type of malware.
“Whichever website you go to, it takes your inputs,” he said. “This is definitely a concern for any app you don’t trust.”
A TikTok spokesperson told Guardian Australia the “report’s conclusions about TikTok are incorrect and misleading”.
“The researcher specifically says the JavaScript code does not mean our app is doing anything malicious, and admits they have no way to know what kind of data our in-app browser collects,” the spokesperson said.
“Contrary to the report’s claims, we do not collect keystroke or text inputs through this code, which is solely used for debugging, troubleshooting, and performance monitoring.”
Tik Tok is actually banned in several countries. Can you guess which ones? Click here to read more.
Tik Tok Marketing
Advertisers of all kinds are jumping in to this platform because of its popularity. I have even seen videos of Private Investigators discussing their services. When they do so, they are sharing their website links to make it easier for the user to make a purchase right within the app.
In the end, it is impossible for OSINT researchers to ignore this app, especially for the demographics stated here. Just add an extra layer of caution to your searches just in case.
