facebook search tips Archives

Three Facebook Group Search Tips

Back in 2018, Mark Zuckerberg was focused on getting more people to engage on their platform. Facebook Groups became a very important tool to use to do just that. Facebook rolled out an algorithm known as “Facebook Zero,” and simply put, this is the reason why you most likely see Group content dominating your newsfeeds. (Hootsuite)

Many people who are involved in Facebook Groups are highly engaged. Once a person joins a group, there seems to be a false sense of anonymity in a way. Meaning, that no one outside of this group can see my posts. If the group is public, that is simply not the case.

It is important to remember this when you are conducting research on your person of interest.

We covered this in a previous blog. The “Must Have” to the “Nice to Have” in Social Research for OSINT featured a case study. From all appearances the POI seemed to be pretty clean cut. Someone who you would never suspect would use drugs. However, once we located a group she was active in, it revealed a different side to her.

When conducting scans, we have found some seemingly “hidden” posts in groups that were very helpful to our client’s case.

Hidden VS. Private Groups

According to Hootsuite:

Private and visible Facebook groups can be found through search, and it requires approved membership in order to see anything beyond a group description, members, and group history.

Private groups that are hidden can only be found by current members and those who have been invited to the group already (even if they aren’t members yet). Only members are able to view the group content beyond that waiting-room-styled display above.

Most business groups are most effective when set to private and visible. People can find you and you have full control of who gets to see and view group content, giving you the best of both worlds for a balance of quantity and quality while still being findable.

Hidden groups are most effective for internal team use or if you want to set up a highly-exclusive group that’s invite-only and don’t want the backlash of angry people who aren’t accepted.

Tips to Search Facebook Groups

Need a quick and easy way to search for groups? Start with Facebook’s Browse Groups page which is designed to help you locate a group that fits your interests.
Once in the Browse Group area, you can filter the search down a bit (see below).

If you have an idea that your POI is active in a particular group that is public, you can easily use the magnifying icon right on the page to search the group for names, keywords, dates, etc..

People who post in groups, seem to be more vocal, more honest and sometimes reveal much more than they are even aware of. It may be because they view it as being more “private” and not publicly available on their own profile page or timeline.

The “Must Have” to the “Nice to Have” in Social Research for OSINT

In the world of online research, social research, OSINT, etc., information falls into two main social research categories. In one group you have the “Must Have” and the other is the “Nice to Have”. Let me explain.

Let’s take a look at this from the viewpoint of information collected on a person of interest.

Must Have: Facebook

Facebook intelligence is still in the “Must Have” category. In part this is due to the fact that there is still so much to discover there, if you know how and where to dig. That is the challenge!

Groups: Sometimes people will showcase their groups and sometimes this information is kept private. If it is kept private, there are search techniques that can be used, but it is not easy. Sometimes this information is readily available on a person’s profile page. When it is, and the group is public, I would suggest taking some time to do a manual search.

What Can You Find?

When people post in Groups, I really think that most have a mindset that it is undiscoverable information. Meaning, it is safe within the constraints of the group. That may give a false sense of freedom to speak their mind or to post something that they wouldn’t want the majority of their friends to know. When viewing a person’s page, public posts may give an impression of being squeaky clean but posts in a group setting can reveal the opposite.

Recently, we conducted a scan on a person who from their two facebook profiles, looked to be pretty clean cut. After digging further, we came up with a series of posts that showed a very different side to the individual.

Facebook Post — Post of a person of interest in a Group

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, “wake and bake” it can be described as getting up in the morning and partaking of the drug of choice, without leaving the comforts of one’s bed. (urban dictionary).

Enough to toss that squeaky clean image right out the door!

Twitter:

If you are having trouble finding information online, one suggestion is to turn to Twitter. Is the person currently employed? By whom? What about past jobs? It may be worth it to scan the company’s Twitter pages because many mid to large size companies will post events, fundraisers, blogs, videos, etc. which have employees present.

We recently found several photos of an individual from their company’s Twitter page.

Nice to Have

There is quite a lot of information that can be filed under the “Nice to Have” social research category. When conducting a deep web scan for example, we may find out that the person had some past problems with the law. From simple traffic violations to bankruptcies and everything in the middle. This may date back 10 or more years.

While it may not be important to the case, it is something that is part of the person’s past. Voter registration, financial contributions to a particular political party, volunteer work, newspaper articles, digital records of all kinds, and so on. All of this additional information can help to give you a good picture of the character of the person.

UCC filing — Person had a possible DEA Controlled Substance License that expired in 2015

A piece of information like the one above can be useful in many ways. Perhaps you know the person to be a Veterinarian or he was one in the past. This piece of information can serve as another data point that confirms his profession. It may list an address or name of a business that you didn’t have before.

It can help you to eliminate false positives in your research as well. Without the help or assistance of multiple software platforms, you can easily get two people confused who share the same name.

Staying Ahead of the Social Media Curve

One area that OSINT & Social Media Researchers have in common with Social Media Marketers, is the challenge of staying ahead of the social media curve. It seems like almost weekly, social platforms change something. Most of the changes have to do with ease of use for the user or trying to adhere to changing policy regulations.

Facebook Classic VS New Facebook

Facebook recently changed the way your profile looks to a new version. They allow you the opportunity to toggle back and forth if you wish. The New Facebook update is also referred to as FB5. Facebook wants its platform to be centered around group and events more than in the past. It has a white background or you can choose a dark mode.

How does this affect our investigations? How is Facebook 2020 different from Facebook 2019? One area of interest is the emphasis on groups. We have discussed this in the past, but I think it deserves another look and mention.

Pocket-Link reports, “Facebook said the Groups Tab has been overhauled to make finding new groups that you might be interested in even easier. The feed for groups will also serve up recent activity within groups you’re a member of and may even replace the News Feed as the default feed. You’ll also see more connections among groups and the Facebook features you use the most, such as Marketplace or Facebook Watch.

OSINT Facebook Tips

So how does this relate to searching Facebook? While some things may change, others remain the same. Searching for the Profile ID is still the same. Once you receive that information, you are able to use some other methods and tools to make your searching easier. This can be found in “properties” by right clicking on a profile page.

The person’s page ID can never change. Even if they change other aspects of their profile. Once you have this, check to be sure it is correct. In your browser, type in facebook.com/ID#, as a way to verify you have the correct number.

Facebook Market Place

Once you have Market Place as part of your profile, you can easily go and search there for your subject’s name. If you find something, you can see under the person’s name, the date in which they joined Facebook. This may be helpful in identifying when they joined. If you recently joined Facebook, you will not be able to participate in Facebook Marketplace. Another social media curve ball.

In future blogs we will dive into business page profiles and some good information you can glean from it. When doing a corporate scan, this is an overlooked area of interest.

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The Dark Side of Facebook

Facebook is a place for online predators to stalk, engage and eventually lure an innocent kid to meet up in person. We have heard these stories too many times.
In this month’s newsletter, we want to cover some areas you may not be aware of, things that Facebook doesn’t really speak publicly about.

Facebook Groups Used To “Friend” Kids: When a person creates a Facebook Group, they have the choice of making it public or private. Facebook Groups can house all kinds of crime from fraud to drugs to sex trafficking. Kids who have a low self esteem or don’t have many friends are the ones who are the most targeted because of their vulnerability. They then get lured in by pimps offering them all kinds of fun and/or material things. Facebook has had numerous lawsuits filed against them over the years because of this. Newsweek published an article on one such case. A child of 12 years old was supposedly groomed online (in social media) for over a year. Facebook now has a very clear policy for this, with excellent resources in case anyone runs across a tip on a victim.

Photos Used For Extortion: A scammer can potentially sift through photos on Facebook, capture and download them and then conduct a reverse image scan to see if any married people are on any dating or swinger sites. They then can use it for blackmail.

Friend Requests: Romance scams are on the rise. Friend requests come in from a handsome man or pretty woman and many people will say yes to the request. Sometimes it may show that he or she is friends with some of the people they know, which makes it all seem more believable. Next comes the “online courting” stage and pretty soon they are asking for money. Catfishers set up elaborate fake profiles to make them appear to be real which hooks someone looking for love online.

Facebook Fraud: Targeting young women, a scammer once again took Facebook images of a victim and then created a post that said she was missing. Then 20 of her friends were duplicated and her “missing’ post was shared on all of their fake profile timelines. The scammers then blocked the real Facebook profiles so the victims couldn’t even see the fake profile of themselves.

2019 Facebook Search Tips For Social Media Investigations

Social Media Investigations has been known to take an unbelievable amount of your time or that of an employee. Facebook searching is one of the areas that can be the most confusing but can harvest some of the best results. Either way, it can cost you money and you may not even reap the rewards of the time spent.

A good Social Media Investigation Strategy begins with a thorough understanding of each of the platforms you are using in your research. “You don’t know what you don’t know”, sort of thing. 2019 will be the year that goes down in history as the year of privacy, which makes social media investigations even more difficult, but not impossible.

One of the very first things to take a look at when beginning to use a social platform for search purposes, is their privacy settings. This way you know ahead of time exactly what you are up against. In this post, we are going to go over two privacy areas that often get overlooked.

Facebook Minor Privacy

Minor privacy in Facebook is taken very seriously, as it should. Take a look at the privacy clearly stated in Facebook:

Social Media Investigations — Facebook Minor Policy

While searching for a Minor in Facebook is allowed, you may not be privy to the type of information you are looking for. Today’s Tweens and Teens are very good at hiding in social media, which makes our jobs even harder.

Facebook General Privacy

Who can look you up using the phone number provided?

This is quite specific and one you may not have even realized existed. When we think about privacy settings, we think about a few questions to answer and it’s done! Not so with Facebook as you can see. This is where a lot of confusion can come in when it comes to mining social media. Any person may have certain aspects of their profile public, while others are set to private.

Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?

Can’t find the social media profile in a Google search? This may be the reason why. Searching in Facebook is key to overcome this setting. Search in a number of ways – think outside the box.

So, how do you know if your person of interest has these privacy settings in place ? You won’t ever know. You just have to find ways to work around it.

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