How do you gather intelligence through social media?

In today's digital age, few Internet users do not have an account on one or more social media sites. People use social media services to post all types of content online, such as photos, videos, text messages and geolocation data.

For example, you can potentially access a wealth of personally relevant information about anyone in the world simply by opening a Facebook page. This information typically includes the target's country of origin, personal images and videos, spouse's name (or marital status), home and work addresses, frequently visited locations, social activities (e.g., park and restaurant visitation history), work history, education, dates of important events (e.g., birth date, graduation date, date of leaving/starting a new job, wedding anniversary), and other social activities. All of these can be found in a Facebook profile.

Social media sites are the focus of online open source surveys due to the large amount of useful information available. If you want to have personal information about a target person, you can get it by visiting his social accounts.

1. Post: Through text passages that people post or write on social media sites that other users can see, information about his interests, political stance, religion, race, family, etc. can be obtained.

2. Reply/comment: This is a social interaction. The content can be images, videos or URLs for replying to other users' posts, updating status or comments.

3. Multimedia content (images and videos): Multimedia is popular and users can upload videos or images as part of their posts. Many social platforms allow their users to upload multiple images/videos (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok). Some also allow for live streaming, a feature that allows users to broadcast live video and display the recording on their profile for later viewing.

4. Location information: Many people like to post with location information to promote a favorite location or business, including schools, parks, museums and theaters. For businesses, this can provide potential customers with valuable information about their business and give them the opportunity to advertise offers such as merchandise sales or customer discounts. An example is Facebook's Check-In feature, which uses location features to identify locations near you and inform people of your whereabouts. These locations can be as specific as a restaurant, or as general as a town or city. For most Facebook users, the Check-In feature lets others know where you've been or that you've arrived at a specific location.