Social Media Websites in Investigations
Social media contains a vast amount of information in the form of posts, comments, images, videos, and beyond. This information, which is often publicly available on individuals' profiles, is increasingly being used by governments, businesses, and other institutions, in order to access knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable. The use of social media in investigations by entities such as governments, private investigators, insurance firms, law firms, and universities prompts a variety of ethical questions and implications for society.
Technology
Government
Many government agencies, such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are increasingly using social media in order to monitor persons-of-interest. Government agencies are able to leverage social media platforms in order to conduct investigations by looking for evidence found throughout posts, images, comments, videos, and other content posted on these platforms.
One extremely controversial act enacted under the Trump administration is a bill which allows the Department of Homeland Security to both ask for, and monitor, the social media accounts of all immigrants entering the United States, and even immigrants who are now naturalized citizens of the United States.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/26/dhs-monitor-immigrants-social-media/
Private Investigation
Social Media is also becoming increasingly prevalent in the realm of social media investigations. Private investigators are using social media content in order to gain more knowledge about their person-of-interest, such as harnessing its metadata to better track suspects, for skip tracing and bounty hunting.
Insurance
Insurance fraud is an $80 Billion dollar industry per year. Insurance Firms are increasingly using social media in order to conduct social media investigations. These investigations are becoming commonplace in a variety of insurance verticals such as life insurance, health insurance, and car insurance.
For example, many health insurance companies are now conducting social media investigations on its current and prospective clients to see if they can spot any inconsistencies within their applications. For example, the health insurance company can check to see whether their customers are lying about not smoking cigarettes or engaging in alcohol consumption.
Insurance companies are also conducting social media investigations for workers' compensation cases, by finding images of their person-of-interest conducting physical activities, after having applied for a workers' compensation claim.
http://www.insurancefraud.org/statistics.htm
Law
An increasingly large number of law firms are now using social media as part of the evidence discovery process, in a process that has now been coined as "e-Discovery."
https://cdslegal.com/knowledge/the-basics-what-is-e-discovery/
