The single largest change in investigative work over 36 years is that people now publish, voluntarily and continuously, the information that once required weeks of fieldwork to obtain. Understanding how it is assembled is the first step to controlling it.
What Is Visible Without Any Special Access
- Employment history, employer and role — usually complete and current
- Home neighbourhood, inferred from photograph backgrounds and repeated locations
- Daily and weekly routine — gym, commute, regular venues, posting times
- Vehicle make, model and frequently the registration plate
- Family members, relationship status and children's schools
- Travel dates, which double as notice that a home is empty
- Financial signals — purchases, renovations, holidays inconsistent with declared income
- Political, religious and health information disclosed incidentally
How It Is Assembled
No single post matters. The method is aggregation across time and across platforms. A professional profile supplies the employer. A fitness app supplies a running route that begins at the front door. A restaurant tag supplies a neighbourhood. A birthday post supplies a date of birth. A photograph of a driveway supplies a vehicle. Individually harmless; together, a comprehensive dossier.
Investigators also work the network rather than the subject. A person with locked accounts is routinely undone by a tagged photograph on a cousin's open profile.
Legal and Not
Viewing public material is legal. Creating a false profile to gain access to restricted material is a platform violation and, depending on purpose and jurisdiction, may be unlawful — and evidence obtained that way is frequently excluded. Accessing an account without authorisation is a serious criminal offence everywhere. Serious firms do not do it, because a case built on it collapses the moment it is examined.
Reducing Your Exposure
Review privacy settings on every platform quarterly, since defaults change. Post travel after returning. Strip location metadata from photographs. Check backgrounds for house numbers, plates, mail and school uniforms. Ask family to seek permission before tagging you or your children. Consider what a hostile reader — opposing counsel, a competitor, someone with a grievance — would build from your last hundred posts.
The Litigation Warning
In any matter that may reach a court, assume every post is discoverable. Deleting material after a dispute begins can constitute spoliation and can be far more damaging than the original content. The right time to be careful about what you publish is before there is a reason to be.
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Dan Ribacoff is a licensed private investigator and the founder of International Investigative Group, a certified polygraph examiner, certified firearms instructor, GIA Graduate Gemologist and the author of I, Spy: How to Be Your Own Private Investigator. He works from offices in New York, Boca Raton and London, and has appeared as a polygraph expert on American and British television.