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Mere months after driving drunk and killing her best friend (and injuring her best friends 6-year-old and 6-month-old children), a Santa Barbara woman posted images of herself holding a drink on MySpace. She also posted comments reminiscing about drinking with friends. The judge was not amused; the woman, who most likely would have gotten probation as it was her first DUI offense, was sentenced to two years in jail. In the judges eyes, she had proven her lack of remorse through her online postings.
Fraud examiners should work hard to discover evidence in information posted on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites (SNS). A persons online profile might be a gold mine for red flags of fraud, such as pictures of a new house that a subject could not afford or postings detailing a luxurious vacation during a supposed sick leave. Also, SNSs are full of subjects information that can be used in legal proceedings either as direct evidence or as a means to contradict testimonies. Conventional wisdom says that SNS members retain privacy in the information they post online by customizing their user settings, carefully considering the third-party applications they use on the sites and refraining from indiscriminately accepting people into their networks. Otherwise, the information is essentially public knowledge and lacks any cognizable privacy interest. But do these manoeuvres wholly protect information from investigators? Cynthia Hetherington is the founder and president of Hetherington Group, a consulting and training firm focusing on intelligence, security and investigation. According to Hetherington, nothing is completely private on SNSs. The whole business of SNSs is to catalogue and sell your information to marketing endeavours, she said. Fraud investigators are making good, legal use of these searches. Furthermore, recent legal proceedings reveal that privacy barriers in SNSs offer a false sense of security in certain situations. If it comes down to litigation, investigators still have useful online evidence sources.