Sunday, May 29, 2016

Journal entry, Week eight

Journal Prompt:
  • What surprises have you encountered specific to your research question?
  • Have you discovered something new not yet expounded on based on bringing together the disparate sources on the topic? 


I feel like the topic that I chose is pretty straightforward.  I haven’t really had too many surprises while doing my research.  There has been somethings that I hadn’t really considered such as the challenge of the speed of technology.  This includes how fast software and hardware changes.  With technology always changing, investigative teams have a hard time keeping up with the changes, and are having to constantly learn and find new tools for jailbreaking devices, decrypting files, and cracking passwords.  This is definitely a challenge of digital forensics, and depending on how locked down ones social media profile is, a challenge in social media forensics as well, as there is, not surprisingly, a lot of crossover in the challenges of social media forensics and digital forensics.

I guess another surprise, that really isn’t a surprise, but something that I had not really considered is that social media forensics can easily place you in a crime scene or prove that you were not at a crime scene by way of geo-locaters.  A lot of people have this option turned-on, on their social media accounts for ease of posting statuses, finding friends nearby, or connecting with other laps.  The information provided by these geo-location settings can tell a lot about where a person was at a 
particular time, and can help to prove or disprove their involvement in a crime.

One other thing that I hadn’t really considered until someone had brought it up in class is the possibility of someone trying to create fake social media accounts portraying someone else, and misrepresenting that person negatively.  While this can definitely happen and can present its own unique challenges, it is fairly simple for an investigator can tell whether the account is a fake if they look at the IP address where the account is being logged into.  Most users are not sophisticated enough to hide their digital tracks.
 

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