A social media search can have a significant impact on your case because of the vast amount of personal information that people share on social media. It’s becoming more common for judges to allow social media evidence in courtrooms, and with more people than ever using social media today, it’s highly likely your subject has at least some online presence on social media platforms – even if it’s not on major social networks. Just like a criminal records search or property records search, social media can help you find the facts you need for legal research — whether you’re in criminal defense law, personal injury law, or doing fraud investigations. Here are a few ways you could use a social media search in a public and private records database for your case.

Run a social media account search to support or disqualify an alibi

 If you’re defending someone that has been accused of a time-sensitive and location-sensitive crime like a bank robbery, law enforcement has to prove that your client was at the bank at the time of the robbery. However, if your client has a location-marked post on their social channels from during the time of the robbery that’s on the other side of town, it could support their alibi. On the other hand, if you’re prosecuting someone for a crime and they have a location-marked post near the crime at that time, it could support your accusation and disprove an alibi. If you search all social media platforms, you may be able to find the location and time evidence you need to support or disqualify an alibi.

• Someone’s alibi is often an important part of their “guilty” or “not guilty” plea, and proving or disproving it requires evidence.
• Having time and location-stamped social media posts can help you support or disqualify someone’s alibi.
• To get information about an alibi for either side, you can use information found in a social media search. 

Expand your scope of information with a social media search

People often assume that activity on social media is private or anonymous, even when they attach their real name to their posts. Because of this false sense of anonymity, people tend to share a lot of personal information about not only themselves but also about their families, friends, and other people they associate with. Performing a social media profile search with a social search engine can help you create a web of connections and build a more robust profile on an individual.

• Social media is an avenue for socializing online, so social media posts often reveal a lot of information about who an individual is related to or associates with.
• If you’re looking for additional information about someone’s family, friends, or associates, you can often find it with a social media search.
• Finding people who are connected to a specific individual with a social media username search is helpful if you’re trying to locate a witness or gather deeper information about an individual for your case. 

How a social media profile search can add to the burden of proof

Social media is circumstantial evidence because it’s possible for people to make things seem different than they actually are, which means it’s essentially impossible to build a case based solely on social media. However, when you perform a social media search in a social search engine, you can do your due diligence and add social media activity to existing physical evidence, helping you meet the burden of proof. For example, if you’re handling a personal injury case and someone posted about their injury, you can use these posts to support existing evidence of the accident — making it easier to convince the court to rule in your client’s favor. 

• It’s difficult to build a case using only evidence from social media sites because social media is biased and circumstantial.
• However, you may be able to find deeper information on social media that can support existing physical evidence.
• Adding social media evidence to other evidence can help you meet the burden of proof and increase your chances of winning a case. 

Can a social media search engine help in your case?

Just a few decades ago, social media barely existed, and social accounts certainly weren’t widespread.  Because courts only recently began to allow activity on social media accounts to be used as evidence in cases, many attorneys aren’t familiar with using it in their cases. However, social media is an incredibly powerful tool for attorneys because it can not only add to existing evidence to meet the burden of proof, but it can also help you build a web of connections and establish an individual’s character. Whether you’re looking to use social media search results as evidence in court, to help with the skip tracing process for locating witnesses, or to perform a more thorough background investigation on an individual for legal research, Tracers social media search engine is the solution.

With Tracers social media search tools, you can get comprehensive social media information about someone, including , social networking profiles, social media websites, web pages, latest news about a person, email addresses, usernames, nicknames, social mentions, phone numbers, blog posts, and blog comments, in one easy-to-read report. These search results can be used to create a more robust profile on any individual and find evidence not available in other records — helping you build a stronger case and gain the upper hand in court.

More information

What is a social media search engine?

A social media search engine allows you to perform a search of all social networks. It’s becoming more common for judges to allow social media evidence in courtrooms, and with more people than ever using social media today, it’s highly likely your subject has at least some presence on social media.

What do I need to access a social media search engine?

If you’re a legal professional looking to use social media as evidence in court or to build a stronger case, you can access a social media search engine. Social media searches can help you strengthen your case and provide evidence not found in a public records search.

What does a social media search engine reveal?

A social media search engine can reveal a number of things. It’s common for people to post on social media about their personal thoughts and beliefs, which means you can often use these posts to establish a person’s character. Also, being able to look through someone’s social media presence to find time and location-stamped posts can help you support or disqualify someone’s alibi, build a robust profile on someone, or add to the burden of evidence.

How can I get started with using a social media search engine?

Bringing social media into a courtroom is a relatively new phenomenon, and it’s easy to wonder whether it can actually help your case. With a social media search engine like Tracers, you can get plenty of social media information about someone. That includes social networking profiles, email addresses, usernames, nicknames, blog posts and blog comments. All that information can help you create a robust portfolio on anyone, whether friend or foe.