Potential employers and others are now doing social media deep dives on folks. I would like to know how this is done as I have people telling me there are things posted about me I need to see. They are somehow unwilling to share this info. Tech luddite here help me out!

What rock have you been hiding under?
Employers have been snooping candidates social media for at least 10-15 years now.
This is nothing new.

it's called 'Open Source Intel'. I used to use it a lot when I was working. There are numerous ways to trace and/or track people across social media, using nothing more that the information stupid or gullible people post about themselves or their friends. None of it is classified, and none of it requires PC or a warrant.

Employers can do it as well without too much trouble.

Note though, that it is intel, not normally admissible as evidence, but still useable subsequently as PC and discoverable at trial, or on receipt of a FOIA request.

A quick Google, Pipl or Spokeo search on your name will often turn up surprising amounts of information.

I think the OP was asking how HE could find out things about himself that other have seen about HIM, and will not share with him.

It is possible for third parties with API access to scrape user data (including non-public profiles) going back to the time of account creation. You should assume that any data you put into the Meta ecosystem could wind up in unexpected places.

Use quotes around your name and screen names. e.g. "Windwolf". You can do that on facebook and on google or other search engines. There are more sophisticated ways to search via google to tell it to search a particular site for what is in quotes. I have no idea other platforms such as instagram how to search on them.

If your friend who says there is stuff out there is being truthful, just tell them to stop being an ass and show you what they're talking about.

My FB profile is only visible to friends. Anyone can find my page, but they can only see the main photo. Anything else you'd need to be a friend to see. I've never been asked about it in a job interview and would never make it public for that purpose if they asked.

quote:

Originally posted by Rick Lee:
My FB profile is only visible to friends. Anyone can find my page, but they can only see the main photo. Anything else you'd need to be a friend to see. I've never been asked about it in a job interview and would never make it public for that purpose if they asked.

Dream on.

Anything that's visible to your friends can be (if someone knows what they are doing) retrieved via their profiles. Anything about you that your friends share or post on their profiles can be retrieved.

The only way to ensure your info cannot be retrieved is to set your profile to 'only me' and not have any friends. Which defeats the object of 'social media'.

Oh, I'm sure people could defeat all kinds of measures if they really tried. I have friends who treat FB like a blog and write pages and pages per day of innermost thoughts, political vitriol, memes, etc. Those folks can never regain their privacy (and would probably never want to). But I basically keep FB for a library of old photos because I lost everything when Fototime went down two years ago after that data center fire in France.

Another tactic is to search for your email name. e.g. "Windwolf@gmail.com". Do that on google, but also go to specific social media sites you use. Search using your screen names the same way. If you are "Windwolf123" on another site, search on that site for that screen name. Even better, search for all your screen names on all the sites in case someone cross referenced you onto another site.

You can do a reverse image search on your profile pictures and background picture. That should show wherever it may also appear, so if someone else is using your photo for nefarious purposes you should be able to find it.

What we need is a real PI to step into this thread. My sister learned how to do these searches when she was internet dating. She discovered her fiance cheating by searching for his screen name on other dating sites. She reverse image searched profile pictures and discovered fraudsters.

Sorry I can't be more specific but you should be able to poke around with those ideas.

^^^^^
I'm not understanding "reverse image search".

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^
I'm not understanding "reverse image search".

Reverse image search

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^
I'm not understanding "reverse image search".

tineye dot com was a reverse image search I used when I was online dating. The stuff I discovered ranged from weird to scary.

LexusNexus is also used by some parties.