It happens very often that you open a Facebook profile and there is not a lot of information shown. Nothing on the About section, a couple of likes and maybe 3 or 4 photos and posts or even none. Since Facebook Graph stopped working it has become more difficult to extract viable information from semi-closed Facebook profiles but here we list you 5 basic tips that you can always pivot from:

Step 1

Look at the URL. Does it have an ID (number) or a username? If it has a number it can give you a pretty rough idea on when the profile was created. If it has a username you can still get the ID from the source code and do the previous step, and you can run that username and check for other social media profiles with the same or similar usernames.

Step 2

Look at the profile picture. Is it quite unique? Like the person’s face or something clearly personal? Don’t forget to run a reverse image search to see if you can find that picture elsewhere online as well.

Step 3

No photos or posts? Don’t forget to go to the profile’s search option (look for the magnifying glass icon) and search for the POI’s name, surname and maybe try other keywords, like friend, happy birthday, family, dinner etc! No magnifying glass icon? Extract the users ID number and place it in this URL;

https://facebook.com/profile/ID/search/?q=KEYWORD

and replace KEYWORD with the keyword of choice.

Step 4

Look at the photos (including cover and profile pic) and other public posts and see the likes and comments section. This is particularly useful if the person doesn’t have their friends publicly listed.

• Focus on more personal photos or posts to identify possible family members.
• Focus on more professional photos or posts to identify possible co-workers.
• Search for people with the same surname in the likes and comments to identify family members.
• Search for very personal comments, use of hearts or other emotional expressions to identify possible closer people.

Step 5

Check out the profiles of those identified in the last step, specially if they have more open profiles:

• Look for pictures where your POI is.
• If the friend list is public, try to find other co-workers or family members that may be friends with your POI.
• Use the profile search option to look for posts with keywords like the company, the name or surname of your POI.

Step 6

There you go, follow these 5 steps and you will, for sure, have more than what you started with! Don’t forget also to check our previous post, with more tips, https://osintcurio.us/2020/10/19/what-to-do-when-a-facebook-profile-is-private/ although the group scanner addon is no longer working.