A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as knowledge or expertise. [1] User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn; and serve as voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits. [2] In personal computing and operating systems, user profiles serve to categorise files, settings, and documents by individual user environments, known as ‘accounts’, allowing the operating system to be more friendly and catered to the user. [3] Physical user profiles serve as identity documents such as passports, driving licenses and legal documents that are used to identify an individual under the legal system.
A user profile can also be considered as the computer representation of a user model. A user model is a (data) structure that is used to capture certain characteristics about an individual user, and the process of obtaining the user profile is called user modeling [4] or profiling.
The origin of user profiles can be traced to the origin of the passport, an identity document (ID) made mandatory in 1920, after World War I following negotiations at the League of Nations. [5] The passport served as an official government record of an individual. Consequently, Immigration Act of 1924 was established to identify an individual's country of origin. In the 21st century, passports have now become a highly sought-after commodity as it is widely accepted as a source of verifying an individual's identity under the legal system. [6]
With the advent of digital revolution and social media websites, user profiles have transitioned to an organised group of data describing the interaction between a user and a system. [7] Social media sites like Instagram allow individuals to create profiles that are representative of their desired personality and image. Filling all fields of profile information may not be necessary to create a meaningful self-presentation, which grants individual more control over of the identity they wish to present by displaying the most meaningful attributes. [8] A personal user profile is a key aspect of an individual's social networking experience, around which his/her public identity is built. [9]
A user profile can be of any format if it contains information, settings and/or characteristics specific to an individual. Most popular user profiles include those on photo and video sharing websites such as Facebook and Instagram, accounts on operating systems, such as those on Windows and MacOS and physical documents such as passports and driving licenses.
Effectively structured user profiles on social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook offer a way for people to form impressions about someone that is predictive or similarly meeting them offline. [9] The condensed format of social media profiles allows for quick filtering of millions of profiles by matching individuals by similar characteristics and interests; information provided upon sign up. A research conducted highlights that only a “thin slice” [7] of information is required to form an impression about an individual online (Stecher and Counts 2008). Online user profiles eliminate the complexity of interaction that is present in ‘face-to-face’ meetings such as behavioural, facial, and environmental information, resulting in increased predictiveness of user personality. [10]
Dating apps and websites solely rely on an individual's user profile and the information provided to form interactions and communication with others on the platform. [11] Despite having control over presented information, lying is minimal in online dating contexts (Hancock, Toma and Ellison, 2007). Apps such as Bumble allow users to ‘match’ with other individuals based on their characteristics and selected filters that allow users to narrow the spectrum of search to their preference. Information for a user's profile is voluntarily specified by the user and includes information such as height, interests, photographs, gender or education.
The requirement of information varies respective to each platform, and there surrounds little consensus to an appropriate amount of information for a condensed user profile. Universally, all social networking platforms display an individual's profile picture and an “about me” page that allows for self-expression.
Influencer user profiles are third party endorsers who shape audience attitudes and decisions through social media content such as photos, blogs and tweets. [12] Social Media Influencers (SMI) often hold a significant following on a social media platform which enables them to be recognised as opinion leaders to shape an information influence to their audience. [13] 'Influencer marketing' industry gained prominence in 2018, when the photo sharing app Instagram crossed 1 billion users, [14] subsequently with approximately 60,000 google search queries for 'influencer marketing' the same year. [15] Influencer user profiles hold a unique selling point, or public personality that is unique and charismatic to the needs and wants of their target audience. [16] SMI profiles advertise product information, latest promotions and regularly engage with their followers to maintain their online persona. [17] Messages endorsed by social media influencers are often perceived as reliable and compelling, as a study conducted found 82% of followers were more inclined to follow the suggestions of their favorite influencer. [18] This allows advertisers to leverage online user profiles and their audience rapport to target younger and niche audiences. [18] According to a market survey, influencer marketing through social media profiles yields a return 11 times higher than traditional marketing, as they are more capable of communicating to a niche segment. [18] Most popular influencers include sport starts such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Hollywood personalities such as Dwayne Johnson and Kylie Jenner each with over 200 million followers respectively. [19]
Online shopping or Ecommerce websites such as Amazon use information from a customer's user profile and interests to generate a list of recommended items to shop. Recommendation algorithms analyse user demographic data, history, and favourite artists to compile suggestions. The store rapidly adapts to changing user needs and preferences, with generation of real time results required within half of a second. [20] New profiles naturally have limited information for algorithms to analyse, and customer data of each interaction provides valuable information which is stored as a database linked with each individual profile. [20] User profiles on ecommerce websites also serve to improve sales of sellers as individuals are recommend products that other "customers who bought this item also bought" to widen the selection of the buyer. [21] A study conducted found that user profiles and recommendation algorithms have significant impact on related product sales and overall spending of an individual. [21] A process known as "collaborative filtering " tries to analyse common products of interest for an individual on the basis of views expressed by other similar behaving profiles. [22] Features such as product ratings, seller ratings and comments allow individual user profiles to contribute to recommendation algorithms, eliminate adverse selection and contribute to shaping an online marketplace adhering to Amazons zero tolerance policy for misleading products. [23]
Modern software and applications account for user profiles as a foundation on which a usable application is built. The structure and layout of an application such as its menus, features and controls are often derived from user's selected settings and preferences. [24] The origin of digital user profiles in computer systems was first initiated by Windows NT that held user settings and information in a separate environment variable named %USERPROFILE% and held the framework to a user's profile root. [25] Consequently, operating systems such as MacOS further accelerated prominence of user profiles in Mac OS X 10.0. Iterations since have been made with each operating system release with the aim to maximise user friendliness with the system. Features such as keyboard layouts, time zones, measurement units, synchronisation of different services and privacy preferences are made available during the setup of a user account on the computer [26]
Administrator user profiles have complete access to the system and its permissions. [27] It is often the first user profile on a system by design, and is what allows other accounts to be created. However, since the administrator account has no restrictions, they are highly vulnerable to malware and viruses, with potential to impact all other accounts. [28]
Guest accounts allow other people access to your system with limited functionality and restrictions on modifying apps, settings and documents. [29] Guest user accounts solve the concern of providing entire access of your account to other individuals. On MacOS, guest profiles don't require a password, however are completely controlled by parental controls on an administrative account. [30] Features such as automatic data & history deletion after a session is closed, allow guest accounts to save disk space once a user logs off. [30] Guest accounts are most popularly used in public services such as libraries where individuals can request for a temporary account to complete work and research. [31]
Physical user profiles or legal documents such as passport and driving license are widely accepted as an official government record of an individual's details. [5] [ failed verification ] Much like digital user profiles, these documents outline primary characteristics of an individual such as their full legal name, birthdate, address portrait picture and a date of expiry. [32] [33] In recent history, many user profiles include a date of expiry or date of creation to indicate the legitimacy of the document and/or to encourage renewal to maintain accuracy of details. In some countries, it is a requirement to have a valid passport for six months after the planned leave from the country. [34]
National identity documents are any documents issued by the official national authority, and are part of a government record. [35] It is used to verify aspects of an individual's personal identity. Government issued documents include birth certificates, drivers licence, marriage certificate, national identity document and a social security card. [35] The format of identity documents varies with each individual country.
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal, surfaced in 2018, raised global concerns over the privacy and the psychographic profiling algorithms that can be derived from user profiles. [36] In 2013, Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge Analytica developed an application "thisisyourdigitallife", which operated as a personality quiz, with the key caveat of connecting to an individual's Facebook user profile to operate. [37] Many news sources documented Cambridge Analytica's exploitation of the Facebook data algorithm, where users not only gave the app permissions to access their "likes", but also information about their contacts and friends. [36] The amassed data approximating 87 million Facebook users was harvested and exploited legally, to predict and influence the individual voting decisions in the 2016 presidential election. [36] For many users it was unsettling that social media was being used to influence public opinion, leading to #deletefacebook campaigns on Twitter as a backlash to the scandal and Facebook's inability to guard privacy invasions. [38] However, a research conducted on undergraduate students revealed many users believe that an exchange of personal information is necessary to participate in a social network and thus, despite the "breach of trust" (Zuckerberg, 2018) minimal users left the platform permanently. [38]
In the months following Mark Zuckerberg's (founder) congressional hearing regarding the scandal, 74% of users made adjustments to their use of Facebook user profiles and changed their privacy settings. [38] The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) legally required Facebook to acquire explicit consent of the user in use of their data, alongside disclosing appropriate information about the third party identity. [36]
Social media dissatisfaction can arise from challenges relating to misinformation, privacy and anti-social behaviours. [39] 'Facebooklessness' a term coined by Ongun & Güder, 2013, considers the intentional distancing and isolation from Facebook. The #deletefacebook movement arose after the Cambridge Analytica Scandal 2018, which fuelled a lack of trust for the service and its ability to protect user information. Some reasons for intentional distancing was time-waste, reducing distraction, privacy concerns, seeking new relationships and coping with lost relationships. [39] The movement away from Facebook is less of a one time gush, but a more steady trickle over the course. [40] Some users adapted by deactivating their profiles (which can be reactivated later), others permanently and unretrievably deleting their accounts. For many users, deactivating was a reactionary and a temporary response to the scandal, as social needs and constant connectedness with relationships introduced imperatives to stay. [38]
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing and especially relate to mass surveillance.
A digital identity is data stored on computer systems relating to an individual, organization, application, or device. For individuals, it involves the collection of personal data that is essential for facilitating automated access to digital services, confirming one's identity on the internet, and allowing digital systems to manage interactions between different parties. It is a component of a person's social identity in the digital realm, often referred to as their online identity.
Social search is a behavior of retrieving and searching on a social searching engine that mainly searches user-generated content such as news, videos and images related search queries on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr. It is an enhanced version of web search that combines traditional algorithms. The idea behind social search is that instead of ranking search results purely based on semantic relevance between a query and the results, a social search system also takes into account social relationships between the results and the searcher. The social relationships could be in various forms. For example, in LinkedIn people search engine, the social relationships include social connections between searcher and each result, whether or not they are in the same industries, work for the same companies, belong the same social groups, and go the same schools, etc.
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by American technology conglomerate Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed almost 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the third-most-visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
Facebook has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure. The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects that include feelings of sexual jealousy, stress, lack of attention, and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.
Digital footprint or digital shadow refers to one's unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions, and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices. Digital footprints can be classified as either passive or active. The former is composed of a user's web-browsing activity and information stored as cookies. The latter is often released deliberately by a user to share information on websites or social media. While the term usually applies to a person, a digital footprint can also refer to a business, organization or corporation.
Social network advertising, also known as social media targeting, is a group of terms used to describe forms of online advertising and digital marketing that focus on social networking services. A significant aspect of this type of advertising is that advertisers can take advantage of users' demographic information, psychographics, and other data points to target their ads.
Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
Since the arrival of early social networking sites in the early 2000s, online social networking platforms have expanded exponentially, with the biggest names in social media in the mid-2010s being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The massive influx of personal information that has become available online and stored in the cloud has put user privacy at the forefront of discussion regarding the database's ability to safely store such personal information. The extent to which users and social media platform administrators can access user profiles has become a new topic of ethical consideration, and the legality, awareness, and boundaries of subsequent privacy violations are critical concerns in advance of the technological age.
Social media intelligence comprises the collective tools and solutions that allow organizations to analyze conversations, respond to synchronize social signals, and synthesize social data points into meaningful trends and analysis, based on the user's needs. Social media intelligence allows one to utilize intelligence gathering from social media sites, using both intrusive or non-intrusive means, from open and closed social networks. This type of intelligence gathering is one element of OSINT.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd. (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described "global election management agency" SCL Group by long-time SCL executives Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix and Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO. The well-connected founders had contact with, among others, the British Conservative Party, royal family, and military. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C. The company closed operations in 2018 in the course of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, although firms related to both Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL still exist.
Social media played an important role in shaping the course of events surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election. It facilitated greater voter interaction with the political climate; unlike traditional media, social media gave people the ability to create, comment on, and share content related to the election.
A social bot, also described as a social AI or social algorithm, is a software agent that communicates autonomously on social media. The messages it distributes can be simple and operate in groups and various configurations with partial human control (hybrid) via algorithm. Social bots can also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to express messages in more natural human dialogue.
Social profiling is the process of constructing a social media user's profile using his or her social data. In general, profiling refers to the data science process of generating a person's profile with computerized algorithms and technology. There are various platforms for sharing this information with the proliferation of growing popular social networks, including but not limited to LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook's Feed, formerly known as the News Feed, is a web feed feature for the social network. The feed is the primary system through which users are exposed to content posted on the network. Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. Using a proprietary method, Facebook selects a handful of updates to show users every time they visit their feed, out of an average of 2,000 updates they can potentially receive. Over two billion people use Facebook every month, making the network's Feed the most viewed and most influential aspect of the news industry. The feature, introduced in 2006, was renamed "Feed" in 2022.
Vero is a social media platform and mobile app company. Vero markets itself as a social network free from advertisements, data mining and algorithms.
In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.
Account verification is the process of verifying that a new or existing account is owned and operated by a specified real individual or organization. A number of websites, for example social media websites, offer account verification services. Verified accounts are often visually distinguished by check mark icons or badges next to the names of individuals or organizations.
Social media use in politics refers to the use of online social media platforms in political processes and activities. Political processes and activities include all activities that pertain to the governance of a country or area. This includes political organization, global politics, political corruption, political parties, and political values. The media's primary duty is to present us with information and alert us when events occur. This information may affect what we think and the actions we take. The media can also place pressure on the government to act by signaling a need for intervention or showing that citizens want change
Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, has faced a number of privacy concerns. These stem partly from the company's revenue model that involves selling information collected about its users for many things including advertisement targeting. Meta Platforms Inc. has also been a part of many data breaches that have occurred within the company. These issues and others are further described including user data concerns, vulnerabilities in the company's platform, investigations by pressure groups and government agencies, and even issues with students. In addition, employers and other organizations/individuals have been known to use Meta Platforms Inc. for their own purposes. As a result, individuals’ identities and private information have sometimes been compromised without their permission. In response to these growing privacy concerns, some pressure groups and government agencies have increasingly asserted the users’ right to privacy and to be able to control their personal data.