Your paralegal found his Facebook. Here's what she missed.

July 17, 2026 · Ridgeback Investigations

Anyone can search a name on Facebook. Plenty of adjusters and paralegals do exactly that, find a profile in five minutes, and call it research.

Then the case moves forward, and the five-minute search becomes the problem. The profile belonged to a different James Brooks. The screenshot has no date, no URL, and no way to prove where it came from. The post that mattered sat one platform over, on an account under a nickname nobody thought to check. Professional OSINT exists because finding a profile is easy. Producing evidence is a discipline.

Attribution is the whole ballgame

The first question a trained analyst asks sounds almost silly: is this account actually your subject?

Same-name profiles are everywhere. A defensible OSINT report ties every account to the subject through multiple independent identifiers before a single post gets cited: the face in tagged photos, known relatives in the friends list, a birthday post landing on the right date, a vehicle in the driveway that matches the registration. Each account in our reports carries its attribution trail in writing, so opposing counsel can follow exactly how we know it’s him.

A search that skips this step produces the most dangerous thing in claims work: confident findings about the wrong person.

Evidence needs a chain, and screenshots need a pedigree

A screenshot texted from a paralegal’s phone is a picture. A capture taken by a trained analyst is evidence: full page, URL visible, timestamped, preserved in original form the day it was found, and logged into case storage with the rest of the file.

That difference decides admissibility. Social content gets deleted, edited, and locked down constantly, often the moment a claimant senses interest in their case. When the account goes private next month, our capture from the day of discovery still exists, and there’s a documented trail showing when and where it came from. A recollection that “the post was public when we saw it” persuades nobody.

The sweep goes far past the big three

DIY research checks Facebook, maybe Instagram, and stops. Subjects live everywhere else too.

A professional sweep works through the long tail: TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Venmo, Strava, fundraising pages, marketplace listings, review histories, obituary comments, league schedules, race results. Google reviews alone have ended cases: a claimant who can’t lift twenty pounds, reviewing the batting cages he visited twice last month, under his own contributor account. Every platform indexes life differently, and each one takes its own technique to search well.

Timing matters as much as coverage. Every find gets classified against the date of loss. Activity from before an injury tells one story. The same activity three weeks after tells another, and our reports separate the two on every item, down to the map.

Method is what you’re actually hiring

Two more things separate the professional product from an afternoon of googling.

Legality first. Trained analysts collect passively, from public view, without friending, messaging, or pretexting their way into private spaces. Evidence gathered by deceiving your subject into accepting a follow request invites a motion you will lose. There are also federal rules about how personal data can be sourced and used, and a professional shop works inside them.

Verification second. Every fact in the report states how it’s known. Accounts we can’t fully attribute get labeled that way instead of quietly blended in. That honesty reads conservative on the page, and it’s precisely what makes the rest of the report bulletproof when it counts.

The math for adjusters, employers, and attorneys

An OSINT investigation costs a fraction of a single deposition. It routinely reshapes settlement posture, surfaces impeachment material, kills fraudulent claims early, and verifies the honest ones so everyone can move on. The DIY alternative risks the wrong subject, spoiled evidence, a privacy claim, and hours of skilled staff time producing screenshots a court may never see.

Search your claimant yourself and you’ll probably find something. Hire a professional and you’ll know what you found, prove where it came from, and put it to work.

Ridgeback’s CrossTrack OSINT investigations serve adjusters, employers, and attorneys across Michigan and Ohio. Refer a case through our confidential intake and we’ll follow up fast.