ANNEX A: TIPS FOR BUILDING A CREDIBLE SOCK PUPPET

Building a fake profile can be a tedious and time-consuming task, but tips to build the credibility of a sock puppet include the following:

•   Don’t leave a profile picture blank: nothing screams ‘hastily put together fake profile’ louder than a blank profile picture. Take the time to select an image that suits the legend of the sock puppet. Abstract profile images of cartoon characters and the like seem to work as well as images of real people. This can be useful if you are legally constrained from using images of another person within your profile.

•   Be female: female sock puppets tend to be more successful at developing links and maintaining anonymity than male sock puppets. This rule seems to apply for either male- or female-dominated networks.

•   Like a lot: many social media platforms allow a user to like a post by another person. Liking a lot of posts is a good way to show that behind your sock puppet is a real person and a team player. This trick allows the sock puppet to more quickly integrate into the community environment common to many social media platforms without the need to engage in lengthy and time-consuming dialogues and posts.

•   Build a sock puppet’s skills from the skill sets around you: look around you in your workplace for useful skills such as linguistic ability and specialist domain knowledge that can be incorporated within your sock puppet’s legend. This can facilitate entry into closed parts of the Internet and as most communication within social media platforms is relatively banal ‘banter’, these specialist skills are rarely called upon or questioned once a sock puppet has been admitted to a group (hence there is not the necessity for multiple operators to be standing by behind a sock puppet).

•   Use a ‘real’ email address: using a free webmail account such as Hotmail and Gmail does detract from the believability of a sock puppet, whereas using a valid email address derived from a hosted website, e.g. [email protected], adds greatly to the believability of a sock puppet legend.

•   Be bold: in many online communities paranoia around infiltrators runs high and any new users are treated with suspicion initially. Go with this. I have claimed I am a bumbling FBI agent on many an occasion when challenged and this approach has always defused the situation with humour.

•   Get to know cultural norms: online communities can develop strange subcultural norms all of their own such as badges of prestige and even whole new languages. Take your time to understand these norms free from the judgements of mainstream society.

•   Inward connections to your sock puppet from other users are stronger than the outward connections that you make with other users: not so much a method, more a point to bear in mind when conducting an operation. Materially this often translates into users who have initiated a connection with the investigator being more willing to give away information or do the investigator’s bidding e.g. introducing the investigator to another profile.

•   Develop a constellation of sock puppets to achieve the same objective: sometimes in an investigation you get one shot to link to a person of interest or gain access to a certain forum. If this is the case, consider making a number of sock puppet personas to conduct the reconnaissance phase of the operation. Although labour-intensive, this approach can yield results for the most delicate of operations.