Subject Identifiers and Candidate Profile Confidence
Subject identifiers are used when matching subject information with publicly available information from a social media profile. For instance, if the subject name matches the display name for a social media profile, then this identifier match is set to true upon handle validation (when a new handle is entered or presented as a candidate profile).
In general, the more identifiers that are matched, the higher the overall confidence.
The following table lists out the identifiers Ferretly uses when determining confidence of a candidate profile.
Identifier | Description |
|---|---|
Unique Name* | A name match, for a name which is determined to be unique (based on less than 5 instances of the name on the social media platform). |
Non-Unique Name | A name match, for a name based on a fuzzy matching algorithm that considers alternate names, e.g., William = Bill. |
Location | A match on location based on a 100 mile radius. |
Company | A company name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. |
College | A college name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. |
High School | A high school name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. |
Database | Handle was found in a database such as a paid source, or our built-in OSINT database. Note, this does not impact confidence. |
Username | An exact match on a username to one or more subject associated profiles. |
Phone | A phone number match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. |
An exact match on email. | |
Image Match | A profile avatar match to one or more subject associated profile pictures based on confidence in image comparison. |
Other | A user provided match. This could be found through a friend connection, etc. |
Subject Provided | A social media profile added to the subject at time of subject creation via our external API or from a related profile referenced in a validated handle for the subject. This assumes that the handle was provide by the customer and/or subject. |
* Unique Name matches are determined by using Ferretly search. When manually adding a subject profile or via import, unique name can not be determined since it bases uniqueness from the total returned set of candidate profiles on a given social media platform.