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. Ferretly's algorithm considers all matches to arrive at an overall confidence that the social media profile belongs to the subject.
The following table lists out the identifiers and confidence values Ferretly uses when determining confidence of a candidate profile match.
Identifier | Description | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
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). | 50% |
Non-Unique Name | A name match, for a name based on a fuzzy matching algorithm that considers alternate names, e.g., William = Bill. | 30% |
Location | A match on location based on a 60 mile radius. | 25% |
Company | A company name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. | 25% |
College | A college name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. | 25% |
High School | A high school name match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. | 25% |
Database | Handle was found in a database such as a paid source, or our built-in OSINT database. | 15% |
Username | An exact match on a username to one or more subject associated profiles. | 25% |
Phone | A phone number match, based on a fuzzy matching algorithm. | 75% |
An exact match on email. | 75% | |
Image Match | A profile avatar match to one or more subject associated profile pictures based on confidence in image comparison. | 80% |
Other | A user provided match. This could be found through a friend connection, etc. | N/A |
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 provided by the customer and/or subject. | 95% |
* 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.