Downloading & Analyzing Twitter Tweets

1. Downloading & Analyzing Twitter Tweets July 6, 2020 By, Eric Neal – PIF Solutions, LLC – http://www.pif-solutions.com If you have ever started an investigation on someone and found their Twitter profile, you’re typically going to find one of two things — A profile that was maybe updated a few times and hasn’t been touched in years, or a profile that is updated more times than a person blinks! If that’s the case, it might be best to just download all the Tweets into a spreadsheet and conduct your analysis from there. A tool that I’ve recently started to use is — Vincinitas.io. (I am not at all affiliated with this tool). This is completely free and all you need is a Twitter account. I suggest using one that is not tied into your real profile, but one that you use for investigative purposes. Now you don’t have to use this specific tool. If you want to try something else, Google something like: Free online Twitter Analysis Tweet Download — you should be able to find what you’re looking for. To use this tool, head on over to: https://www.vicinitas.io Choose your preferable option, I did “User Tweets” and then enter in the user name (@whateverhere). Then click “Search”. You will then be given the option to Authorize this tool to your Twitter. Accept authorization and the download should began. This is good up to 3,200 Tweets. Beyond that, you’ll have to pay a subscription fee.

2. Once your download is completed, you should get a spreadsheet filled with data. I’ve blurred out some of the details here on my latest analysis, but I will tell you what you will see in each column. • Text: This is the specific tweet. • Name / Screen Name: This should be just the person and user name you ran. • UTC: The exact time and date stamp of the Tweet. • Created Alt: The exact time and date stamp in a different format. • Favorites: How many times the Tweet was loved / favorited. • Retweets: How many times others had retweeted the user’s tweet. • Language: What language the Tweet was in. • Client: What platform the Tweet was made on (Web, Iphone, Android, etc). • Tweet Type: Reply or original Tweet. • URL's: What URL's are listed in the Tweet, if any. • Hashtags: How many hashtags are listed within the Tweet. • Mentions: How many times that Tweet has been mentioned. • Media Type: Photo, Video, etc. • Media URL's: Where the media originates if available There is a whole other tab called “Users” listed in the spreadsheet, but that is not prevalent to this tutorial. It basically shows stats on each individual listed in all the mentioned Tweets. There are many ways to utilize this data. For the purpose of asset recovery, I have specific searches I tend to use right off the bat. Here are my most common searches: • Bank Search — Bank; Deposit; Account; Wells Fargo; Capital One; Bank of America; US Bank; Investment; Trading; etc • Employment Search — Job; Work; Boss; Shift; Overtime; Paycheck; coworker, etc • Residence Search — Home; House; Neighbor; yard; etc Obviously these searches are highly customizable to your needs and whatever type of investigation you may be doing. Being able to search through multiple pieces of data just by hitting “ctrl-F” (on a Windows computer) and being able to do so offline, definitely has it’s perks. The best thing you can do with this knowledge is to try it out on a few test subjects and create a system that will work best for your type of investigations.