Aaron Edens - Online Investigations: Adam4Adam, Ashley Madison, Grindr, OKCupid, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, and More

Websites and applications for dating, hook-ups, and casual sex are abundant. They can be found online and in the application stores of Apple and Google. They offer the chance to meet someone with minimal effort and varying degrees of anonymity. These services have millions of users. An estimated 41,000,000 Americans have tried online dating. Two of the largest sites, eHarmony and match.com have a combined membership of close to 37,000,000 people. Customers spend a lot of money of online dating and casual sex services. The average users spends $239 annual on these types of services. The industry generates approximately $1,249,000,000 every year.

While many are looking for a long term relationship, others are interested simply in sex. In one study, 33% of women respondents reported they had sex on the first online date encounter. Unfortunately, the nature of these sites makes them hunting grounds for those who would prey on the vulnerable. According to one source approximately 10% of registered sex offenders use online dating sites to meet people. These can include pedophiles prowl these sites looking for underage children to begin the process of grooming them and rapists who use these sites to set up their next victim for drug facilitated sexual assaults. Robbers also use these sites to entice their victims to a meeting site knowing they are unlikely to report the crime as they were attempting to engage in casual sex, often with the same gender.

Those who use casual dating sites and applications may feel anonymous or at least discrete. However, there is an abundance of investigative leads that can be followed up on to lead to the true identity and location of suspects using these types of services. Each comes with its own unique particularities and challenges. Some of these services are out of the country. Others store very little usable information on their servers. A few are particularly vulnerable to forensic recovery of evidence from devices used to access the service.

The following chapters cover some of the most popular hetero and homosexual dating sites. The information they store, service of process information, and forensic vulnerabilities for each site are covered in detail. But, before getting started with a dating service investigation, there are some important considerations to address.

The nature of dating and casual sex applications and services makes them generally not suitable for work. Many contain graphic images of genitalia and detailed descriptions of sex acts. Accordingly, many law enforcement systems block access to these sites by using firewalls and monitoring systems. It is prudent to advise the information technology staff of your department that you will be accessing these sites during the course of an investigation.

Similarly, it is also wise to make sure supervisory personnel are aware. Accessing these sites may trigger a notification that could make it appear you are trolling for sex on the departments time. Advance notification can intercept uncomfortable conversations and internal affairs investigations before they begin.

Mental preparation is also key to successful investigations involving casual dating/sex sites. While most law enforcement officers are accustomed to graphic images, some law enforcement officers might be uncomfortable dealing with the graphic nature and descriptions found on some of the sites. This is particularly true when investigating many of the services catering to the same sex.

Many online dating and casual sex applications do not preserve data on their servers once it has been deleted. This makes it imperative to preserve digital evidence as soon as it is located. In the time it takes to get a search warrant, court order, or subpoena, the suspect may irretrievably delete evidence.

The quickest and easiest way to preserve evidence from one of these applications or service is to capture the page as either a PDF or using screen capture software. This allows the investigator to retain a working copy of the profile or message. It may also serve as evidence in the event the profile or message is deleted. PDF and screenshots are not the ideal evidence. However, if nothing else exists after the profile or message is altered or deleted, the PDF or screenshot could be the best and only evidence.

Most law enforcement agencies are fairly restrictive about installing software onto a departmental computer or mobile data terminal. For reasons the defy explanation, police officers can be trusted with a handgun, Taser, pepper spray, impact weapon, patrol rifle, and handcuffs but they cant be trusted with installing software on a computer.

Fortunately there is a solution already on most law enforcement desktops and mobile terminals. Microsofts OneNote is packaged with other software such as Word and Excel. It is one of the most underutilized software programs by law enforcement officers and is a tremendous tool for organizing case files and other information. OneNote can be used to save webpages into a work book and then printed or exported in a number of formats.

To save a profile, posting, or any other webpage, into OneNote select File then Print .

Within the print options select OneNote and the entire web page will be saved.

The advantage of saving webpages this way is it captures the entire page and not just the visible area. Using the Print Screen function in windows only prints the visible area and it may take several screen captures to get the entire posting.