Use of social networking sites and applications in identification of missing and unidentified persons: A robust forensic tool

Abstract

Social media is an invaluable tool when seeking information or evidence in criminal cases or in finding missing persons. Social media encompasses vast amount of information such as videos, photos, texts posted by criminals, witnesses and/or victims itself. Social media forensics helps recuperation of electronic evidence from social networking sites which often plays a crucial role in the conviction of a suspect. However, there barely exist any applications which can aid in identifying a deceased person.For identification of deceased, forensic odontologists search for antemortem data such as dental casts, X-ray images, portrait pictures showing the anterior teeth etc., for comparison with the post-mortem data. Archetypal features such as tooth rotations, diastemas, missing teeth, supernumerary teeth, crowded teeth, recognizable removable/fixed prostheses and other attributes could be present in the missing person’s profile and can be crosschecked during the autopsy of the unidentified corpse. For this reason, smile photos represent one of the most common sources of dental information, especially when no technical antemortem dental data is available. To date, there is only one forensic application for smartphones which helps in storage of antemortem smile photo of individuals. Storing the antemortem data that is easily accessible from the social media network aids as an important forensic tool especially in natural disasters or terrorist attacks where human identification process can be arduous.