Often, that information is found on social media accounts. Traditional background checks, however, do not provide everything an employer might want to know.

Many employers use OSINT to find information on current and perspective employees. In this digital age, a lot of information is available online, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

This week she explores how sock puppets can be used for beneficial purposes. In this 4-part blog series, up-and-coming cybersecurity researcher Dakota State University Junior, Mariel Klosterman, describes the how sock puppets are used by malicious actors and OSINT investigators, types of sock puppet accounts, and how to create a sock puppet for information collection. However, this is not the only way to use a sock puppet account. Sock puppet accounts are mainly known to those outside the information security field as accounts used for disinformation purposes, such as swaying your opinion about a topic or a product.

Daniel Kats, Senior Principal Researcher for NortonLifeLock Research, held a similar view in his article, “Identifying Sockpuppet Accounts on Social Media Platforms:” “We define a sockpuppet as a fictitious online identity created for the purposes of deception.”

The most common definition is found on Wikipedia’s entry: A sock puppet or sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. When you search “sock puppet accounts” using Google, there are a few definitions that show in the search results, and they all follow a common theme. Junior at Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences, Dakota State University

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