Data retrieval from online social network profiles for social engineering applications

With the increased use of online social networking sites, data retrieval from social networking profiles is becoming a major tool for business. What makes social networking profile data different is its semi-structured format. The structure and the presentation of profile data change all the time. In social networking there is a lack of research into automated data retrieval from semi-structured Web pages. Our approach is based on automated retrieval of the profile´s attributes and list of top friends from MySpace by examining and extracting the relevant tokens in the parsed HTML code. The tokens were placed into a repository and Breadth First Search algorithm was used. The approach was implemented and tested with a profile which resulted in over 800 top friend profiles and attributes being extracted. This implementation process highlighted that MySpace profile structures vary depending on profile type and the way in which the user has customised the profile.