Top 10 Social Media Forensic Tools

1. X1 Social Discovery
   Collects, indexes, and analyzes content from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and webmail.
   Best for: Legal investigations and evidence collection.

2. Magnet AXIOM
   Recovers data from social apps (WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) across mobile and cloud sources.
   Best for: Deep mobile and cloud forensics.

3. Social Links
   Uses OSINT to analyze connections, user behavior, and hidden data from 500+ sources including social media.
   Best for: Law enforcement and intelligence analysis.

4. SOCIETAS
   Gathers and visualizes open-source data from social platforms to investigate fake profiles and networks.
   Best for: Identity tracing and digital footprint mapping.

5. Maltego
   Graph-based analysis tool that tracks connections between people, accounts, emails, domains, and more.
   Best for: Relationship mapping and influencer networks.

6. Hunchly
   Automatically captures and documents every web page you visit during an investigation.
   Best for: Web and social media content preservation.

7. FBStalker (now defunct)
   Used to extract info from public Facebook profiles before being shut down; a concept still used by newer tools.
   Best for: Public Facebook data (conceptual learning).

8. SentiOne
   Real-time monitoring and sentiment analysis of social media conversations.
   Best for: Reputation management and early threat detection.

9. OctoReely
   Collects social media data across platforms for threat intelligence, geolocation, and behavioral patterns.
   Best for: Field operations and profiling.

10. Pipl
    Deep people search tool that uncovers linked social profiles, emails, usernames, and more.
    Best for: Background checks and identity investigation.