A Good Desktop Investigation Doesn’t Start With Google
It starts with people: how demographics, relationships, culture, naming conventions and online behaviour shape a targeted and proportionate desktop investigation.
People don't exist in isolation.
Sociologist Barry Wellman and his colleagues describe modern life through the concept of “networked individualism”— where people operate across multiple, overlapping networks rather than within a single, tightly defined group or community. These networks can include family, partners, friends and colleagues, as well as employers, businesses, schools, sporting clubs, professional associations, interest groups and community organisations. Importantly, the internet does not sit separately from these relationships. It has become embedded in everyday life, connecting the different people, activities and communities through which we live, work and interact.
Put simply, we organise our lives through relationships and groups. We work somewhere. We know people. We join organisations. We play sport. We operate businesses. We hold qualifications. We participate in communities. We buy and sell things. We interact with institutions.
In today's world, many of these interactions leave a digital trace.
Australian data demonstrates how significant these different parts of our lives can be. In 2021, ABS research found that 92% of Australians had participated in activities with family or friends during the previous four weeks, while 39% had participated in activities with community groups or clubs. Among Australians aged 65 and over, participation in community groups or clubs increased to 50%.
Those relationships and activities matter to a desktop investigation because each can create a different source of information. A person may have little public social media activity themselves but still appear through an employer, partner, business, sporting club, professional association, community organisation or other person.
Understanding who someone is connected to, and the different parts of life in which they participate, helps determine where their digital footprint may exist.
Age matters — but it doesn't define someone
Age can provide useful context about where a person is likely to operate online, but it should never become an assumption about where they will or will not be found.
ACMA's 2025 research found 98% of Australian adults had used a communication or social-media website or app during the previous six months. Facebook was used by 78%, YouTube by 71% and Facebook Messenger by 71%.
But the underlying demographics are continually moving. Between 2024 and 2025:
Reddit use among Australians aged 55–64 increased from 8% to 14%, and among those 75+ from less than 0.5% to 5%.
Weekly Instagram use among 55–64-year-olds increased from 27% to 33%.
TikTok use among 45–54-year-olds increased from 19% to 25% over six months, while weekly use increased from 12% to 17%.
Snapchat use among 18–24-year-olds fell from 60% to 50%.
Therefore a desktop investigation search methodology developed several years ago cannot simply be repeated indefinitely. Platforms grow, decline and attract new demographics.
At the younger end, the differences are even more pronounced. In 2025 eSafety found 84% of Australian children aged 8–12 had used at least one social-media or messaging service during 2024, despite many major services having a minimum age of 13 at that time.
A good desktop investigation therefore considers age as one data point about likely online behavior, while remaining current enough to recognise when those patterns change.
Life stage can tell us more than age
Two people of exactly the same age can live completely different lives.
A person's circumstances may place them within a range of additional networks: a workplace, children's school community, sporting club, volunteer organisation, professional association, university, business or caring network.
The Australian data illustrates this particularly well among older Australians. In 2021 ABS research found 23% of Australians aged 65 and over participated in organised volunteer work, compared with 13% of people aged 18–64. Half of people aged 65+ participated in activities with community groups or clubs.
This challenges a simplistic assumption that an older subject's footprint will primarily be found through traditional social media.
Their relevant footprint might instead sit across community organisations, charities, clubs, associations, committee memberships, sporting organisations or other formal and informal networks.
For a desktop investigation, the better question is therefore not simply “How old is this person?” but “What does this person's life actually look like?”
Profession changes where people leave information
Work is another major part of a person's identity and daily activity.
At the 2021 Census, approximately 12.7 million Australians aged 15 and over were participating in the labour force. Among those reporting themselves in the labour force, 55.9% worked full-time and 31.2% worked part-time.
But different occupations create very different information environments.
A medical practitioner may have professional registration records. A security officer may require a licence. A tradesperson may operate through an ABN and advertise services. A company director may appear in corporate records and professional profiles. An academic may appear in publications and conference material.
That means occupation should influence search methodology for a desktop investigation.
The question is not simply whether someone has LinkedIn. It is what registrations, qualifications, organisations, businesses and other records would reasonably be expected to exist given what that person does.
Relationships create their own footprint
People also live within families and relationships.
Australia's household structures are diverse. The 2021 Census recorded approximately 5.5 million couple families, more than one million lone-parent families and 2.6 million couples without children. More than 2.1 million Australians reported living in a de facto relationship.
For desktop investigations, the relevance is not that someone's family should automatically be investigated. It is that a person's publicly observable footprint is not necessarily created by that person alone.
A partner may tag them in a photograph. A family business may identify them on its website. A sporting club may publish results. An employer may publish a biography. An event organiser may publish photographs. A professional association may list their membership.
Someone can have almost no public social-media presence and still have a substantial digital footprint created through their participation in other people's lives and organisations.
Culture and language change how we search
Australia's population also makes cultural and linguistic knowledge particularly important.
The ABS found 27.6% of Australia's population was born overseas in the 2021 Census. More broadly, 51.5% of Australian residents were either born overseas or had at least one parent born overseas.
Almost one-quarter of Australian households — 24.8% — used a language other than English at home. Mandarin alone was used at home by approximately 685,000 people, followed by Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Punjabi among the most commonly reported non-English languages.
That has practical implications for desktop investigations.
A person's online footprint may not exist entirely in English. Their name may be transliterated differently, appear in another script, follow different cultural naming conventions or be presented differently depending on whether they are operating professionally, socially or within their cultural community.
An English-language search of one spelling of a person's name may therefore represent only one version of that person's identity.
People present different versions of their identity
People also naturally present themselves differently depending on context.
Someone may use their full legal name on a professional register, an abbreviated name at work, a nickname socially, initials in another setting, a trading name commercially and a username within an online community.
This is not necessarily concealment. It is ordinary human behaviour.
A person formally identified as 'Matthew Jonathan Gordon' might appear as Matthew Gordon professionally, Matt Gordon socially, M. J. Gordon in a formal record and Matty within a sporting community.
Cultural naming conventions add another layer. Given names and family names may appear in different orders; names may be transliterated into English in more than one way; and someone with several given or middle names may use different combinations in different contexts.
These are not simply alternative search terms. They are identity data points.
Each needs to be considered alongside other identifiers — occupation, location, employer, photograph, telephone number, username, associated businesses or relationships — before information can confidently be attributed to the subject.
Finding someone with the same name is easy. Establishing that you have found the right person is the investigation.
People change
People change jobs. They move. Relationships change. Businesses open and close. Children grow up. Interests change. People join and leave organisations. They adopt new platforms and abandon old ones.
The online environment changes with them.
ACMA's 2026 data provides a tangible demonstration: in just one year, it recorded increases in Australian use of Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, Threads and Pinterest, while use of Messenger, Snapchat and X declined.
This matters when an investigation concerns a historical event.
The question is not necessarily who the person is today. It may be who they were, where they were working, what they were doing and how they were operating at the relevant time.
A current LinkedIn profile or Facebook account cannot automatically be treated as a representation of someone's circumstances three years ago.
Understanding people leads to better investigations
Understanding someone's age, life stage, occupation, culture, language, relationships, interests and online behaviour is not a reason to investigate every part of their life.
It provides the information necessary to decide what not to investigate.
Combined with the client's reason and goals for the investigation and the relevant timeframe, understanding the person allows a desktop investigation to identify the sources most likely to contain relevant information and avoid areas that have little connection to the enquiry.
That is what makes an investigation targeted and proportionate.
The objective is not to search every available database, platform and social network.
It is to understand the person well enough to know where to look.
Sources
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). 2021 Australia, Census All Persons QuickStats. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Household Impacts of COVID-19 Survey, April 2021. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Cultural Diversity: Census, 2021. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australian Communications and Media Authority. (2026). How We Communicate: Executive Summary and Key Findings. Australian Communications and Media Authority.
eSafety Commissioner. (2025). Children and Social Media. Australian Government, eSafety Commissioner.