CBA Bits & Bytes November 2018

Three Ways To Collect and Properly Preserve Web Content and Social Media (yes you need to do this!) By Brett Burney & Chelsey Lambert

Just when you got comfortable about collecting email and elec- tronic documents, a new creature emerged from the murky lagoon of digital data … social media. While email still continues to be the primary source of poten- tially relevant electronically stored information (ESI) in most litigation matters, it is quickly taking a backseat to the prolif- eration of web content and social media. It is amazing what humans will say and reveal and admit on public social media channels, and if you are not actively seeking out this informa- tion then you are overlooking a significant source of relevant information. But how do you pull content from a Facebook profile? How do you capture a never-ending Twitter or Instagram stream of consciousness? How do you grab someone’s LinkedIn page be- fore they make changes to it? How do you “print” a web page so that it looks like what you see in your web browser? More and more today, these questions arise in almost every single litigation matter because these digital domains are where your clients and opposing parties are living and interacting. Here are three methods for collecting information posted on the web and social media channels: “Printing” a Website The first method most people try is to simply “print” what they see in their web browser. They either try to print to a physical piece of paper, or “print” to a static PDF file they can save to their computer. While there are a handful of instances where this method could be appropriate for preserving web content, it is a dreadful way to preserve electronically stored informa- tion. When you use the print function inside a web browser, you are effectively attempting to fit the square peg of a dynamic web page into the round hole of an 8½” x 11” sheet of paper. Not only are you losing the significant metadata that’s built into the web page, but the end result will look nothing like what you see in your web browser–the pictures have moved around, the text is scrunched, the ads get in the way, etc. If you insist on using this method to preserve web content, be sure to document who launched the print job, the date & time it was done, the URL it was pulled from, and what web browser you were using. Some of this information can be printed at the bottom of the paper or PDF file, but you may need to check your print settings for this. Screen Capture Software A second method is to use screen capture software. Both the Mac and Windows operating systems have a built-in method for “snipping” a screenshot, but you can also use more sophis-

ticated options such as Snagit www.snagit.com from TechSmith https://www.techsmith.com/ (Snagit will even allow you to capture a “scrolling” webpage). While this method will guarantee that the resulting JPEG image or PDF file will visually look exactly the same as what you see in your web browser, it still lacks the ability to collect any of the vital and descriptive metadata embedded into the web page. If you use either of these first two methods for capturing web content, it is highly recommended that you document all of your actions since you are effectively becoming a link in the chain of custody for the web-based electronic evidence. Software and Tools Built for this Purpose This last method is the most comprehensive, reliable, and verifiable–use a software, service, or tool that is built specifi- cally for collecting and preserving web content. Not only do these tools produce an accurate visual representation of the web content (it looks like what you see on your screen), but they collect as much metadata as possible and include a date & timestamp, the server’s IP address, and the web browser that was used. All of this information helps to immediately authen- ticate where the web content came from. Here are a few tools on the market today that you should consider: Page Vault (www.page-vault.com)–they offer an “on demand” option for capturing websites, Facebook profiles, and web con- tent such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc. PageFreezer Legal (https://legal.pagefreezer.com/)–they can capture everything from a single web page to social media ac- counts. X1 Social Discovery (www.x1.com)–probably the most compre- hensive option for collecting social media but does require a bit of a learning curve to get familiar with the software. There are more tools coming on to the market because this is such an important concern in any litigation matter today. Just be aware that your duty to collect and preserve electronically stored information includes web content such as blog posts and social media, and then consider using one of the tools mentioned above to ensure the job gets done right! Brett Burney & Chelsey Lambert are the authors of the 2018 eDiscovery Buyers Guide at https://lextechreview.com, a handbook that explains when and how to use eDiscovery solutions without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

LPMT Bits & Bytes l November 2018

13