Internet Artifacts

The internet has become a staple in commercial and consumer environments. Digital communication between users is a daily activity. It is uncommon for a household not to have a device connected to the internet in some manner. They give students in elementary school devices to connect to the internet to enhance their education. Email addresses, URLs, social media, and file sharing are all vectors of activities a user can partake in. It is up to the user to decide whether their online activities will meet social norms and be accepted or whether they will cross the line and conduct criminal activity. Your job as a digital forensic investigator will be to investigate their activities in the digital realm.

In this chapter, we will be discussing some of the common browsers and social media sites and the artifacts they provide. We will also discuss P2P file-sharing tools, cloud computing services, and their artifacts.

We’ll be covering them in the following...