The last social media platform that I would like to cover is TikTok.
Now, TikTok has over 1.3 billion users, and it's mainly used to watch TikTok videos or to share videos
to the internet.
Now, as always, the first thing that you want to do with every single social media account is to analyze
the target profile.
You want to find any useful information, for example, if they have a different username on this account,
if they have a different display name, or if there is any link.
Another thing that you want to do is to save the person's profile picture, because we might use it
to search for it in search engines, which we will cover in a future section.
Now, if you want to download a certain TikTok video and you want to extract the metadata or the timestamps,
then you can basically play the video first, and then you want to have a look at the URL and you will
see a video ID which you want, and then you want to convert it to binary, similar to what we have
done in the LinkedIn Osint lecture.
And after you convert this number to binary, you want to copy the first 32 digits and convert it to
decimal.
Now let's say that this is the target profile.
And you would like to see when a certain video were made public.
So let's say that this is the video that I would like to see when it were made public.
So I'm going to click on it and I can look in here and see that it were made public and 2nd of October
2021.
But I would like to know at which time this video were made public.
So in this case, I can just copy the video ID from the URL and then convert it to binary using this
website that we have used before.
So I'm going to say from decimal to binary.
And then I'm going to say convert.
And then I'm going to select this number and then copy it.
And then go to my notepad and paste it in here.
And then I would like to select the first 32 digits, which you see in here.
And then I'm going to say copy and then convert from binary to decimal, and then paste the number or
the first 32 digits.
I'm going to say convert.
And then I'm going to get a Unix timestamp.
I'm going to copy it and then go to this converter that you will find its link in the resources of this
lecture.
And then I'm going to put the number in here and say convert.
And as you can see, this is the time when I posted this video and made it online.
Now let's say that you would like to find when a certain comment were made public.
And this is very similar.
All we have to do is just right mouse click on the comment and then select inspect.
And then go to this arrow and click on it.
And you want to select the complete field where the comment is.
So I'm going to click in here.
And if you looked at the HTML code you will see an ID.
You can copy the ID and do the same.
Convert it to binary and then copy the first 32 digits and convert it to decimal, and then take the
number and convert it to a normal date and time.
But in our case, what I like to do is just to go to this website.
That will make my job much easier.
So all I have to do just to paste the number, it could be the video ID or the comment ID, and then
I can click on unfurl and you can see here we have two timestamps.
And since we are investigating a TikTok account, I'm going to rely on this one.
And we can see the date and time when this comment were made.
I can obviously copy the video URL and put it in here, and it will also show me when this video were
made public.
As you can see here.
Now let's say that we would like to download this video.
So the manual method would be right mouse click in this white space and then select inspect.
And then when I click on this arrow to select a certain element in the page.
And we will select the video.
And then we'll see a URL in here.
Double click on it and then the URL will be selected.
Ctrl C to copy.
And then open a new tab.
And then Ctrl V to paste.
And then I'm going to say enter.
And now I have the video right mouse click save video as.
And then I can save it on my desktop.
So let me play it.
As you can see let's say that we would like to copy or find the link of all of these videos.
So what I always like to do is right mouse click inspect and then go to network.
And then I'm going to select media.
And then I'm going to hover over all the videos.
And then we will find the links in here.
I'm going to do this.
And you can see that now we are getting all the links of these videos.
So let me for example double click on a certain link.
Let's say this one double mouse click.
This will open a new tab and I can immediately right mouse click and then save the video as and I can
save it on my desktop.
Now let's say that you don't like to use this manual method, and you would like to use a certain service
for free to download all of the user TikTok videos.
So all you have to do is just to go to a website called ticker CC, that I'll put its link into the
resources of this video, and then I'm going to type the username of the TikTok profile and then say
search.
And this will extract all the videos from the target profile.
And all I have to do is just to click in here to download the TikTok video.
And now I have it on my desktop.
Now, the reason why I'm showing you how to download a TikTok video manually is because in case this
website got shut down, you'll still be able to download any TikTok video.
The last thing that I would like to show you is how you can extract the metadata from any TikTok account.
Now these are information that are not publicly displayed when you visit.
A TikTok account and they are embedded within the source code of the page.
So what we are going to do is just to extract this metadata and see what.
Information we can get.
Now let's say that I would like to extract the metadata of this TikTok account.
So all I have to do is just right mouse click inspect.
And here is the HTML code of this page.
I want to scroll down a little bit.
And here I'll see a script called Universal Data for rehydration.
I'm going to click on this arrow.
And here are the metadata.
Double mouse click.
And then I'm going to say copy.
And then I'm going to open my notepad.
Let me open a new file and paste the metadata in here.
And then I'm going to save the file on my desktop.
And I'm going to call it Z security.
And then I'm going to change the file extension to JSON.
And then I'll say save.
Now let me open the file.
It's on my desktop where it is, and I can open it with my Firefox or with my Chrome.
So I'm going to open it with Firefox, with double mouse click.
And then I'm going to say expand all.
And as you can see here are the metadata of this account.
What's really important is to scroll all the way down.
You can see how much information there are there are in here which are not all important.
And you will see at the bottom the number of the followers and the language.
And you'll also see the region which I think is very important.
Now I is for Ireland.
So I'm going to say my country and you can see that I is for Ireland.
Now this could be the country where the account has been created or where the videos are being uploaded
from.
Another thing that I would like to show you, which I think is really interesting, is when you go to
the target profile and try to open the profile picture.
So right mouse click Open Image in a new tab, you will find that it's very small.
But if you have the metadata then you can click on this one, which is called Avatar Larger and open
the link and you will see that this image is way better and has higher quality.
Now let's recap.
The first thing you want to do with any social media profile is to have a quick look at the target profile.
See the username display name if it's different from other accounts or not, if there is any links,
or if there is any description that could help us to get further information.
And the second thing is that if there is any certain video that you would like to download and you want
to find its timestamp, then you can extract the video ID, convert it to binary, and then convert
it to Unix number and then convert it to a normal date and time, which might be important if you would
like to present this video as an evidence in a certain court, you have also learned how to download
videos, the manual method and the automatic method, and how to extract the metadata to find information
like the region, or to download a high resolution of the profile picture.