Forensic Analysis of Instagram on Android

Abstract

The use of social media has become a new lifestyle trend in today’s society. Social media provides a variety of benefits, ranging from building connections, delivering news, and sharing daily activities. On the other hand, social media is often misused to commit crimes, such as cyberbullying, child grooming, buying and selling drugs, spreading hoaxes, etc. Information uploaded on social media can be made into consideration for investigations in finding evidence of crimes. Therefore, efforts in supporting the verification of crimes in social media need to be done using the right forensic techniques. Topic of this research is an analysis of artifacts produced by the Instagram application on Android. This research provides benefits for analysts and practitioners to help in finding digital evidence of Instagram on Android. The results of this study successfully identified artifacts of Instagram application on Android, such as user account information, message exchange documentation, and user-uploaded activity traces.