A social engineering attack takes the path arrived at after the evaluation of information known about the target. Therefore, the tactics learned in the preceding chapters will be applied depending on the results of this chapter. However, information gathering is not as challenging as it used to be a few years ago when one would only get details about a target either directly from the target or from asking around. The internet, more specifically the use of social media, has simplified this stage with newer and faster techniques of data collection. In the process of data gathering, no piece of data is said to be irrelevant. Just a small bit of information, such as a target's favorite joint, might be sufficient to enable the social engineer to succeed at convincing the target to act in a certain way. It is important for a social engineer to know what type of information to look for. There is an information overload and lots of irrelevant information may be collected. It is also good to know the sources where this type of information can be found. Having information is not enough, it is important to know how to use information collected to profile a target and make them more predictable. Lastly, it is crucial to know how to store this information in an orderly fashion for ease of retrieval. This chapter will teach you how to do this in the following sections:

• Gathering information about targets
• Technical and nontechnical information-gathering methods