Maltego is software used in data mining, especially, in the process of finding the relationship between different pieces of information. Due to its immense power, it is also commonly used by law enforcement agencies while doing online investigations. Maltego is interactive and it renders graphs for the links it finds between different pieces of information. It is powered by a graph database capable of storing huge amounts of information, something relational databases cannot do. This comes in handy as Maltego can collect a lot of information about a person. The categories of information that it can collect include:

• Personal information: It can determine the full name, nickname, age, and physical address among other types of information about a target
• Social networks: Maltego can identify social media platforms bearing the names of a target across all social media networks
• Companies: Maltego searches company websites for information related to a given target and pools it together at a central place
• Websites: Maltego can search for sites such as chat forums or support pages where the target has registered with his or her name or nickname
• Affiliations: Any organizations or events that the target is affiliated with
• Files: Maltego will obtain documents and files on the internet that have the target's names