At Bison Security Co., we often say that today’s cybercriminals don’t just hack devices — they hack people.
That’s because most modern scams and attacks no longer rely on broad, random tactics. Instead, attackers start with research — often extensive and alarmingly accurate. They gather personal, professional, and behavioral details to build what are known as target profiles. These profiles help cybercriminals craft scams that feel personalized, trustworthy, and far harder to detect.
Understanding how cybercriminals build target profiles is critical for anyone navigating today’s digital world. Whether you’re protecting your family at home or safeguarding your small business, knowing how this process works — and how to limit your exposure — is one of the smartest and most proactive steps you can take.
Table of Contents
What Is a Target Profile?
A target profile is a detailed collection of information that cybercriminals compile about a potential victim. Think of it as a digital dossier — a file designed to exploit trust and familiarity.
Understanding how cybercriminals build target profiles is key to understanding modern online scams. These attackers no longer rely on random chance. Instead, they carefully harvest personal, professional, and behavioral data to craft attacks that feel uniquely tailored to you.
The more data they gather, the more believable and effective their scams become.
A basic target profile might include:
- Full name
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Home address
- Social media profiles
- Employer and job title
But many cybercriminals go far beyond the basics. An advanced target profile could also include:
- Names of your children, spouse, or pets
- Hobbies and personal interests
- Recent travel locations
- Friends, coworkers, and social connections
- Professional certifications, awards, or licenses
- Purchase history and online behaviors
- Clues to security questions (mother’s maiden name, first car, childhood address)
Why does this matter? Because the entire goal of how cybercriminals build target profiles is to weaponize trust. They use this detailed knowledge to break down your natural skepticism and create a false sense of legitimacy.
For example:
- An email sent to your company address from what appears to be HR, referencing your real manager by name and a new policy update.
- A text message claiming your child’s school needs updated emergency contact info — using your child’s actual name and grade level.
- A phone call offering a “personalized” financial service, mentioning a recent business trip you posted about on LinkedIn.
When scams are highly targeted, they bypass many of our normal defenses. What feels familiar feels safe — and that’s exactly what these criminals count on.
How Cybercriminals Build Target Profiles
You might think building a highly detailed target profile requires sophisticated hacking skills or access to the dark web. In reality, the process is shockingly easy — and much of the information is hiding in plain sight.
When you understand how cybercriminals build target profiles, one thing becomes clear: today’s attackers act more like patient researchers than smash-and-grab thieves. They take their time to gather data from multiple sources, creating a profile that makes their scam feel personal and trustworthy.
Here are the most common ways they do it:
Public Social Media
Social media is one of the richest sources for building target profiles. In fact, many attackers start here first.
How cybercriminals build target profiles often begins with a deep dive through your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), or even TikTok presence. And it’s not just what you post — it’s what your friends, family, and coworkers post about you too.
Many of us unknowingly share:
- Vacation photos that reveal travel patterns and locations
- Birthday posts that expose exact birth dates
- Friend lists that map your personal and professional network
- Work anniversaries that reveal employment history and current job title
- Posts about hobbies, pets, and family life — all details attackers can use to sound authentic in phishing messages or phone calls
Pro tip: Even with privacy settings turned on, your profile photo, cover photo, bio, public comments, and “likes” or “follows” may still be visible to anyone — including cybercriminals.
Data Brokers
When studying how cybercriminals build target profiles, you’ll quickly discover that data brokers are one of their favorite tools.
Data brokers legally — though often unethically — collect and sell detailed personal information to anyone willing to pay. These companies aggregate data from:
- Public records (property ownership, voter registration, court filings)
- Loyalty programs and rewards cards
- Online purchases and e-commerce activity
- Social media scraping
- Apps that sell user location and behavior data
The result? In minutes, an attacker can purchase a disturbingly detailed dossier on you — often for just a few dollars. These profiles can include phone numbers, home address, family members, income level, political leanings, and even hobbies.
Pro tip: You don’t have to fight data brokers alone. Our Bison Identity Monitoring service includes automatic removal from major data broker sites — helping you reduce your digital footprint and take control of your personal information. Learn more here →
Breached Databases
When you dig into how cybercriminals build target profiles, data breaches emerge as another key source. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance your information has already been exposed in one or more breaches.
When companies suffer data breaches — think LinkedIn, Facebook, T-Mobile, financial services, or health organizations — the stolen data is often sold on the dark web. Over time, attackers can piece together bits of information from multiple breaches to enrich their target profiles.
Breached data often includes:
- Email addresses
- Passwords (sometimes encrypted, sometimes exposed in plain text)
- Phone numbers
- Home addresses
- Security question answers
Pro tip: Want to know if your personal data has been exposed? Bison Identity Monitoring scans for compromised accounts and breached data — and alerts you so you can take action fast. We’ll also guide you on securing your accounts with stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication. Learn more →
OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence)
Professional attackers rely heavily on OSINT when building advanced target profiles — especially when going after high-value individuals or small businesses.
OSINT refers to gathering information from any publicly available source. This can include:
- News articles mentioning you or your company
- Corporate websites (team pages, press releases, blog posts)
- Professional profiles (LinkedIn, professional associations)
- Government databases (licenses, permits, court documents)
- Public records and archives
- Google search results
How cybercriminals build target profiles using OSINT often surprises even tech-savvy professionals. The depth of data that can be assembled from simple Google searches, scraping tools, and automated scripts is staggering — and it’s exactly why Business Email Compromise (BEC) and spear phishing campaigns are so successful today.
Pro tip: Google yourself and your business regularly. Check not only the first page of results, but also images, cached pages, and lesser-known directories. If you find personal or sensitive details exposed, take steps to remove or obscure them where possible.
How These Profiles Are Used
Once cybercriminals build target profiles, those detailed dossiers become powerful weapons in social engineering attacks.
The goal is simple: use what they know about you to craft scams that feel legitimate — and bypass your natural skepticism.
Here are some of the most dangerous ways attackers put target profiles to work:
- Phishing emails that reference real colleagues or projects
- A fake email from your manager asking you to review a “critical document” — and it even mentions a real client or project you’ve worked on.
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams
- Using information about your company structure and vendors, attackers impersonate executives or suppliers to trick employees into wiring money or sharing sensitive data.
- Fake tech support calls
- Based on a target profile that includes your device type (MacBook, iPhone, etc.) or services you use (Microsoft 365, QuickBooks), scammers pose as legitimate tech support.
- Family-targeted scams
- Text messages or calls referencing your child’s name, school, or recent activities — crafted to manipulate emotion and urgency.
- AI-generated deepfake videos or voice clips
- Leveraging the personal details and voice/video samples gathered while building target profiles, criminals create eerily convincing deepfakes. Imagine receiving a voicemail from your “CEO” asking you to act fast, or a video that appears to show a loved one in distress.
The common thread? The more personal the scam feels, the more effective it becomes. How cybercriminals build target profiles is key to understanding why today’s scams are so much harder to spot — and why proactive protection is critical for both families and small businesses.
How to Fight Back: Practical Steps
At Bison Security Co., we help families and small businesses build resilience against modern cyber threats. One of the smartest ways to protect yourself is by limiting the data that fuels these attacks — in other words, making it harder for criminals to build target profiles about you.
Here’s a practical, step-by-step game plan to reduce your risk:
Lock Down Social Media
Social media is a primary source for how cybercriminals build target profiles. Every public post or connection gives them more data to exploit.
Here’s how to fight back:
- Set profiles to private wherever possible. Only allow trusted friends to see your content.
- Remove unnecessary personal details from your bio (birthdays, schools, workplaces).
- Limit post visibility to friends only — avoid sharing to “Public” by default.
- Disable public friend/follower lists — this prevents attackers from mapping your network.
- Avoid posting real-time location updates (vacation posts are a common trap).
- Never post sensitive info such as travel plans, birth dates, full names of children, or financial milestones.
Teach kids and teens especially. Their generation shares a lot online — and that makes them prime targets for scams both now and in the future.
Scrub Data Broker Exposure
Data brokers are a massive driver of how cybercriminals build target profiles — and their reach is often invisible to everyday users.
Here’s how to minimize this threat:
- Use an identity monitoring service like Bison Identity Monitoring to automate removal from hundreds of data brokers.
- Manually request opt-outs from the largest players (Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, MyLife).
- Opt out of loyalty programs or use minimal info when enrolling (skip phone numbers or exact birth dates).
- Use a dedicated email address for online shopping and loyalty programs to help isolate your primary identity.
Bison Identity Monitoring makes this process simple — removing your data from key broker databases and giving you ongoing visibility.
Monitor for Breach Exposure
Data breaches are a goldmine for attackers when they build target profiles. Exposed credentials and personal info often fuel highly targeted phishing and fraud attempts.
Here’s how to stay ahead:
- Use Bison Identity Monitoring to monitor breach exposure and receive alerts when your data appears on the dark web.
- Immediately change passwords for any exposed accounts.
- Use a password manager to generate and store strong, unique passwords.
- Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all critical accounts — this adds an essential layer of protection even if your password is compromised.
Proactive monitoring and quick response are critical here — the faster you act, the less damage an attacker can do.
Educate Your Family and Team
Understanding how cybercriminals build target profiles is one of the best defenses. When people know the risks, they’re much harder to fool.
Build a culture of awareness:
- Hold regular conversations about how personal information is used in scams.
- Train kids and employees to spot red flags:
- Messages referencing personal details out of context.
- Unexpected messages from known contacts.
- Requests for sensitive information or urgent actions.
- Encourage a “verify first, trust later” mindset — even when messages sound legitimate.
Regular reminders and simple role-playing scenarios can go a long way in reinforcing this vigilance.
Reduce Your Digital Footprint Proactively
The less information available about you online, the harder it is for attackers to build target profiles. Make reducing your digital footprint an ongoing habit:
- Google yourself every few months — see what’s publicly visible and take steps to remove unnecessary content.
- Use a separate phone number for online registrations (Google Voice or a privacy-focused service).
- Limit app permissions — review which apps can access your location, contacts, and camera.
- Decline permission requests that aren’t essential for an app’s core function.
Think of this as regular cyber hygiene — the fewer breadcrumbs you leave online, the safer you and your family will be.
Final Thoughts
How cybercriminals build target profiles is often an invisible first step — but it’s one of the most critical phases of modern cyberattacks. The good news? You can fight back with awareness and simple cyber hygiene.
By proactively limiting the information attackers can gather about you, your family, or your business, you make their job exponentially harder. A well-protected digital footprint turns you into a much less appealing target.
At Bison Security Co., we help families and small businesses put these defenses into action — through personalized coaching, smart content filtering, identity monitoring, and practical digital wellness programs that fit real life (not just big corporations).
Take Control of Your Digital Safety
At Bison Security Co., we believe strong cybersecurity starts at home—and grows with you. Whether you’re a parent, professional, or small business owner, we’ve got your back with the tools and support you need to stay safe in a connected world.
Here’s How to Get Started:
- Schedule your FREE Home Cybersecurity Audit — 30-minutes, no strings attached.
- Take Our Cyber Hygiene Quiz— Learn where your family or business stands and what to do next.
- Explore Our Cybersecurity Services — From identity protection to digital wellness plans, we make security simple and strong.
- Subscribe for Weekly Tips — Stay ahead of threats with expert advice, family-friendly checklists, and early alerts.
Security That Stands Its Ground.