Investigating YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Social Media Interactions on Chrome and Edge Browsers

This paper presents an in-depth digital forensic analysis of user interactions on popular social media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, through the usage of Chrome and Edge web browsers in both their standard and private browsing modes. The research methodically creates scenarios that include actions such as liking, posting, viewing, commenting, sharing, and direct messaging. We investigate physical and virtual machine environments. Key to our analysis were two approaches: firstly, an examination of data preservation in local, session, and indexedDB storage using the Developer Tools of the browsers; secondly, a thorough inspection of the contents in local storage directories using the Magnet Axiom tool. Despite employing private browsing modes, our findings were significant. The Magnet Axiom tool successfully extracted revealing user data, including posted content and usernames, from the specified local storage paths. The fact that data is kept in both browsing modes presents serious privacy issues. This paper clarifies these implications, particularly about social media interactions, and offers important insights into the limitations and effectiveness of current digital forensic practices.