Kali started by running a web search with the keywords Seven Winds Group Malaysia Human Resources. The fourth in her thread of results was a LinkedIn page for the corporate branch’s HR manager, a woman named Farah Tan.

A click of the touchpad and Kali was reading the public information Tan had up on the site. It included her profile photo, work experience, education and academic degree. On the right side of the page under the heading People Also Viewed was a list of some twenty names and profile photos whose links had come up in related web searches. Four of them—three women, one man—also belonged to employees of Seven Winds Malaysia’s HR department.

Kali copied and pasted the five hits to her digital notes, then continued down her original list of results. She found two more staffers within the department on the second page, both women. One had a public LinkedIn profile, like Farah Tan. The other had posted a similar profile on a site called ZoomFind. She again found and copied the related search links.

Within half an hour, she had assembled a list of eighteen employees within the company’s HR department. She then logged in to LinkedIn under an alias to access their members-only contact information, such as their work phone numbers and email addresses.

She was halfway done. A few sips of tea, a brief stretch to work the kinks out of her neck and she went on to the next step.

Which was to try to find her eighteen human resources staffers on the major social media platforms. She did this in-app each time, again logging in with a false username and password and then typing their names into the search bar.

It produced a hefty catch. Fourteen of the eighteen were members of Facebook, Instagram or Chirp. Twelve of the fourteen had accounts with multiple sites. Only three had high privacy settings. The rest were completely public.

Kali ignored the three secure accounts and browsed the rest. The most interesting ones for her purposes belonged to the HR department’s generalists and assistant hiring managers, since they were usually the first to receive job applications and résumés.

There were six women and three men within that group. Four of the women and two of the men listed their romantic statuses as single. All were under thirty-five, and three under twenty-five. The ideal demographic, since it was the most vulnerable to phishing expeditions.

She spent an hour carefully examining the photographs and videos posted on their personal timelines, narrowing in on the type of people they found romantically or physically attractive. She studied photos and videos of boyfriends, girlfriends and favorite celebrities: actors, musical artists, athletes and other popular figures. She read through the user’s accompanying comments and innuendos about their looks and physiques. Where possible she noted the user’s stated or apparent sexual orientation. She went as far down their timelines as possible.