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What you should know about links

Introduction

A link is a relationship between entities. There can be only one link between two entities.

The following types of links exist:

Know links

Know links represent a know type relationship. Two entities have a Know link when at least one of the two has the other in his/her address book.

A Know link can be directional or bi-directional.

Peer links

A Peer link connects two entities that represent people. The Peer link indicates that the two entities directly communicated (i.e.: phone call, chat). The relationship can be directional and bi-directional.

Peer links represent a stronger relationship than know links, thus they replace any Know link between the entities.

Position and Virtual links

Position and Virtual links connect an entity that represents a person and one that represents a physical or web site respectively. The Position/Virtual link indicates that the person was in that site.

The relationship is only directional: from the entity that represents a person to the one that represents a place.

Managing Peer/Position/Virtual and Know links

The analyst manages links so they represent the evolution of the investigation, thus:

Identity links

Identity links represent a suggestion of an identity relationship between two entities that represent people. This type of link is automatically created by the system when the two entities share at least one identification (i.e.: phone number).

Identity links do not have directions.

Managing Identity links

The analyst must decide the reason for identity links and how to act accordingly:

Link time value

Links are the result of an automatic or manual process completed at a certain time. However, the time the link is created, meaning when the first relationship was formed between entities, is only logged for Peer/Position/Virtual links automatically created by the system.

This way, an analysis period can be selected to see when certain relationships were created.

For the other links, once they are created (automatically or manually) they are considered as created at the beginning by the system.

RCS9.6 | User manual | © COPYRIGHT 2015