User profile

Article summary

A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify the person it’s about, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as knowledge or expertise. The amount and criticality of the information featured on one largely depends on the needs of the platform it’s on. Social networking sites like LinkedIn require more details about the person, while other sites like YouTube and X are more social media and don’t need as much critical information. User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and serve as a voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits. In personal computing and operating systems, user profiles serve to categorise files, settings, and documents by individual user environments, known as 'accounts', allowing the operating system to be more friendly and catered to the user. Physical user profiles serve as identity documents such as passports, driving licenses and legal documents that are used to identify an individual under the legal system. A user profile can also be considered as the computer representation of a user model.…

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1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
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3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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