User profile

A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as knowledge or expertise.^[1] User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn; and serve as voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits.^[2] 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.^[3] 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. A user model is a (data) structure that is used to capture certain characteristics about an individual user, and the process of obtaining the user profile is called user modeling^[4] or profiling.