What does Fama flag?

By Dave Fradette · Published September 26, 2026 · Last reviewed September 27, 2026

Short answer: Fama says its standard screening uses eight Behavior Flags. Its published materials describe violence, threats, trolling (harassment), intolerance, sexual content, cannabis, and illicit drugs, and employers can add custom keywords. Fama says it avoids flagging movie quotes, sports, recovery posts, and protected information, and that analysts review every flag before it reaches an employer.

PruneSocial isn't affiliated with Fama. Everything on this page comes from Fama's own public materials and press coverage, cited below.

Who Fama is

Fama is one of the best-known online screening companies. It reviews a candidate's public online footprint, not just social media but also sources like message boards, blogs, and news, and flags content tied to workplace misconduct.^[1] Its reports go to employers, and it describes itself as FCRA-compliant.^[2] If you're being screened by Fama, you have the rights covered in your rights in a social media background check.

Fama's behavior flags

Fama says its standard setup includes eight Behavior Flags.^[3] Its published reports describe them like this:^[4]

Fama flag	What Fama says it covers	Closest PruneSocial category
Violence	Advocating, inciting, or taking part in violent acts	Violence
Threats	Threats of physical harm, or intimidation	Threats
Trolling	Online harassment and content that bullies, shames, name-calls, or insults a person	Trolling / Harassment
Intolerance	Discriminatory content, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, or xenophobia	Intolerance
Sex	Sexual content ranging from explicit images to suggestive language	Sex
Cannabis	Mentions or images of cannabis use	Drugs (casual references capped at Consider)
Illicit Drugs	Promoting drugs or drug use, or use of illegal substances	Drugs

Fama's homepage also gives examples like celebrating workplace theft, which maps to PruneSocial's Crime category.^[5] "Trolling" used to be called "Harassment." Fama renamed it in 2025, so older articles may use the old name.^[6]

Employers can also add custom keywords for their brand, role, or industry.^[2] That means a specific employer's report can look for things beyond the standard flags.

What Fama says it doesn't flag

Violence that isn't yours. Fama says it separates a candidate acting violently from sharing news about violence, quoting movie scenes, or anti-violence advocacy.^[3]
Sports and games. It says it can tell a real threat from something like mixed martial arts.^[3]
General venting. It says it distinguishes trolling a person from harsh language aimed at a broad audience or at objects.^[3]
Recovery. It says it avoids flagging posts about quitting smoking or detox programs.^[3]
Protected information. Fama says protected-class information isn't flagged and is removed from what employers see.^[2]

What about drinking? Back in 2019, Fama's CEO told CNN that most employers weren't treating drug and alcohol content as a hiring factor, and joked, "Don't worry about having the Solo cup in your hand."^[1] That was one comment, years ago, and cannabis is now a standard flag, so don't read it as a guarantee.

How Fama reviews content

Fama says its AI flags content based on behavioral indicators, and that trained analysts review every report and every flagged item for context and tone before it goes to the employer.^[2] It says it reviews public content going back as far as seven years.^[7]

What Fama finds most often

In its 2025 report, Fama said 6.45% of screenings, about 1 in 15, surfaced adverse findings, up 34% from the year before.^[10]
In 2024, Fama said about 1 in 20 candidates showed warning signs, with harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct the most common, and violent threats rising from 5% to 14% of reports reviewed.^[4]
In its 2025 report, harassment and trolling again made up the largest share of flags, followed by intolerance and sexually explicit content.^[8]
Fama's 2025 report said misconduct signals on LinkedIn rose nearly 200% year over year and Facebook flags rose 100%. Fama noted that changes in platforms' content moderation policies contributed to the increase.^[10] Inc. reported the same figures.^[9]

The takeaway: most flags aren't dramatic. They're insults, heated arguments, and offensive jokes, the kind of thing that's easy to post and easy to forget.

How to check your own history against these categories

You can't run Fama on yourself, and PruneSocial doesn't reproduce Fama's system. What PruneSocial does is score supported text from your own account exports against categories modeled on what vendors like Fama publish, with the same kinds of exclusions for sports, movies, news, and recovery. See the methodology for the full mapping and sources, and how to clean up your social media for what to do with the results.

See what your own history looks like

PruneSocial scores supported text activity from your own account exports against publicly documented screening categories and gives you one specific cleanup action for anything flagged. Try a free 50-item preview first.

Start a free preview