We elaborate the difference between individual and group profiling in a slightly different manner, by distinguishing and defining direct and indirect profiling. We study these two types of profiling in the light of virtual persons. In direct profiling, data is typically collected for one single subject or a small group of subjects. Knowledge built on this data then only applies to this specific subject or this small group of subjects. Direct profiling can be used to uniquely characterize a person within a population or to infer, for example, future behavior, needs or habits of a specific target.
In indirect profiling, data is collected from a large population. Groups and categories of subjects with similar properties emerge from the collected data. Each group has its own identity defined through a small amount of information. The typical member of one group can be modeled using the concept of virtual persons. It is then sufficient to identify a subject as a member of the group, i.e. with the corresponding virtual person, to be able to infer, for this subject, knowledge inherited from the group itself: probable behavior, probable attributes, probable risks, etc.