While it is NOT likely IRCC personnel spend time crawling online forums for adverse information about their clients, it is readily apparent that IRCC does, sometimes, access open sources for information about clients . . . IAD and Federal Court decisions reveal IRCC has researched and considered online information about clients in the course of processing PR visa applications, PR Residency Obligation examinations, and grant citizenship applications.
As I have reported elsewhere, LinkedIn appears to be among the more common sites accessed by IRCC. It is apparent that in some cases IRCC (or CIC previously) researched variations of the applicant's name. On multiple occasions IRCC has made decisions relying on the content of the online information despite an applicant's denial, where IRCC has informed the applicant of the information and given the applicant an opportunity to submit evidence disproving it . . . which can be difficult to the extent that IRCC is demanding the individual prove a negative . . . . as in, how can "Jack D. Applicant" prove a LinkedIn account, and the information therein, for someone named "Jake Applicant," is NOT his? (In one case an applicant denied she had a LinkedIn account under a variation of her name and IRCC gave her an opportunity to prove she was not that individual and was not employed by the foreign employer as listed for that account holder . . . she more or less responded she was not that individual and was not employed as listed . . . on appeal it was held that IRCC did NOT have to prove she was that individual and did NOT have to prove she was so employed, the burden of proof was on HER to PROVE it was not her and she was not so employed, and her denial was insufficient to meet that burden of proof.)
In the meantime, it is impossible to guess who is crawling these forums or for what purpose. It is impossible to guess whether someone might take the information a person has revealed in a forum like this and, if not sufficiently anonymous, send the proverbial
poison-letter to IRCC about that person, and thereby create problems for the individual. Indeed, if the individual can be identified, who can guess if and when someone will exercise anger or frustration or naked maliciousness and make false accusations about them to IRCC? Within just the last few days I've had someone fling a desire to block my path to citizenship at me here (they'd be more than four years late, but there's little to prevent the uninformed from behaving with little regard for the facts).
Sure, the caution expressed by
@razerblade is an obvious one. But the obvious needs to be stated sometimes. Reminders rarely hurt. Reminders, even as to the obvious, will sometimes save someone from unnecessary grief.
This is not a good venue in which to spill one's life in too much detail. Those who are looking for advice about their particular facts should consult with a lawyer, in a confidential lawyer-client relationship.