pro ‧ fil ‧ ing /ˈprəʊfaɪlɪŋ $ ˈproʊ-/ BrE AmE noun [uncountable]
1 . offender profiling British English the process of studying a crime, especially a murder, and making judgments about the character of the person who committed it
2 . American English when people who belong to a particular race or group are stopped and searched, for example by the police or at airports, because the police think that they are more likely to commit crimes:
racial profiling
3 . when companies collect information about people that they wish to sell something to