diff --git a/nexus/profile.py b/nexus/profile.py
index bceb62d..1f26684 100644
--- a/nexus/profile.py
+++ b/nexus/profile.py
@@ -10,10 +10,26 @@
 from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
 import os
 from dotenv import load_dotenv
+import re
 
 load_dotenv()
 
 
+def safe_filename(s: str) -> str:
+    """Sanitize a string to be safe for filenames: allow [a-zA-Z0-9_.-], replace others with _."""
+    return re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-]', '_', s)
+
+def _safe_join(base: str, *paths) -> str:
+    """
+    Safely join one or more path components to the base directory, preventing path traversal.
+    Returns the joined absolute path, or raises ValueError if traversal detected.
+    """
+    base_abspath = os.path.abspath(base)
+    path = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(base_abspath, *paths))
+    if not os.path.commonpath([base_abspath, path]) == base_abspath:
+        raise ValueError("Detected path traversal attempt (outside configured directory)")
+    return path
+
 class Profile:
     def __init__(self):
         self.utils = Utils()
@@ -28,11 +44,17 @@ def create_social_profile_tweepy(self, map_name: str, map_description: str, user
         :param outdir: specified directory of where the tweets(in JSON format) shoudl go
         """
         lookup_amount = 10000
+        # Sanitize and normalize outdir
+        outdir = os.path.abspath(outdir) if outdir else os.path.abspath("data")
+        if not os.path.exists(outdir):
+            os.makedirs(outdir, exist_ok=True)
         for user in users:
+            sanitized_user = safe_filename(user)
             tweets = [{"text": p.clean(tweet["full_text"]), "created_at": tweet["created_at"]} for tweet in
                       self.utils.user_lookup(user, lookup_amount)]
-            with jsonlines.open(f'{outdir}/{user}_tweets.jsonl', mode='a') as writer:
-                for idx, tweet in enumerate(tweets):
+            tweet_file_path = _safe_join(outdir, f'{sanitized_user}_tweets.jsonl')
+            with jsonlines.open(tweet_file_path, mode='a') as writer:
+                for idx, tweet in enumerate(tweets[:]):
                     if len(tweet["text"]) < 10:
                         tweets.pop(idx)
                         continue
@@ -66,18 +88,24 @@ def create_social_profile_sns(self,
         """
         all_tweets = []
 
+        # Sanitize and normalize outdir
+        outdir = os.path.abspath(outdir) if outdir else os.path.abspath("data")
+        if not os.path.exists(outdir):
+            os.makedirs(outdir, exist_ok=True)
 
         for user in tqdm(users):
+            sanitized_user = safe_filename(user)
             try:
                 logger.info(f"Loading {user}'s tweets from disk")
-                data_path = os.path.join(outdir, f"{user}_tweets.jsonl")
+                data_path = _safe_join(outdir, f"{sanitized_user}_tweets.jsonl")
                 with jsonlines.open(data_path, mode="r") as tweets:
                     for tweet in tweets:
                         all_tweets.append(tweet)
             except BaseException:
                 logger.info(f"Not on disk! scraping {users}'s tweets now")
                 tweets = self.utils.user_lookup_sns(user, 10000)
-                with jsonlines.open(f'{outdir}/{user}_tweets.jsonl', mode='a') as writer:
+                tweet_file_path = _safe_join(outdir, f'{sanitized_user}_tweets.jsonl')
+                with jsonlines.open(tweet_file_path, mode='a') as writer:
                     for idx, tweet in enumerate(tweets):
                         tweet["full_text"] = p.clean(tweet["full_text"])
                         if len(tweet["full_text"]) > 30:
@@ -85,7 +113,6 @@ def create_social_profile_sns(self,
                             all_tweets.append(tweet)
                             writer.write(tweet)
 
-
             for idx, tweet in enumerate(all_tweets):
                 tweet["id"] = str(idx)
 
@@ -94,7 +121,12 @@ def create_social_profile_sns(self,
             for n_clusters in n_cluster_docs:
                 logger.info(f"computing {n_clusters} cluster layer")
                 try:
-                    with open(f"data/cluster_labels/{users[0]}_id_to_cluster_label_{n_clusters}", "r") as f:
+                    cluster_labels_dir = os.path.abspath("data/cluster_labels")
+                    if not os.path.exists(cluster_labels_dir):
+                        os.makedirs(cluster_labels_dir, exist_ok=True)
+                    sanitized_user0 = safe_filename(users[0])
+                    cluster_path = _safe_join(cluster_labels_dir, f"{sanitized_user0}_id_to_cluster_label_{n_clusters}")
+                    with open(cluster_path, "r") as f:
                         id_to_cluster_label = json.load(f)
                     logger.info("Loaded all resources from disk")
                     print(id_to_cluster_label[-1])
@@ -117,7 +149,12 @@ def create_social_profile_sns(self,
                     for datum, cluster_id in zip(all_tweets, [int(i) for i in list(kmeans.labels_)]):
                         id_to_cluster_label[datum['id']] = cluster_id
 
-                    with open(f'data/cluster_labels/{users[0]}_id_to_cluster_label_{n_clusters}', 'w') as f:
+                    cluster_labels_dir = os.path.abspath("data/cluster_labels")
+                    if not os.path.exists(cluster_labels_dir):
+                        os.makedirs(cluster_labels_dir, exist_ok=True)
+                    sanitized_user0 = safe_filename(users[0])
+                    cluster_path = _safe_join(cluster_labels_dir, f"{sanitized_user0}_id_to_cluster_label_{n_clusters}")
+                    with open(cluster_path, 'w') as f:
                         json.dump(id_to_cluster_label, f)
                 print(len(all_tweets))
                 logger.info("Computing Topics")
@@ -144,4 +181,4 @@ def create_social_profile_sns(self,
                                        map_description="A social profile of the latest POTUS Joe Biden, with Nomic's text embedder created by Yuvanesh Anand",
                                        users=["JoeBiden", "POTUS"],
                                        topics=True,
-                                       embedding_path="embeddings/JoeBiden.npy")
+                                       embedding_path="embeddings/JoeBiden.npy")
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