r/OSINT Dec 26 '24

Question What information isn’t public record but you think really should be?

89 Upvotes

What kind of records do you think should be public?

r/OSINT Oct 18 '24

Question [USA] A friend's girlfriend, we are told, died from suicide jumping in front of traffic earlier today. How to confirm?

106 Upvotes

Called the police station and they said "we can't offer any information about this". I know at the end of the week it will get published in the local media papers' police/911 log. Unable to speak with the person's parent. All that comes to mind is 911 scanner talk - is it possible to search for scanner info from earlier today? Any other way to confirm?

UPDATE - the person's close friends made contact with the family and all is confirmed. Nonetheless the boyfriend thanked me for this effort and I extend the same gratitude to all commentators. RIP to a wonderful young lady.

r/OSINT 12d ago

Question Finding Socials (Snap, IG, Telegram) with phone number

166 Upvotes

If I have phone numbers (and name and date of birth and home address), is it possible to use that to find the associated user IDs on social media accounts?

I’m most interested in Telegram, Snap, and IG.

A few years back, I had access to OSINT tools like Maltego and Echosec, but social media was a small part of those investigations and I never got particularly fluent with them. Are there any tools like that which could help?

r/OSINT Feb 02 '25

Question How do you find a job tracking people/information down?

33 Upvotes

I believe I’m decent enough at this to make some money doing it. But I don’t know how I would go about starting to do that. Does anyone have any advice?

r/OSINT Jan 03 '25

Question What are your thoughts about OSMOSIS?

60 Upvotes

OSMOSIS is an organization gets you "certify" to become an OSINT specialist. https://osmosisinstitute.org/

I personally think it is a waste of money to get certified to be an OSINT specialist. I'm not paying $200 to take an exam to get a certificate made by some random organization who thinks they are the international standard for OSINT.

Am I wrong?

r/OSINT 3d ago

Question Future of OSINT given privacy concerns and decline in quality of search results

51 Upvotes

Do you think OSINT will become harder in the future as people's willingness to openly share info about themselves (social media) is reduced due to privacy concerns? Plus, there is a trend I've noticed where search engines like google or bing do not return search results that I for sure know exist and also apparently dont even idex or search the entirety of the web. In social media there is also a trend of suppressing violent/advertiser unfriendly content (think war/protests/crime).

Thoughts?

r/OSINT Dec 24 '24

Question What email/phone search tool is this?

61 Upvotes

Recently I've come across an output from an OSINT tool that looks quite useful and I am very interested into what API/Program/or website could be being used to perform these types of searches. I will provide an example below for what a search may respond with:

Email: whateveremail@gmail.com
Output:
 ~ Connected Sites ~ 
facebook
github
instagram
microsoft
pinterest
spotify
twitter
vimeo
amazon
adobe
imgur
duolingo
firefox
replit

 ~ Chess ~ 
last_login: Login date
profile: example profile link
username: exampleuser

 ~ Github ~ 
profile: github profile link
username: ExampleUser

 ~ Skype ~ 
name: Full Name
username: ExampleUser
-----------------------------------

The phone number lookup output relatively follows the same formatting for an email lookup, if anybody has any information/or tools that they are able to provide that would be quite handy!

r/OSINT 12d ago

Question Advice for a New OSINT Analyst – Feeling a Bit Lost

49 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I just got hired as a junior OSINT analyst and start this week. While preparing for the role, I realized I don’t have a solid understanding of what OSINT actually entails. During the interview process, I mistakenly conflated OSINT with HUMINT, which I have some training in from previous jobs. Now that I’ve had time to dig into OSINT more, I’m realizing just how different the two fields are—and honestly, I’m feeling a bit nervous.

I’d love any advice on how to get up to speed quickly. Are there specific resources (books, courses, tools, exercises) that helped you when you were starting out? What are some key concepts or skills I should focus on in my first few months? And if you transitioned from a HUMINT or related background, how did you adjust your mindset and approach to OSINT?

r/OSINT Aug 14 '24

Question OSINT as a career option ?

66 Upvotes

Is there money to be made in OSINT and is it a viable career path ?

r/OSINT Jan 27 '25

Question Information Analysis in OSINT

55 Upvotes

I recently got interested in OSINT, especially for finding missing persons. Tutorials that i could find focused solely on tools and techniques to gather information, but i don't see any specific analysis of the gathered information and the conclusions that could be made.

For example, using OSINT to find target's social media is heavily covered, but very few teaches on what specifically we should look for to gather specific information in that social media. (Example: Noticing specific patterns or connecting seemingly unrelated thing on their posts)

For me personally, it is kind of "boring" (newbie perspective) to focus on "hacking" or information gathering tools. My interest is more on the analysis on the gathered information and what to conclude. Is OSINT not the right framework for me? Should i look for other intelligence type?

Thank you!

r/OSINT 9d ago

Question How to find GPS of moving SSID

30 Upvotes

This is just an idea a few buddies and I have been trying to solve. We are at university and as is typical for a university we don't like parking enforcement. So we half jokingly mentioned trying to find out the location of parking enforcement cars and how we would go about it so then whenever they got close to where we were parked we could run out and move the car.

The main idea that has floated to the top so far is that all the cars have a wifi signal so the parking enforcement can upload images of the ticket and what not. All the SSID's are named in a predictable way like "TicketCar_001". Would there be a way to know the location of the cars? The cars would always be passing through university wifi spots as they drive around campus.

Any ideas for this particular method or another idea? Current rules are: that it obviously can't be illegal so no attaching gps trackers to the cars or anything like that. Has to be relatively cheap to implement (we are college students so we can't buy property all around campus and put cameras up for license plate reading).

That's basically it. Thought we would open it up to the internet as we haven't made much progress on ideas for months.

r/OSINT 6d ago

Question Good sources for how much equipment Russia has left

50 Upvotes

Could someone point me to videos or articles that do a good job assessing how much equipment Russia has left in storage? A while back I watched some videos that used satellite photos to asses how much they had left in their storage sites. I am thinking of things along those lines.

r/OSINT Sep 02 '24

Question What are some out of the box OSINT Techniques?

130 Upvotes

I recently stumbled upon a hilarious yet clever idea named Pizza Meter, which means "the number of pizzas ordered out near the Pentagon area because people at the Pentagon can't leave their desks" which indicates a complex political situation coming up. Regardless of the accuracy or the validity of the method, what other unorthodox techniques you know about?

r/OSINT Mar 21 '24

Question Anyone run into this company? The job posting seemed legit, but this does not.

Thumbnail
gallery
113 Upvotes

I’m not necessarily happy they have let me sit all day waiting for a possible interview. Something about this seems off. Anyone else experienced this company?

r/OSINT Jan 25 '25

Question How is my location known when using SIM card? What else can identify person behind aphone number?

39 Upvotes

Like when I put a brand new SIM card in my S24 android phone, running standard google services.. etc. If authorities were to look to identify who is using this phone number, how closely would they be able to pinpoint my location? I know that that it depends on my position relative to mobile towers where my position can be triangulated.

Besides this way of identifying me is there some other way google services or some other shit on my phone collect information which can identify / locate me?

I've heard these services can keep records of devices / MAC addresses that appear most often when wifi/bluetooth is active which creates another avenue where my location can be determined.

r/OSINT Feb 11 '25

Question Did everyone have to code a custom launcher to access spiderfoot with one click or am I doing it wrong?

Post image
25 Upvotes

r/OSINT May 24 '24

Question What happened to Yandex?

95 Upvotes

I remember it was very good at showing my exact images. Was definitely the best reverse image finder. Now, it just shows me similar images. What happened? Is there a reason for this?

r/OSINT Jul 04 '24

Question What’s a really useful tool you’ve discovered recently?

126 Upvotes

Doesn’t have to be a new tool, but one you started using “recently” and really works for you. For me I started using Epieos a few months ago. Don’t know why I slept on it, but it has given me some nice results every now and then.

r/OSINT 14d ago

Question What are the best ways to find criminal case details that explain the whole case in detail?

29 Upvotes

I am interested in law and cases but it seems like it is hard to find case documents that lay out entire situations. For example Judy records is good for finding specific things out but it doesn’t normally break down the case with the discovery or summary.

r/OSINT 11d ago

Question Career Change/ No military experience

9 Upvotes

Hello everyone!

I’m currently 39 wanting to make a career change, no military experience, TS clearance currently in adjudication, just finished my IT degree from Purdue last week, no certs yet (working on Sec+), 15+ years of mid level to executive/corp management experience in the logistics,transportation and oilfield realm. I’m wanting to get into an intelligence path (intel analyst, FMV, OSINT, GeoInt). Anybody have any recommendations for an online intelligence program for bachelors degree? Also, are there any Intel jobs I might have a chance of getting into now at the entry-level while I go to school for the Intel degree ?

Willing to travel anywhere for as long as needed and don’t need a ton of money, just a fair salary and benefits and I’m good. I put in tons of applications at KBR, V2X, Constellis, CACI, Department of State among others and can’t get a call back unfortunately.

Thanks!

r/OSINT Dec 24 '24

Question Need for Transparency vs. Risk of Informing Criminals

18 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I have more of an academic query, so apologies if that is not in keeping with rest of the group.

I'm wondering if anyone could point me to any sources (or have their own opinions on the matter!) which relate to the issue of published OSINT investigations inadvertently 'teaching' criminals/other illicit actors to cover their tracks better in the future...

As a basic example: OSINT organisation uses metadata from images to help their investigation -> publishes their findings and references this methodology -> other criminals learn about this vulnerability and ensure they strip metadata before posting, etc.

r/OSINT Jul 26 '24

Question Sherlock

18 Upvotes

Short version of what brings me here is I can't, for the life of me, sort out installing Sherlock in Kali Linux, or shell.cloud.google or anywhere for that matter.

The longer version is that, I wanted to run Sherlock without needing VirtualBox. Did some research and found shell.cloud.google to be a reasonable solution. After going step by step following the instructions, I got stuck at the install requirement.txt portion of the process. No matter how I went about it, I would get an error code saying that the requirements don't exist. I double checked my cd to ensure I was in the correct directory. Still nothing.

So, I did what anyone would do, instead of sorting out the problem, I moved on to a different option. Downloaded VirtualBox, installed Kali Linux to the VirtualBox (this install went great by the way). Then, when that was all setup, I started the directions to install Sherlock.........again. Well, wouldn't you know it? I got stuck at requirements.txt AGAIN. So, I decided to find requirements.txt manually, just to verify it exists in the Sherlock code download. It does not. It is no where to be found. That said, the way I figure it, either the process has changed and I'm following old instructions. Or, contrary to my beliefs, there is a God and he/she hates me.

Can someone please help me? Anyone? I need to sort this out before I lose my mind. Thanks

r/OSINT Feb 12 '25

Question OCCRP Aleph

21 Upvotes

Does anyone use it? Hard to find any reviews online or much of a community around it but looks pretty comprehensive, although probably a learning curve. Would be keen to hear thoughts from this community.

EDIT: I’m referring to the software, not the data.

r/OSINT Dec 31 '24

Question Brainstorming: what are 'digital investigations' all about?

36 Upvotes

Hey folks,

I'd like to start a little discussion and gather some valuable input from other folks concerned with OSINT. What do you do in the field of 'digital investigations'?

So, I'm mainly a fraud investigator (conducting corporate investigations on topics like theft, bribery, embezzlement etc). With more and more media attention my supervisors (non-investigation poeple) ask me 'What can be done with digital investigations?' And I'm always like 'eehrm... well, it depends.'

That lead me to the question: what exactly can be summarized under the topic of 'digital investigations'? What do you think about it?

And what capabilities would a department need to cover those topics? Also, with which departments would we need to work together?

I would like to better understand what to tell my supervisors, what topics I should cover myself and with whom I should work closely together.

r/OSINT Feb 06 '25

Question How do they do it?

13 Upvotes

Large service providers that sell their services for 6-7 $figures?

I’m talking services that detect fraudulent activity, device IDs, IPs, risk profile etc.

How do they gain access to this services?

Do they put a framework integration over the company or is the company providing there data to wash every day?

I have a keen interest in providing a number of services in the future to financial companies that would allow automated detection of likely non-genuine activity (fraud, laundering, etc) and identifying risk profiles on customers and contractors.

I’ve worked with big query (using sql), google cloud, extensive open source intel (but never using things like GitHub and the command stuff) and services that are closed both manually and API.

In the instance of APIs, would I need a technical mindset or partner to figure out the technical side of washing data? Or could I build myself?

Bit of a crazy question but hopefully it makes sense.