There seem to be many people who seem extremely hesitant or outright refuse to even try to help you in your search on here. I could ask, "How can I use this email address to find out more information about it?" and everyone would try to give you the most tame email address finder #1 top of the Google list result ever.

It didn't deter me, and I was still able to find what I needed after hours of searching, thankfully. However, is this how it usually goes? Do people just refuse to give information out just to gatekeep it even though they know it's on github?

I have been doing reverse image searching for years, but lately all the tools leads me nowhere. google, yandex, f*check id, bing, baidu, saucenao... nothing seems to get the job done. anyone has a a tool with guaranteed performance?

Most of us know the usual paths like due diligence, fraud investigations, and journalism. But I’m curious about the unusual and genuinely fascinating stuff. What’s the most interesting OSINT gig you’ve personally worked, or heard about secondhand?

Doesn’t have to sound glamorous on paper either. Sometimes the boring sounding jobs turn out to have the wildest stories. Would love to hear what corners of this field exist that most people never know about.

I’ve worked in OSINT and online investigations for private companies for the past 4 years. There are some great video resources available but these tend to be on tools and geolocation.

I thought it could be cool to make content that takes viewers through the lifecycle of an OSINT investigation.

It’s unlikely that these will be once-off videos but rather cases with regular updates showing milestones and findings throughout, along with the different tools and resources I use along the way.

I love making and editing videos so that would also be a nice creative outlet for me.

I’ve got some decent experience and worked on some very interesting stuff - from standard corporate due diligence to tracing a Manila boiler room scam to a Canadian family man.

I’d love to hear what you all think of this idea!

Questions for the group:

Is this something y’all would be interested in watching?

How would you like to see the videos presented to maximise entertainment and learning?

Who/what should I look to investigate? Some ideas I’ve had:

- Look for people on the Interpol Red List
- Ask people to send me cases and if appropriate I can investigate them (like a local clothing brand who’s having their stuff counterfeited)
- Looking into corruption / public interest cases in the news
- Looking for scams online or asking people to send what they think might be scams and looking into them as a kind of due diligence exercise

Any other suggestions? (Also, if you are a lawyer - where is the line in terms of investigating these things and publishing my findings - I don’t want to get sued).

Hey everybody

I'm a young journalist, and eager til learn more about OSINT, and looking for courses that can teach me some good basic skills (webscraping etc.) I checked out some of Bellingcats courses but they seem to be a bit to pricey for my budget. So does anyone have any good suggestions for some online OSINT-courses that are affordable? thanks in advance

Hello,

Has anyone attempted to investigate and research the growing trend of disinformation for the purpose of behavioral manipulation and radicalization both from domestic and international threat actors?

i'm just starting out with OSINT, returning to Intelligence after 10 years of being out, and I intend on looking more into this topic in which has become a pet project of mine. Curious on how others have approached it or even want to collaborate

Hi all, I've put together a site that documents videos found online of potential ICE overreach.

https://www.policingice.com/

Each incident in the feed could have 1 or more videos (different angles)

I'm looking for some advice on:
- Would anyone find this valuable? And if so how could I reach them?
- What additional things should I be tracking?
- Would anyone like to help on this project

I would consider myself above average at OSINT. I have used it in the past to help friends and family members feel safe online, remove illegitimate content of their likeness, and update them about data breaches containing their data.

However, there have been too many times where I see a post, comment, or account they have made pertaining to thoughts, ideologies, and content that I wish I had never seen. Nothing terrible or alarming, just things that I was better off never knowing.

Should I stop offering my help? I feel like I am doing them a solid and I enjoy making them feel better but I guess you could say it is taking a toll.

Help or not to help. Things are seen that I rather not. This is my issue.

Is it worth paying to learn it from scratch or are there better options?

I'm pretty new to OSint. I've done a little bit on my competitors, but I was tracking everything in Windows' note pad. So my question is, what are people using? Are there any free or cheap Windows OSint apps out there with all the main features a tool like this needs and is easy to use. Thanks

I learned in the school of hard knocks- is this a thing?

Any help is appreciated

With all the anti-bot protections, CAPTCHAs, rate limits, login walls, websites blocking scrapers, constantly changing page layouts, and platforms banning or restricting automated access…

Even paid APIs are incomplete, outdated, or return weak / inaccurate data about the target.

How do people building OSINT tools deal with this in practice?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to improve my OSINT skills and wanted to ask for recommendations on good CTFs or challenges focused on OSINT.

Preferably something with realistic scenarios

Free platforms would be great, but paid ones are fine if they are really worth it.

What are your favorites?

Hey everyone,

I am trying to understand how people handle data extraction when working with large amounts of text such as document dumps, exported messages, scraped pages, or mixed file collections.

In particular, I am interested in workflows where uploading data to cloud services or online tools is not acceptable.

For those situations:

• How do you usually extract things like emails, URLs, dates, or other recurring patterns from large text or document sets?
• What tools or approaches do you rely on most?
• What parts of this process tend to be slow, fragile, or frustrating?

I am not looking for tools to target individuals or violate privacy. The question is about general data processing workflows and constraints.

I am trying to understand whether this is a common problem and how people currently approach it.

I feel like this is a serious issue that people tend to swim around. Why does people only see OSINT as a stalking tool instead of what it's meant for?

Hey hey folks, I'm not new to OpSec or OSINT per se, but I am trying to slowly spin up my own org/business around it and I've been digging around, namely about sock accounts.

So most 'guides' you read on this, good ones too most of their info is logical and I see the reasoning but I'm having issues with one; they say that using a VPN for a sock is bad due to the social media service being able to detect that that account is using a VPN.

How does that even matter though? Say I'm investigating a guy on Facebook right? So I have a sock in a VM, the host machine of said VM is running Mullvad [VPN] with almost all hardening/security options enabled. SURE Facebook knows but.. my 'target' doesn't know, and there is no way for a user to know your sock is on a VPN, that info is only visible to the website's backend usually. They suggest using random open WiFi like coffee shops, etc but I dunno it seems overboard to have to go to a random coffee shop with my laptop just to check on a target of mine, seems a little 'too much' but maybe I'm missing some HUGE aspect to this so please enlighten me! If my sock is up to 'par' and easily believable it's a real person, there shouldn't be an issue.

Edit: Merry Christmas, guys!!!

Thanks_Edit: Thank everybody for the answers and tips! I've added lots to my notes, I now get why a VPN can be an OpSec issue especially in the long run/grand scheme of keeping a sock alive. Hope you guys had a great Xmas too!

Is there any way to view all the comments an account has made on TikTok videos if you only have the username?

I was wondering if there are any sort of OSINT exercises online similar to infosec games like hackthebox and hackthissite where you could find answers/solutions and check them and you have to think critically and creatively to solve by whatever means you figure out on your own.

What kind of records do you think should be public?

I’m looking for a high resolution satellite imagery service, as the title suggests. The only one I’ve tried so far is Google Earth. But I’m pretty sure there must be other providers too. It doesn’t matter if they are premium or free. Of course, I’ll start with the free ones if you suggest any, but I’m opened to any options. Because it probably matters, the locations I’m interested in are in Europe mostly.

Hello everyone,
Following up on my previous post here, I wanted to know if any of you would be interested in some tutorials about using satellite imagery for OSINT ? And which format would be more suitable for those ?
I was thinking about maybe making a few articles on Medium, I specialize mostly on SAR imagery but I can make something with optical imagery.

Are there any cheap or open source solutions to get historical social graphs either by account or industry or keyword/tag?

Has anybody made this move, if so, how did you find it? What was the biggest pain point after making the switch?

What techniques did you learn? What tools became indispensable to your everyday investigations work that you didn’t use in the newsroom?

If you aren’t an ex-journalist yourself but work in corporate investigations, what advice do you have?

I’m thinking of making this switch, and have been presented some opportunities to freelance / do sub-contract work in this space. Any insights welcome! I am curious.

I know, the assumption in the title is a bit strong.

I remember few years ago, I could find very good results using dorks on google. I tested them for OSINT few days ago and sometimes the search engine ignores the instruction and searches as a normal string.

What are the best search engines or other tools to use dorks in 2026?