OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE

 
Since the advent of the internet, and especially over the last 10 years, people have been encouraged to upload private and public information about themselves to all corners of the internet. Now a large part of society believe this is normal and have willingly shared their whole lives online for the rest of the world to see. A lot of people seem to forget that there isn't actually an internet waste pipe. Once you put something online it's very hard to remove it fully. This pool of searchable, publicly available data is unprecedented and has never been so easy to access.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) define OSINT as:

"produced from publicly available information that is collected, exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a specific intelligence requirement."

Open Source Intelligence is 1 of 4 intelligence disciplines. It's the process of gathering and disseminating data from publicly available sources to be used for investigation or research purposes. Whether you're a newcomer to citizen journalism or a seasoned pro this unique and comprehensive list of Open Source Intelligence tools will help you search and gather publicly available information on pretty much anyone or anything. Here we take you through some of the many publicly available tools used to harness this data.

 

OSINT TOOLS

General Search | Main National Search Engines | Meta Search | Specialty Search Engines | Visual Search and Clustering Search Engines | Similar Sites Search | Document and Slides Search | Pastebins | Code Search | Major Social Networks | Real-Time Search, Social Media Search, and General Social Media Tools | Social Media Tools | Blog Search | Forums and Discussion Boards Search | Username Check | People Investigations | E-mail Search / E-mail Check | Phone Number Research | Expert Search | Company Research | Job Search Resources | Q&A Sites | Domain and IP Research | Keywords Discovery and Research | Web History and Website Capture | Language Tools | Image Search | Image Analysis | Stock Images | Video Search and Other Video Tools | Radio and Podcasts Tools | Academic Resources and Grey Literature | Books and Reading | Geospatial Research and Mapping Tools | News | News Digest and Discovery Tools | Fact Checking | Data and Statistics | Web Monitoring | Bookmarking | Startpages | Browsers | Offline Browsing | VPN Services | Notetaking | Annotation Tools | Writing and Office Tools | Slideshow and Presentation Tools | Digital Publishing | Newsletter Tools | Digital Storytelling | Infographics and Data Visualization | Image and Photo Editing | Productivity Tools | E-mail Management | Document and Reference Management | PDF Management | OCR Tools | Cloud Storage and File Sharing | Web Automation | Dashboard Tools | Wikis | Collaboration and Project Management | Communication Tools | Calendars and Scheduling | Mind Mapping, Concept Mapping and Idea Generation Tools | Social Network Analysis | Privacy and Encryption Tools | Other Tools

 

OSINT VIDEOS

Here's a few short videos showing how OSINT can be used for nefarious activities.
 

Data to Go

 

Amazing mind reader reveals his 'gift'

 

See how easily freaks can take over your life

 
 

REMEMBER, LOOK AFTER YOUR DATA