r/OSINT

What do I do about the fact that, here in Britain, so many osint tools are blocked. Dystopian as fuck to be asking this ik. Vpn's aren't working, duckduckgo isn't, was trying specifically emailosint.org but also others.

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Even paid APIs are incomplete, outdated, or return weak / inaccurate data about the target.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

I am an early career researcher/investigator generally cover online fraud schemes. Now, I am thinking to put my skills to some good use. I hate child-trafficking and I believe that everyone who is involved in it should face strict possible punishment.

So I was looking for individuals/organization who work in the similar space for me to contribute. If you know of any, or you are already involved in something similar or wish to be involved, please let me know. It would be ideal if they compensate, otherwise it will be fine for me too. Besides, I can sign up for other good causes too.

Thanks

To anyone struggling with cancelling the Spokeo subsription heres how to do it. They are scammy and try to hide how to do it and their official instructions are incorrect https://help.spokeo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010516568-How-do-I-cancel.

What you need to do is go to https://www.spokeo.com/user/account. Look for "If you have any questions about your plan or billing, need help searching, or want to manage your membership, you can view our support contact form here." The word here is a link. Click that and it give you a drop down. Select "I would like to terminate my membership", which then renders a button "TERMINATE NOW ANYWAY"

https://preview.redd.it/1horwqyrvrah1.png?width=1792&format=png&auto=webp&s=aeded61a55c9bad308ab9c572438a7b164edb0f2

https://preview.redd.it/7ddtucrnvrah1.png?width=996&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2a0d0a2388d40492eb31f5bf34f08cd9df5e6f0

Excuse my lack of knowledge. I am brand new to this world, but I love how helpful the community is. I have been trying to fix this for a long time now. Essentially I want to know if this is even possible. Can I find the email I used for an account if all I have is the Username? I am specifically referencing a Playstation account. Sony's recovery process is outdated and unreasonable. I have tried to use tools that search up usernames, but "playstation" never pops up and it 100% exists. Can anyone help?

I'm working on a system that pulls geopolitical and cybersecurity events from open sources (official statements, satellite imagery, breach disclosures, conflict trackers, and sanctions filings) and tries to flag when a narrative around an event doesn't hold up against primary sources. Think less "who posted this?" and more "does the claim survive contact with the underlying data."

To be clear up front, this is about events, infrastructure, and narratives, not people. No individual tracking, no doxxing angle, nothing that touches a specific person's identity or location. I know that's a hard line here, and I want to stay well inside it.

Where I'm stuck is the verification layer. I can pull data fine (satellite feeds, news APIs, government bulletins, and breach databases), but turning "here are five sources saying different things" into "here's the most defensible version of what happened" is the actual hard problem. Right now my approach is source-tiering plus timestamp cross-referencing, but I suspect that's naive for anything state-actor-adjacent, where official sources themselves can be the disinfo.

For people who've done verification work on contested geopolitical or cyber claims: how do you actually weigh sources when even "primary" ones might be lying? Is there a methodology from journalism or intel work I should be borrowing instead of reinventing? And is "propaganda detection" even the right framing, or does that just invite bias accusations regardless of how neutral the pipeline is?

Genuinely looking for the failure modes here before I build more on a shaky foundation.

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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?

Hi everyone, I’m fairly new to OSINT and glad I found this community.

I’ve searched the sub and read through a lot of older posts, so apologies if this has already been covered recently. I’m looking for current, reputable tools similar to Holehe that can help with account discovery and identity resolution, for example checking whether an email is associated with public profiles or platforms.

I’m mainly trying to learn best practices, avoid outdated tools, and understand what people are using responsibly today. Any recommendations, workflows, or cautions would be appreciated.

anyone actually pay for stuff that checks if ur info got exposed somewhere or nah.

what makes u trust one enough to pull out a card/wallet for it

also most of u checking ur own exposed stuff or digging on other ppl?

genuinely curious how this sub uses these tools vs just hoarding bookmarks lol

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