Digital Journalism | OSINT Essentials

Welcome back to the redesigned osintessentials.com. The layout is intended to make it easier for users to navigate, as well as for me to update - which is a crucial part of what will hopefully keep the site helpful and relevant.

An easy-to-use tool for starting an OSINT task

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Tools & Services - What and why?

SOCIAL

Who posted what? - Search for posts by keyword, within selected date ranges. From Henk van Ess & Daniel Endresz.

Facebook Graph Searcher - Graph Search Generator by Intelligence X. Website has other tools worth checking out.

Graph.tips - Facebook Graph Search Generator by Henk van Ess and Tormund Gerhardsen

LookupID - Finds a Facebook user's unique ID number.

GEO

Google Maps - Maps from Google, including Street View, 3D, Photo Spheres

Google Earth - Browser-based version of Google Earth. Standalone desktop version can be downloaded here

Bing Maps - From Microsoft. Small variations in satellite orbit can mean dramatically different views to Google Maps

Yandex Maps - Particularly useful for Russia and some surrounding countries

OpenStreetMap - Global crowd-sourced maps

Travel With Drone - Shows aerial videos of locations marked on a world map

Suncalc.org - Shows the position of the sun at any time and location. See also The Photographer's Ephemeris, which is slightly less intuitive. Very similar to suncalc.org is suncalc.net - but it's not working at the moment after Google made changes to the charges for the Google Maps API.

Shademap - Visualises shadow direction and length for given location, date, and time

Global Gazzetteer - List of locations worldwide, with spelling variations in multiple languages and scripts.

Dual Maps - Allows map, satellite, and Street View in Google Maps to be displayed simultaneously

Area Calculator - Gives the area of a shape you draw on a Google map

MapChecking - Helps estimate maximum crowd density for a selected area (French)

Latlong - Converts degrees, minutes and seconds to decimal values, and vice versa

PeakVisor - Provides detailed 3D views of mountains worldwide

Wikimapia - Crowd-sourced maps with descriptive details of locations and very useful filter layers

Mapillary - Crowdsourced street-level imagery

World Imagery Wayback - Historical satellite views from Esri

Open Infrastructure Map - Shows key infrastructure such as power lines, solar installations etc. User-generated

Submarine Cable Map - Searchable map of undersea cables worldwide

Open Railway Map - Map of railway lines worldwide

CarbonBrief Nuclear Map - Shows the location and operating status of nuclear power plants worldwide

Peakfinder - Mountain and hill peaks worldwide, with visual representations

VIDEO/PHOTO/AUDIO

* A word of caution

MW Metadata - Displays detailed metadata on YouTube videos, as well as the channel on which they're posted.*

TubePilot - Displays detailed metadata on YouTube videos, as well as the channel on which they're posted.*

YouTube GeoFind - Allows searches by location for geotagged YouTube videos.*

InVid - Browser extension that allows an array of analytical functions to be carried out on video and still images.

Watch Frame by Frame - Speed up, slow down or advance YouTube or Vimeo video frame by frame within the browser

Anilyzer - Allows video from YouTube or Vimeo to be played frame by frame or in slow motion

Yandex - Powerful service. Tends to do well on facial recognition relative to other services

Google - Very strong. Comprehensive and has useful filters

Bing - Lags a little behind the big two currently, but has some interesting features, particularly the ability to crop to elements of an image and re-search in real time

TinEye - Making something of a comeback after lagging for a few years. Strong on logos and symbols, and can filter chronologically

Remove Background - Removes the background in an image. Can help reverse search engines focus on main subject

metadata2go.com - Online tool for viewing metadata, including image Exif data (metadata embedded within images), such as camera setting used when taking a photographs, date and location information, and thumbnails. Also can be used for video, and tends to do better on this than other tools

Online EXIF Viewer - Exif viewer - very fast

Jimpl - Exif viewer - can also be used to remove metadata

VerEXIF - Exif viewer - can also be used to remove metadata

Metadata Interrogator - Desktop metadata viewer that works offline and extracts metadata from multiple filetypes

A word of caution: image analysis is quite complex, and I have seen people embarrass themselves by reading too much into the results. Do not expect this to tell you definitively whether a photo is "fake". The creator of FotoForensics warns: 'Any single analysis algorithm can generate noise that may result in a false-positive interpretation. You should confirm your results with other analysis methods. ("Observation" is always a good one, so is "common sense".)'

FotoForensics - Tools for digital picture analysis, including error level analysis, metadata, and tutorials.

Forensically - Digital image forensic analyser

EarthCam - Large directory of live webcams worldwide.

Live World Webcams - Webcams worldwide. Has some locations I haven't seen in other directories.

Windy - Webcams worldwide. Have to enable to webcams layer via the camera icon on the lower right.

WebcamTaxi - Worldwide webcam directory with a user-friendly interface

WXYZ web cams

- Webcams worldwide. Doesn't look as slick as some of the big sites, but has some cameras in places others don't.

TRANSPORTATION

RadarBox24 - Flight tracker with live maps and search function. Displays flight info by default in map view

FlightAware - Flight tracker with live maps and search function

Freedar - Customisable flight tracker that includes military aircraft. Also has monitoring of air traffic control audio

Airportia - Tracks flights, airports and airlines worldwide

AviationDB - Searchable database of info on aviation. This link goes to the very useful Aircraft Query page

Live ATC - Live air traffic control broadcasts

PlaneSpotters - Details on planes worldwide, with a huge collection of photographs

Pinkfroot - User-submitted photographs of planes. Searchable. Also has a section on ships

Airline livery quiz - For practice - can you identify an airline by its livery?

Marine Traffic - Live tracker and database of marine vessels

Vessel Finder - Live tracker of marine vessels

Myshiptracking - Live tracker of marine vessels with information on ports worldwide

Marine Insight ship guide - A guide to different types of ships operating worldwide

Ship prefixes - Wikipedia guide to prefixes used to identify vessels operated by merchant and national navies

Pinkfroot - User-submitted photographs of ships. Searchable. Also has a section on planes

PEOPLE

WhatsMyName - Searches for usernames across platforms. Very fast - and from the people at OSINT Combine, so no concerns about privacy or security issues.

Instant Username - Searches for usernames across platforms.

Namechk - Searches for usernames across platforms

NameCheckup - Searches for usernames across platforms

These are generally of use almost entirely for the United States. I've included quite a few as the quality of results tends to vary - different ones are better for different searches, with no obvious consistency.

ThatsThem - People-search tool for US

xlek - US public data search. Formerly known as Cubib

Spokeo - People-search tool for US

Peekyou - People-search tool for US. Looks for social media accounts as well as basic info

Locate Family - People-search website. Has reverse address search

InfoTracer - Background check site. Emphasis on legal records. Includes reverese address search but free info very limited

Infobel - Listings for telephone directories worldwide

Numberway - Listings for telephone directories worldwide

World phone numbers - List of phone number codes worldwide

Hunter - Searches for email addresses on a specified domain

email-format - Searches for email addresses on a specified domain

emailrep.io - Gives information on email addresses, including platforms they have been linked to

WEBSITES

Spyonweb - Finds domains with the same Google Analytics code, AdSense ID, hosting IP etc

DNSlytics - Finds domains with the same Google Analytics code, AdSense ID, hosting IP etc

Whois - Information on registration of domain names. Declining in usefulness due to non-compliance with GDPR

Subdomain Finder - Scans domain and finds subdomains

Followthatpage - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address

Distill - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address

Visualping - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address

Wachete - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address

FluxGuard - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address. The same company provides the similar Versionista

ChangeTower - Monitors web pages and sends alerts to an email address

* Web Alert - Mobile (Android) app. Monitors web pages and gives notifications on your device.

Google Alerts - Monitors blogs, news and other websites for new mentions of specified keywords and phrases. Alerts can be sent to email or RSS

Archive.today - Allows archiving of pages and posts, including Facebook

Internet Archive - User-friendly archiving - particularly with the Wayback Machine browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Doesn't work on Facebook

Conifer - Formerly known as Webrecorder, an archiving service that asks you to set up your own account to save collections, with 5GB of space free, and also share and download them. Strong on social media.

Video Vault - Preserves online video with downloads and metadata

MISCELLANEOUS

International Encyclopedia of Uniform Insignia - Military and other uniform badges and insignia from around the world. Also has a discussion forum

Military Factory - Information on military hardware, including weapons and vehicles

Weapons ID Database - Helps in visual identification of weapons. Provided by Small Arms Survey

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