Learning the ropes in OSINT

I have been reading blogs, watching videos and taking a few courses on My OSINT Training. I downloaded Obsidian and then grabbed the Obsidian template from Micah Hoffman over at My Osint Training.

At first glance, the template from Micah is a bit overwhelming. I decided to find a target, which was the spouse of a distant relative. I chose him because I don't know much about him, other than his name. Also, because we are related, I could more easily verify the information I found while learning to use the osint tools.

I started with FastPeopleSearch I find that to be a good starting point. I was able to gain some information, but not an email address for him. Next, I looked at LinkedIn and was able to get an email address. I was looking for a date of birth, so I kept moving along my list of search tools.

Next, I tried PeekYou and was able to discover a username I had not seen before. I still wanted to find a tool that would show me a date of birth. I moved down my list and tried ThatsThem and hit the jackpot. I found his date of birth and 4 email addresses.

I ran the username I discovered through Whatsmyname and was able to find 16 accounts for that user. Since the username was quite unique, I was confident those accounts belonged to him. I began clicking through those accounts and some displayed profile photos that allowed me to verify him as the user.

If you have a lot of experience in OSINT, this post may sound silly, but I am just documenting walking through the steps and gaining experience.