Someone mentions a great open-source tool for checking which sites a username is registered on. You open the README. It wants Python 3.11. Your machine has 3.12, and the last tool you installed pinned a library this one hates. Twenty minutes later you have a broken virtualenv, a Stack Overflow tab, and no answer to the question you sat down with.

Now multiply that by every tool in a normal OSINT workflow. Sherlock for usernames. Holehe for emails. theHarvester and dnstwist for domains. Each one installs differently, takes different flags, and drops its output somewhere you’ll never find again.

We got tired of it. So we built otinstaller, and today it’s free for everyone.

It does one job: it gives every open-source OSINT tool the same front door. You install a tool by name, run it with the same syntax as every other tool, and every result gets saved where you can find it again.

pipx install otinstaller
ot install --all

Those two lines install 47 tools.

Five minutes with otinstaller

Here’s what using it actually feels like.

Set it up once. ot doctor checks your machine and tells you exactly what’s missing. ot init creates your config and asks you to accept a short responsible-use notice. (More on that below.)

pipx install otinstaller
ot doctor
ot init

Install a tool by name. No cloning, no hunting for the right requirements.txt. Each tool gets its own virtualenv under ~/.otinstaller/, so nothing ever touches your system Python and no two tools can break each other.

ot install sherlock

Run it without learning its flags. This is the part I like most. Instead of remembering how every tool wants its input, you tell otinstaller what the target is:

ot run sherlock -- u:janedoe
ot run holehe -- e:jane@example.com
ot run dnstwist -- d:example.com

u: is a username, e: an email, d: a domain, p: a phone number. otinstaller translates that into each tool’s own syntax. Every original flag still works after the --, so power users lose nothing.

Run everything at once. Once you have a few tools installed, this is where it starts to feel different:

ot run --all --live u:janedoe

That runs every installed tool that accepts a username, in parallel, with a live status table. Not sure what kind of target you have? ot auto <target> works out whether it’s an email, domain, IP, URL, or username and picks the right tools for you.

The details that matter on a real case

Installing tools is the easy part to demo. What makes otinstaller useful on a real investigation is the boring stuff underneath.

Every result is kept, with receipts. Each run writes to ./results/<tool>/<target>/ with a timestamped output file and a .meta.json sidecar: the exact command, timing, exit code, and a SHA-256 of the output. Months later, you can show exactly what you ran and when. Group related runs with --case <name>, pull indicators out of saved results with ot extract, and compare the last two runs of a tool with ot diff.

API keys live in one place. All keys go in a single file, ~/.otinstaller/.env, with locked-down permissions. Each tool only receives the keys it declares. ot keys check tells you what’s missing.

Interruptions don’t cost you. If a long install or run dies halfway — crash, kill, power cut — ot resume retries the interrupted install, or hands you the exact command to rerun an interrupted run. Partial output is always kept.

It plays well with scripts and AI agents. Every command supports --json, nothing prompts when you pass --yes, and the repo ships an llms.txt so agents know how to drive it.

Maintenance is one line. ot update --all keeps everything current. ot remove <tool> removes a tool and its environment cleanly. No orphaned folders, no mystery packages.

Why it’s free

otinstaller is MIT-licensed and free, full stop.

The honest reason we built it: open-source tools are where most investigators start, and the setup tax keeps too many people from ever getting good at them. If otinstaller saves you an afternoon of dependency debugging, that’s an afternoon back on the actual case. That’s the whole point.

When open-source runs out — breach records, people search, WHOIS history, face matching — that’s what SearchIn is for. But otinstaller stands on its own, and it always will.

Who built it

otinstaller was built by Sushant Koul, who did the hard, unglamorous work of making 47 very different tools behave like one. If you use it and it saves you time, tell him. Builders don’t hear that often enough.

Use it responsibly

otinstaller installs other people’s tools. It doesn’t write them or vouch for them, and many are dual-use: the same tool that helps a fraud investigator or a journalist could be misused by someone else.

So we put that front and center. The first time you run ot init, you’ll see a short responsible-use notice, and nothing installs until you accept it. Tools tagged dual-use ask again before they install. Use them only on targets you’re authorized to investigate, follow the laws and terms that apply to you, and never use them to harass or harm anyone.

Try it today

If you’re on Linux (it’s tested on Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, and checked on Kali before each release), you’re two commands away:

pipx install otinstaller
ot install sherlock

Prefer to watch first? Here’s a short demo of the whole registry installing in one go: youtu.be/_AfUGMFRaKA

The full guide, every tool in the registry, and the command reference live at osintverse.com/otinstaller.

What I’d love from you

otinstaller is young, and it gets better fastest when people who use it in real work tell us what’s wrong. Three small asks:

1. Star it on GitHub at github.com/OSINTVerseHQ/OTinstaller. It genuinely helps other investigators find it.

2. Tell us which tool to add next. Hit reply to this email. I read every one.

3. Break it. Open an issue when something fails, or send a pull request if you can fix it.

Thanks for reading, and happy hunting.

Most Experts were using Maltego which cost same amount of money my entire family used to spend in entire year including food, utilities, clothes, almost everything except my college fees. Tools were a barrier in learning and real world work.

Today, we are throwing that barrier into dustbin. I have spent almost a year understanding the OSINT market, launched a SaaS(Profiler.me) to get better insights from people who are ready to pay but can’t afford a thousand dollar subscription. Learned a lot of books about how to build a good business where you weren’t just chasing money, you are also doing something good for society, delivering real value to your users. Tried building a good team who can help me in this journey but it failed terribly. But after spending one and half year in learning and experimentation. Now, i am confident enough to build the best OSINT company in the world. Either it’s in terms of UI/UX, customer support, innovation, OSINTforGood, affordabilty, and in any possible aspect.

I registered a US entity last month, OSINTVerse, Co. I dreamed of building OSINTVerse in 2024 but now, i am working on making it a reality. Time to reveal our first product which is now stable.

SearchIn by OSINTVerse - A UI first investigation platform with pay for what you use pricing. Unlike other platforms, we don’t believe in quantity, we believe in quality. We add only a few selected providers which are best the industry after carefully testing them for some time internally. As of today, we have the following providers -

• OSINT Industries & Predicta Search - The two best provider for reverse lookup.

• Hunter.io - Best for finding corporate emails

• LeakOSINTBot, Dehashed & SnusBase - Their are many vendores of leaked data. These are the best three in terms of coverage, pricing and trust. (IntelX is something which i feel is missing. Their official api is very expensive so we can’t afford it right now and we don’t want to add it via any third party which may give false positive and false negative. Either we deliver the best or we don’t.)

• LeakRadar.io - Best for infostealer data in the industry. (The other best is infostealers.info by our friends, but they are shifting to enterprises, so good luck to them.)

• Whoxy & WhoisXML - Best provider of Whois data, the most loved ones.

• SecurityTrails - Industry standar for DNS related data

• BuiltWith - Best for understanding technology stack and metadata.

• Shodan - the pioner of IoT search engines

• FaceCheck.id - most popular face search engines

• Picarta.ai - really good in photo geolocation(the second best after GeoSpy Aka Raven)

We are constantly working on adding more providers to support all kinds of investigations.

Why it’s better than others -
The best way to understand is just try it once and you will get it yourself.

Here’s what we offer -

• Best customer support - Unlike others, we reply fast and we deliver a solution not an excuse.

• Pay for what you use - we don’t charge any monthly subscription, so no headache of cancelling a subscripton

• Credits never expire - we understand value of your hard-earned money, so we only charge for what you use. Your remaining balance doesn’t become zero by the end of the month magically.

• Beautiful UI/UX - there is still a need of lots of improvement in it. we are working on it but it’s still better than other outdated UIs.

• Fully Collaborative - We understand the value of collaboration. You will get a delightful experience working with your team. Just create a team and you will see the magic.

• Save Results and one click sharing - We make it easy to revisit your past search results without charging twice. You can share results of any search with anyone in just a single click.

Lots of other amazing experiences which you will feel while using the product.

If you feel something is missing or needs improvement, email us anytime at dheeraj@osintverse.com and we make that possible within hourse unless it needs a big commitment of money.

Join us today at osintverse.com

That’s it about the product.

About the newsletter - We are restarting the newsletter again soon. Fully details in next email by the end of the week.

Have a good day.

OSINTCon 2026 is now live.

Join hundreds of investigators, cybersecurity professionals, intelligence analysts, researchers, and OSINT practitioners from around the world for a full day of expert-led sessions, practical demonstrations, and real-world case studies.

Join the Live Stream Now

🎥 Watch Live:
https://youtube.com/live/GtRkPg7FLDk

The conference has officially begun, and our keynote session is about to start.

Opening Keynote

AI and OSINT – Evolution, not Revolution
Chris P
Head of Intelligence, Blackdot Solutions

A practical exploration of how AI is shaping modern intelligence gathering, analysis, and investigative workflows.

Today’s Featured Topics

• AI & OSINT
• Maritime Intelligence & Vessel Verification
• Telegram Investigations
• Incident Response & WHOIS Intelligence
• Digital Evidence Preservation
• DARKINT & Threat Intelligence
• Live Q&A with Industry Experts

Important Information

• Questions can be submitted through the YouTube Live Chat.
• Feel free to join at any point during the event.
• The conference will run throughout the day with multiple expert-led sessions.
• Session recordings may be made available after the event.

We’re excited to have you with us.

See you inside the live stream.

Best Regards,

Dheeraj Yadav
Founder, OSINTAmbition

OSINTCon Team

After thinking a lot about this topic and discussing about it with a few of my friends and some working professionals, I have decided that I will running a newsletter but not like this one. This newsletter has 8705 subscribers at the time of writing this email. I got an average of 3.5k views on any post I publish. But i don’t feel the happiness in writing this newsletter. When we were a just at 2k subs, i used to get appreciation, I used to get feedback. I also made little money by taking accepting a few sponsorships. Today, it has grown almost 4x but it didn’t give me a good feeling, Now, it feels like a burden to run this newsletter. I accept it’s 99% my mistake, i had not been consistent, the newsletter has been dead for sometimes months. I accept my mistakes and i will try not to repeat that. I had always loved content writing and I still do. Here’s what i am planning to do -

I am moving the entire active audience to Beehiive. It’s a newsletter platform that i had been following from the time when it was underrated. I had always wanted to run my newsletter on Beehiiv because they have so amazing UI, features, and a lot of cool stuff + they care about their audience. I never did it earlier because most of the cool features are in their paid plan and i run a free newsletter, so it’s a risky bet. But i had taken this bet today.

While i just came to know that i can’t use their native feature for managing paid subscription as they use stripe for payment and stripe doesn’t support Indian companies much. So, I will need to manage the payments manually, but it’s ok, I can do that. I am very lucky that i have access to stripe legally while running a legal company although there are lot of restrictions. I will accept all payments on stripe link and will update the info on beehiiv, so their will be slight delays in getting access to our new newsletter. It can take up to 12 hours in it.

I am introducing two tiers -

Paid Subscription

A 2$/month plan for people who want to read our exclusive paid content. Their will be 3-4 posts per week for these subscibers. I post will be weekly updates but it will be in much better format and a few other posts delivering knowledge about OSINT and a few other skills that will be helpful for a professional working in OSINT.

Free Subscription

A 1$/year plan for people who wants to get just weekly updates just like this newsletter but that will be consistent and regular. Although, it’s 1$/year, it’s almost a negligible amount. I won’t become rich by charging 1$ per year but it will keep my email list spam free. I want a subscriber list with a highly engaged audience. I will prefer to have just 100subscribers with 90 people reading it rather than a newsletter with 8.6subs and 3.5k reads but 0 appreciation. I want to keep that newsletter spam free and only want people who are serious. Also, if any readers of that newsletter stays inactive for more than a month, he/she will be automatically unsubscribed by automation. They will be given reminder too. In case, they wanted to rejoin again, they can just email to hi@osintupdates.com and they will be added again for free.

If you are thinking about it being a scam because i am charging a 1$ amount, i request you to kindly unsubscribe from this newsletter. It’s not worth it to read my content if I haven’t earned even that much of respect.

As of today, i have wrote three posts in that newsletter for paid subscribers. For the free subscribers, the newsletter will be active from 1st may.

Join Paid Subscription - https://buy.stripe.com/6oU4gB35L53I44I2gDfUQ06

Join Free Subscription - https://buy.stripe.com/14AdRb0XD0NsfNq9J5fUQ07

Pay via Paypal or Wise - dheerajyadavmandlana@gmail.com

Clarification About Ads

There will be a few ads in the newsletter. They will be from legit companies. If you click on them and explore their website, i will get a little bit commission for referring them some traffic. If you like anything, you can give it a try. If you don’t like it, just visit the website once and explore it once and then just close it. The revenue made from this will help me in paying for the beehiiv’s paid subscription. Rest, it’s your choice.

What about this newsletter?

I will just be writing one monthly round up post in this newsletter on the last day of each month.

That’s it for this newsletter.

If you want to unsubscribe from this newsletter, feel free to do so. I don’t mind. I don’t want to chase the numbers, i want to chase the impact.

Have a Good Day.

Thanks to all those lovely people who helped me in coming up with this solution.

I am thankful to everyone who have been a subscriber to this newsletter, but that journey now ends here.

I started this newsletter just for fun, but now a lot of things have changed, and I have to change this newsletter too.

To My Dear Readers - I started this newsletter during my college time, now I am graduated and I have lots of personal responsibilities on my shoulders. I have to change my lifestyle now, I wanted to do lots of things in life, i want to explore the world, I want to meet new people, I want to enjoy different cultures, lifestyles, beautiful places and lots of other cool stuff, and I need to money for all this. I can’t run this newsletter as i used to do. I have two options -

Option 1 - i sell it to someone who wants to run it with a good will and i move on in my life.

Option 2 - i start a paid newsletter separately for exclusive content and continue to run this as a free newsletter bi-monthly. To be honest, I want to go with option2, but it can only be possible if some people from you support it. I understand that it’s difficult to pay to someone who has always done content creation for free. But, i can assure you i have always wanted to some next level content creation in OSINT, but money has always been a challenge in it, so i have never been able to do it. Also, for initial few months i am keeping the price to be just 2$/month, so you don’t feel any regret of it if you don’t like it. I will try to do my best but i can’t meet expectations of everyone. If you want to be part of this paid newsletter, click on below link to pay for it. Once i receive your payment, you will be added to the paid newsletter within 12hours. The first exclusive content will be our tomorrow.

Try for 2$ now - https://buy.stripe.com/6oU4gB35L53I44I2gDfUQ06

Note - Incase, the newsletter got acquired, all the payments will be refunded to you automatically. So, it’s win for you. Show your support once.

TO OSINT Companies - If any OSINT company wants to acquire and runs this newsletter for community benefit, I will be more than happy to sell it(i have given a lot of my time in building this, so I expect some monetary rewards for myself, i don’t believe it’s wrong in anyway). Reply to this email with your offer and what are your intentions of running this newsletter.

Thank you for giving your time, will be back shortly.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

✨ Announcement - OSINTCon Summer is Back. Get your free tickets now. Call for speakers is also open now.

Link - https://osintconference.com/

This Week in OSINT

• FBI releases annual internet crime complaint report. Read Press Release. Read Annual Report.

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read They Researched Their Victims on Zillow Before Kicking Down the Door

• Read Croatia’s Football Team Signed Deal With Gambling Sponsor Whose Rep Used Fake Name

• Read ‘Snoopy’, ‘Adolf’ and ‘Password’: The Hungarian Government Passwords Exposed Online

• Read The War You’re Not Allowed to See: How the UAE Rewrites the Story of Iranian Strikes

• Read Tips for Investigating Right-Wing Influencers and Podcasters

• Read How Journalists Can Fight Back Against the Rising Tide of Money Laundering

• Read Germany Doxes “UNKN,” Head of RU Ransomware Gangs REvil, GandCrab

• Read How Does AI-Enhanced Images Help Identify Military Targets in Iran?

• Read Tracking a Stolen Shipment: A Fictional Case Study of the KitKat Theft

• Read Modern OSINT | From Easter Eggs to Extra Cheese

• Read What “Do Your Own Research” Actually Means

• Read What Critical Infrastructure Teaches Us About Enduring OSINT Capability

• Read The Real Value of AI May Be in Workflows, Not Tasks

• Watch Incognito Web Browsing Is NOT Private! (Well...Sort Of)

• Watch OSINT Like a Boss with Alethe Denis

• Watch How to Track Hackers Using OSINT: TryHackMe Operation Slither Walkthrough

• Watch Unmasking AI Nudifier Networks: OSINT Techniques from Bellingcat’s Kolina Koltai

• Watch Video Analysis Shows Two Waves of Bombings in Iran Elementary School Strike

• Watch Can You Solve This Real SOC Investigation? (I’ll Give You the Logs)

• Listen 462: LinkedIn is spying on you, and you agreed to nothing

• Listen Tracking the traffickeres by StageTalks with BellingCat

Newsletter Spotlight

• published Fact-Checking on the Eve of April Fool’s Day

• published Catching AI in videos

OSINT Toolbox

1. NimbusQuery - A structured methodology for cloud infrastructure reconnaissance. Read more here.

2. Fact Check Database - Search debunked images from Reuters, Snopes, PolitiFact, AFP, BOOM Live, Lead Stories, Full Fact and 100+ fact-checkers worldwide. Covering 2025-04 to 2026-04, updated daily.

3. ShareTrace - Reveal the identity behind a share link

4. TLDSweep - a domain intelligence OSINT tool that sweeps 800+ TLDs to find registered variants of a domain, flag newly registered lookalikes, and alert via Telegram and Discord.

Mystery Box

• Claude skills for journalism - A curated collection of Claude Code skills designed for journalists, researchers, academics, media professionals, and communications practitioners.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

This Week in OSINT

• Global cybercrime crackdown: over 373 000 dark web sites shut down by German Authorities and Europol.

• A technical glitch in Companies House allowed logged-in users to view and even edit other companies’ records — including sensitive data such as directors’ home addresses and emails.

• OSINT IRL - a YouTube channel by Plessas Network, some good content worth exploring.

• GIJN published an awesome guide, Tech Focus Project.

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read Reddit: An In-Depth Guide to Searching and Monitoring

• Read Blueprint for Bluesky: An OSINT Guide

• Read Your OSINT Is Only as Good as Your Thinking

• Read How Wildlife Traffickers Are Using Coded Language to Sell Protected Animals On Facebook

• Read Total Defense and OSINT: The Role of Citizens in Modern Warfare

• Read Maritime Intelligence: An Overview

• Read Why AI-Driven Social Threat Detection Can’t Be Ignored

• Read Invisible Intelligence: Navigating the Risks of Unsanctioned AI in Digital Investigations

Newsletter Spotlight

• published Detectives, Detectors and Deceptions on what AI detectors get right, get wrong, and miss.

• published Retrospective! A Free OSINT Lesson: Why RUMINT is the Unsung Hero of Intelligence Gathering.

• published Finding fake followers, TikTok edition.

• published Why AI Makes Content Moderation Better, Not Worse.

• published New Data Journalism Resources from NICAR 26.

• Watch gaslighting geoguessr pros by RAINBOLT

• Watch Why these Irish cartel bosses are still free by Bellingcat.

• Listen to Alligator in the Boat | E102 by NeedleStack Podcast

OSINT Toolbox

1. UsernameScanner - another web based tool similar to whatsmyname (gives false negatives and false positives results).

2. CrowdCounter - Upload a photo, select the area with people in it, and answer a couple of questions to estimate how many people are in the photo by

Mystery Box

Global Organized Crime Index is an innovative tool designed to measure levels of organized crime in a country and assess their resilience to organized-criminal activity.

Register to attend a free webinar by Craig Silverman on 16th April, The best free or cheap digital investigative/OSINT tools to use right now.

OSINT Practice Platforms from Simulation to Real-World Impact - View a curated selection of platforms that support investigative skill development.

That’s it for today, we will back shortly. Thank you for being a reader. Have a Good Day.

As a lot of users asked for discount, we are offering a 10% discount for next 48hours.
We recently added a lot of new tools for image and domain, so don’t forget to try them out.

Discount Code - LAUNCHV1

Link - https://app.profiler.me/

The discount code is applicable on both, top-up and subscriptions.

We also added a yearly subscription, so if pay once and you get one-month free subscription and monthly credits rollover happens automatically. Don’t wait, just do the purchase now.

That’s it. I will be sharing an interesting OSINT case study tomorrow, so stay tuned.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

✨✨ Sponsor Spotlight: Profiler.Me : A product by our own team

Profiler.me will all in one OSINT platform that provides everything you need in a single dashboard. While the product is still in development, some of the tools are available to use like advance search (similar to reverse lookup tools like epieos but better and more affordable), LeakSeach (similar to leakcheck, intelx, etc). More tools like infostealer search, reverse image search via facecheck.id, etc will added in next two days. Try the platform now at app.profiler.me
(Note - This is fully paid platform so don’t waste your time if you are looking for free stuff. A detailed blog will be out soon while we changing our philosophy from fremium to paid soon.)

This Week in OSINT

• Read this awesome LinkedIn post, I Used to Say Bad Analysts Collect Tools. Now They Build Dashboards.

• Explore Key tools review by Cartel Watch for Mexican OSINT.

• Our friends at Ubikron creation a collection of OSINT CTS.

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read Who is the Kimwolf Botmaster “Dort”?, An OSINT investigation report by KrebsOnSecurity.

• Read OSINT Chinese Companies: How to Investigate Corporate Networks Beyond the Great Firewall

• Read Under-16s Social Media Ban: OSINT and Its Implications by OSINT Combine.

• Read How to Hide Your Boat about investigating shell companies associated with boats.

• Read GHOST: Where OSINT Data Finally Gets Organized!!! about GHOST OSINT CRM.

• Read From OSINT to Exploit: Uncovering Auth Bypass and Leaked Credentials showing how OSINT is used in pentesting by Synack.

• Read The Advantages of OSINT Tool Consolidation by SkopeNow.

• Watch Why Tor and VPNs Don’t Save Hackers by Anon_ali about opsec failures.

• Watch Telegram OSINT 101 about OSINT bots.

• Watch Unboxing SITDECK--a browser-based OSINT tool

• Listen EP 171: Melody Fraud by Darknet Diaries about frauds in streaming platforms.

• Listen 457: How a cybersecurity boss framed his own employee by Smashing Security.

• Listen E101 | Navigating the Ransomware Negotiation Landscape by Needle Stack.

Newsletter Spotlight

• Secrets of Privacy published The Age Verification Bills Are Bigger Than You Think.

OSINT Toolbox

1. Shadow broker - Self-hosted worldwide events monitoring map and dashboard.

2. Video Search Engine - Free online tool to search for videos on different platforms: YouTube, TikTok, VK, Youku, Netflix, Vimeo and many others.(It is based on Google CSE)

3. PlaceSpotter - Know exactly where a photo was taken instantly (One more geophotolocation tool).

Mystery Box

OSINT Spain - A collection of useful resources for osint investigations in Spain or person residing or citizen of Spain.

Hashclue - The world's first cryptographically committed investigative intelligence game. Read more.

First of all, apologies for being inactive, as you all have noticed that i haven’t published anything from last 4months. I will talk about the reason behind in some future post for sure. As of now, i just want to announce that i am back on schedule. So, i will start publishing weekly OSINT updates from next week.

Also, i need a little help from you readers too. From last few months, we have been working on v1 of Profiler.Me. While it’s not something world changing, it’s just a small part of something i have been trying to build from long time. If you professionally work in OSINT, i believe you must be doing email lookup and data leak searches regularly. So, let me introduce you to Profiler.Me - A platform for all your OSINT needs. Our mission with this is to bring together all osint tools at single place with ease of use, ease of pricing, ease of experience with honestly and transparency.

The platform is focused for paid users only. So, there is no free tools to be used.

You can get more details about it from officially website - https://profiler.me/

Try the app - https://app.profiler.me/search

The product is still in development, so we are adding more tools, features and functionality very actively. Feel free to give suggestions and feedback for improving it.

Thank you for being a part of OSINT Updates and helping me in this journey.

Petr Vancl Hochberger, one of the most respected figures in the global intelligence community and a Former NATO Intelligence Chief, is now live at OSINTCon 2025 — presented by Tovek.

In his talk, “Public Data Is Not Enough: The Reality of Professional OSINT”, Petr explores how modern investigators can no longer rely solely on open public data. Traditional OSINT skills remain essential, but they reach limits in time, scale, and access.

This session bridges the gap between enthusiast techniques and professional-grade intelligence. Starting with a live demo of advanced OSINT methods on Telegram and other platforms, Petr will highlight both their strengths and limitations.

He’ll then demonstrate how shifting from manual hunting to scaled analysis — powered by access to unique, non-public data — transforms investigations, turning days of effort into minutes. Attendees will leave with a new framework for efficiency, scale, and the data sources that separate hobbyists from professionals.

Click here to watch -
https://streamyard.com/watch/Q5NyxSj43HAb

Don’t miss it.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

✨✨ Sponsor Spotlight: Tovek Artemis Auditor – Premiering at OSINTCon! ✨✨

Artemis Auditor is a desktop application built for OSINT analysts, investigators, and journalists who need to make sense of large volumes of unstructured data. Whether it’s Office documents, PDFs, TXT files, or even entire email mailboxes, Auditor transforms them into a fully searchable, offline knowledge base — keeping your sensitive data 100% private.

✨ Key Highlights:

• AI-powered entity extraction: Instantly identify names, organizations, emails, IBANs & more.

• Advanced search & queries: Run powerful lookups across all your indexed data.

• Link visualization: Automatically map relationships or manually build your own connections, similar to i2 Analyst’s Notebook.

🔎 Perfect for:

• Analyzing leak dumps (PSTs, CSVs, PDFs)

• Researching persons and companies in depth

• Building your own private data intelligence hub

🎁 Exclusive for OSINTCon attendees:

• Free Freemium version (time-unlimited)

• Special “Founders” discount for the first 50 registrants

• Invitation to a webinar series on advanced techniques

👉 Sign up now: forms.tovek.cz

With 30+ years of experience providing analytical tools to law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies, Tovek is now opening its powerful technology to the OSINT community. Don’t miss this chance to be among the first to try Artemis Auditor!

This Week in OSINT

• Learn how to Find the exact date and time a Google Maps review was posted. Read full post.

• started his own newsletter on substack, .

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read Uncovering Schemes Worth Billions: Inside the Belarusian Investigative Center

• Read The tequila heist that exposed supply chain fraud – and the fake companies behind it

• Read The role of technology and gathering ‘OSINT’ in preparation for the safe policing of special events

• Read OSINT in Civil Law: Shifting from Prosecution to Compensation

• Read Australian OSINT Symposium Capture-the-Flag Walkthrough Part I

• Watch Learn OSINT! by John Hammond.

• Watch OSINT At Home #27 – How to Track Wars, Disasters & Ships at Night

• Listen to What is GEOINT in OSINT? | E92 by NeedleStack

• Listen to EP 164: Oak Cliff Swipers by Darknet Diaries

Newsletter Spotlight

• published, OSINT Field Notes #1.

• published, How ProPublica Exposed a Flawed AI Tool ‘Munching’ Hundreds of Veteran Contracts.

OSINT Toolbox

1. NASA Worldview - an alternative to Google Earth, provides the capability to interactively browse over 1000 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data.

2. Xplore - A tool for generating Twitter search queries to find tweets in a specific location (like BirdHunt).

Mystery Box

Tips and Tools for Uncovering Online Scams, a Free webinar by GIJN on Oct 28, 2025 06:30 PM in India. Register here.

WhenTaken - An online game that tests not only geolocation skills, but also chronolocation skills. You have to guess not only the place where the photo was taken, but also the year.

Awesome AI OSINT - A list of articles, videos, and tools related to the use of AI for OSINT.

The Oceans Investigations Guide by GIJN.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

✨✨ Sponsor Spotlight: Tovek Artemis Auditor – Premiering at OSINTCon! ✨✨

Artemis Auditor is a desktop application built for OSINT analysts, investigators, and journalists who need to make sense of large volumes of unstructured data. Whether it’s Office documents, PDFs, TXT files, or even entire email mailboxes, Auditor transforms them into a fully searchable, offline knowledge base — keeping your sensitive data 100% private.

✨ Key Highlights:

• AI-powered entity extraction: Instantly identify names, organizations, emails, IBANs & more.

• Advanced search & queries: Run powerful lookups across all your indexed data.

• Link visualization: Automatically map relationships or manually build your own connections, similar to i2 Analyst’s Notebook.

🔎 Perfect for:

• Analyzing leak dumps (PSTs, CSVs, PDFs)

• Researching persons and companies in depth

• Building your own private data intelligence hub

🎁 Exclusive for OSINTCon attendees:

• Free Freemium version (time-unlimited)

• Special “Founders” discount for the first 50 registrants

• Invitation to a webinar series on advanced techniques

👉 Sign up now: forms.tovek.cz

With 30+ years of experience providing analytical tools to law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies, Tovek is now opening its powerful technology to the OSINT community. Don’t miss this chance to be among the first to try Artemis Auditor!

This Week in OSINT

• SANS annoucned OSINT Summit 2026. See Details.

• View recording of Sayari Masterclass: Shining a Light on Shadow Fleets

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read 8 Tips to Improve Your Reverse Image Search Results

• Read Step-by-Step OSINT Roadmap for Investigating Videos

• Read Bulletproof Host Stark Industries Evades EU Sanctions

• Read The essential handbook for AI detection: seven strategies to identify digital fakes

• Read 5 Years of Running an OSINT Business… What’s it Like?

• Read Feds Tie ‘Scattered Spider’ Duo to $115M in Ransoms

• Read Australian Cocaine Pilot Killed in Brazil Plane Crash Linked to Kinahan Drug Cartel

• Read Incendiary Munitions Strike Gaza-bound Flotilla Two Nights in a Row

• Read Like Clockwork: An Orange Wall Exposes Yet Another Active Club ‘Fight Night’

• Read OSINT: The Internet of Bodies — A Target Centric Approach

• Read The Role of OSINT in Disaster Response and Recovery

• Watch Exploring the Dark Web

• Watch OSINT At Home #26: Top 5 hacks to find deleted websites, posts and secret changes

• Watch How to make beautiful OSINT map graphics

• Watch Fact-Check & OSINT Review #11

• Watch How to Archive the Web - Bellingcat’s Auto Archiver Tool

• Listen “Tracking Suspicious Ships” with Christian Panton by StageTalks with Bellingcat.

• Listen E91 | Ransomware’s collateral damage by NeedleStack

Newsletter Spotlight

published Why We Trust Famous Faces.

published Safari’s Secret Weapon: Unlock Its Built In Advanced Privacy Settings.

published The essential handbook for AI detection: seven strategies to identify digital fakes.

OSINT Toolbox

1. Councilon - Perform a Real People Check with a Councilon People Search Engine and get detailed information about anyone in the United States. Councilon analyzes hundreds of millions of people-related data in the U.S.

2. Kwold - Try looking for a partner, a family friend, a famous person, yourself, or somebody else you might know.

3. Vericora - find in-depth and up-to-date info on just about every adult in the U.S.

Credit goes to and Dennis Keefe

Mystery Box

OSINT Handbook - An index of OSINT tools and resources curated by the team at i-Intelligence GmbH.

Legendary OSINT by K2OSINT - Github repo with with hundreds of #osint tools in different categories: people search, aviation, reverse image search, dark web etc

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🎁🔍 Mystery Box

OSINTCon 2.0, organised by OSINT Ambition in partnership with TOVEK, is back on popular demand. This time we have more amazing speakers, more amazing talks and some surprises too. The conference will be on 1st and 2nd November 2025, 10 AM to 8 PM GMT with a break in between. Claim your VIP pass now at https://osintconference.com/
(Call for Speaker is also open now, apply on the website.)

This Week in OSINT

• GitHub started deleting certain repositories containing data about the dark web, hacking, OSINT, etc. So, as a safety precaution, make a copy of your info on GitLab. Many OSINTers, like Scully, have already shifted to GitLab.

• We just launched an OSINT Forum where OSINTers can freely share their ideas, opinions and discuss without worrying about their privacy and security. Join us now at forum.osintambition.org. Be the first one to post. (Feel free to give suggestions for making it better.)

• UK OSINT Community organized a webinar on Information Laundromat: Tracking Misinformation and Disinformation Online. Watch the recording now.

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read Stop Calling It OSINT

• Read Updated Test of 24 LLMs for Geolocation

• Read Reporter’s Guide to Detecting AI-Generated Content

• Read Can Flipper Zero really steal your car? (Spoiler: NO)

• Read Why AI Agreeableness Poses Risks to OSINT Work

• Read What is in the Jeffrey Epstein Files, and can OSINT Reveal the Answer?

• Read OSINT in Insurance: Evolving From Tools to Frameworks

• Read GOP Cries Censorship Over Spam Filters That Work

• Read The Ongoing Fallout from a Breach at AI Chatbot Maker Salesloft

• Read A Guide To Monitoring Conflict Amidst a Sea of Misinformation

• Watch OSINT and Public Speaking with Mishaal Khan.

• Watch The Internet's Most Asked OSINT Questions

• Listen E89 | Adding Agentic AI to analysis by NeedleStack

• Listen OSINT and the changing character of warfare by James Intelligence.

• Listen Building Tools for Research with Galen Reich by StageTalks with Bellingcat.

Newsletter Spotlight

• Published: Exposing AI Manipulation in Fast Fashion.

• Published: A Free OSINT Lesson: Being a Defense Attorney is Hard.

• Published: A Journalist's Toolkit for the AI Era.

OSINT Toolbox

• Meawfy - Search and discover files from Mega.nz with our intelligent crawler technology. Access over 9 million indexed files instantly.

• Flightera - Free historical flight data from 2017. Search by arrival and departure airports, time, and date.

• Social Search CSE - Google Custom Search engine for searching in 17 different social media: Facebook, OK, VK, Linkedin, Telegram, TenChat and others.

• Awesome Search Queries - Large list (30K+ lines) of search queries for searching servers with various vulnerabilities or installed software(For Google, Shodan, FOFA).

• Facebook Catalogue - A free online tool for finding the most popular and active pages on Facebook in different countries and topics. Useful for news monitoring and other tasks.

• First YouTube Comment Finder - The first comments on posts and videos are often left by the author's close friends. Therefore, finding them can be useful for investigations on all social networks.

• Copyright Public Records System Search - A large database of all records on registered copyrights in the USA🇺🇸. Useful for gathering information about a person or company.

  (Credit for this section goes to )

Mystery Box

Read this five-part series on OSINT fundamentals by @sinwindie -

1. The OSINT Intelligence Cycle Part 1: Planning and Direction

2. OSINT & The Intelligence Cycle Part II: Lets Talk About Collection

3. OSINT & The Intelligence Cycle Part III: Processing Raw Intelligence

4. OSINT & The Intelligence Cycle Part IV: Analysis and Production

5. OSINT & The Intelligence Cycle Part Five: Dissemination

Read this excellent guide by GIJN, Guide to Investigating Social Media Algorithms.

Read this other excellent guide by , The Chrome Privacy Checklist: 6 Settings You Need to Change Right Now.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🔧📈 OSINT Tool Updates
🎁🔍 Mystery Box
OSINTCon 2.0, organised by OSINT Ambition in partnership with TOVEK, is back on popular demand. This time we have more amazing speakers, more amazing talks and some surprises too. The conference will be on 1st and 2nd November 2025, 10 AM to 8 PM GMT with a break in between. Claim your VIP pass now at https://osintconference.com/
(Call for Speaker is also open now, apply on the website.)

This Week in OSINT

• WhatsApp is getting ads in the updated tab. Official Docs

• Instagram’s new Map feature shares your location in real time. Official Docs

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read LLMs vs. Geolocation: GPT-5 performs worse than other AI models

• Read A Chinese Fentanyl Smuggling Network’s Footprints in Japan.

• Read The Open Source Tool That Has Preserved 150,000 Pieces of Online Evidence.

• Read What Can Open Sources Reveal About Beijing’s Deadly Floods?

• Read GROKINT – Using Grok AI for X OSINT.

• Read Mobile Phishers Target Brokerage Accounts in ‘Ramp and Dump’ Cashout Scheme.

• Watch WHY 2025 - Stealth Web Scraping Techniques for OSINT

• Listen to NeedleStack’s new episode, Intelligence tradecraft in the digital age | E87

• Listen to the first episode of The OSINT Podcast, Episode 1 – OSINT in Action: From Counterterrorism to Chinese Content.

• Listen to the new episode by James Intelligence Podcast on US-Mexico border security.

• Listen to the new episode of StageTalk with Bellingcat, Speaking of Violence with Leyla Hussein.

• Listen to this podcast episode, How to Operationalise OSINT in the Defence Sector.

Newsletter Spotlight

• published VSCO: The Not-So-Safe Space, describing how it can be used in an Investigation due to a lack of privacy and security in the app.

• published A Free OSINT Lesson: Go Job Hunting to Find Your Target.

OSINT Toolbox

GEM - A search engine for ads selling second-hand clothing worldwide, on various platforms.

Kagi - Privaсy focused search engine that aggregates results from different sources.

Space Frontiers - AI assistant to search for answers to questions in a specific dataset. Choose one - PubMed, BioMed, Wikipedia, Telegram, Reddit or other).

TattoDo - A very large database of tattoos from around the world. Even for rare requests, there is an endless feed of posts from tattoo artists who share their work. Useful as an additional source of information for identifying people with tattoos.

Kagi Translator - Translations across 244 languages using advanced language models.

Nanonets OCR - Hugging Face space for particularly heavy text recognition tasks in Images/PDFs. Good at reading tilted, blurred and other unreadable text.

Image Upscaling & Restoration using GFPGAN Algorithm - Hugging Face space that restores blurred images. The faces are sometimes looks creepy, but more natural than many similar tools.

TraceTracks - an OSINT tool that discovers YouTube videos basted on SoundCloud tracks.

Credit for this section goes to

Mystery Box

If you use ChatGPT and some other AI chat tools in a browser (including Gemini), your prompts are saved in your browsing history. Know more.

Anti-detect Tools - List of anti-detect and humanising tools and browsers, including captcha solvers and SMS-activation.

Obsidian OSINT Templates - These templates are suggestions of how the Obsidian notetaking tool can be used during an OSINT investigation.

Obsidian OSINT Templates & Plugins - Custom templates for OSINT investigations designed to advance pivoting.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🔧📈 OSINT Tool Updates
🎁🔍 Mystery Box
⏳🔙 Missed Last Week?

This Week in OSINT

• @grok, created by @xai, is accessible via the search "site:http://grok.com/share", providing a glimpse into shared conversations.

• Telegram has restored its translation feature this week, which was unavailable for some time.

• Learn how to get to the time zone on LinkedIn.

Read, Watch & Listen

1. Read Phone Number Investigation in Indonesia

2. Read Maritime Sector Faces Surge in APT and Hacktivist Cyber Threats.

3. Read How to Use Germany’s New Lobby Register as an Investigative Tool

4. Read Scammers Unleash Flood of Slick Online Gaming Sites.

5. Read How to Check if Your Target Has PLA Ties: Real Life OSINT Case

6. Read Identity Resolution and Linking Online Personas to Real-World Threats

7. Read Former Indian MP’s Terror Trial Was Largely Conducted in Her Absence

8. Read Inside Russia’s drone launch sites: A detailed OSINT investigation by Ukrainian researcher

9. Read Using AI and Satellites to Track Illegal Fishing in Marine Protected Areas

10. Read Find Information About Anyone Through Social Media OSINT Techniques

11. Read ASCWG CTF Qualification 2025 — Operation Spare Clue Challenge

12. Watch The Dark Side of Crypto: Fraud, Hacks and Hitmen

13. Watch OSINT Gone Wild: How I Found Drug Traffickers and NarcoTerrorists

14. Watch OSINT and misinformation how to navigate ethics and limitations

15. Listen to new podcast episode of StageTalks with BellingCat, Detecting Stolen Art with Arthur Brand.

Newsletter Spotlight

published a new post, The ChatGPT confession files.

published a new post, Stolen accounts in the blue, blue skies.

OSINT Toolbox

• BrokerCheck - a free tool created by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to research the background and experience of financial advisers and firms.

• OpenRefine - It identifies similar items in a dataset and groups them together. It makes it easy to clear up alternate names, correct spellings or even identify trends.

• European Commission Competition Policy Case Search Tool - Search 68506 decisions by company name, case number and case title. Lots of information about different companies, both European and those with ties to Europe.

• List of academic databases and search engines - A list of dozens of the largest online tools for finding scholarly articles in a wide variety of disciplines.

• Credit for this section goes to

OSINT Tool Updates

DuckDuckGo now has a filter to hide AI-generated images from image search results. Hopefully, this feature will soon become a standard for all search engines and for all types of searches.

Mystery Box

Uk-osint.com - A very useful site managing good collection of OSINT tools.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

This week’s issue includes...
🔍✨ This Week in OSINT
📖Read. 🎬Watch. 🎙️Listen. To…
💡🔍 OSINT Pro Tips
📰✨ Newsletter Spotlight
🚀🛠️ OSINT for Beginners
🛠️✨ OSINT Toolbox
🔧📈 OSINT Tool Updates
🎁🔍 Mystery Box
⏳🔙 Missed Last Week?

Want to promote your product to a highly engaged OSINT audience? Be a sponsor in the next issue of this newsletter. For details, please email us at hi@osintupdates.com.

This Week in OSINT

• Tea is a woman-only app that helps women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and shows them who’s really behind the profile of the person they're dating. It provides services such as background checks, Reverse Image Search, Sex Offender Search, and Phone Number lookup. (As per their Google Play Store page)
  The data of their users, including selfies (images taken for verification during signup) and voter IDs, is now going viral on the internet. It’s not a leak or breach; it’s possible that a vibe-coded app stored all the user data in a public bucket on Firebase. Some users scraped and uploaded the data to 4chan, and some even went a step further by pinpointing the user’s geolocation on Google Maps, revealing their possible home location. Want to know more, search on Google or Twitter.

• Pentagon suspends participation in think tank events. The Pentagon has suspended participation in all think tank and research events until further notice, according to an email sent Thursday to staff and obtained by POLITICO, a major shift in engagement from the country’s largest federal agency.

  The decision comes a week after the Defense Department pulled out of the high-profile Aspen Security Forum citing “the evil of globalism” and indicating the event did not align with the Trump administration’s defense policies. Read more.

• A surveillance vendor was caught exploiting a new SS7 attack to track people’s phone locations. Security researchers say they have caught a surveillance company in the Middle East exploiting a new attack capable of tricking phone operators into disclosing a cell subscriber’s location.

  The attack relies on bypassing security protections that carriers have put in place to protect intruders from accessing SS7, or Signaling System 7, a private set of protocols used by the global phone carriers to route subscribers’ calls and text messages around the world. Read more.

• Siren & Flashpoint partner to boost intelligence investigations. Siren and Flashpoint have entered into a strategic partnership to deliver a unified environment that aims to enhance investigation capabilities and drive intelligence-led decision-making for security and intelligence teams.

  The collaboration comes at a time when geopolitical tensions and hybrid threats, combining cyber, physical, and informational tactics, are increasingly impacting both private and public sectors. Organisations are facing heightened challenges from sophisticated adversaries, and the integration between Flashpoint and Siren is designed to address these evolving risks. Read more.

Read, Watch & Listen

• Read Digital Breadcrumbs: How Social Media Betrays Fugitives.

• Read Advanced OSINT Techniques: Exploring Modern Network Intelligence Methods

• Read Garage Aesthetics of OSINT: DIY Gadgets for Investigations & Garage Aesthetics of OSINT: DIY Gadgets for Investigations (vol.2).

• Read How Your Digital Footprint Grows While You’re Busy.

• Read What Can Be Found About You and Your Business Online (And Why It Matters)

• Read GEOINT 001 : An introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery.

• Read Phishers Target Aviation Execs to Scam Customers.

• Watch recordings of SLEUTHCon 2025 on YouTube.

• Watch OSINT AI Tech Predicts Global Threats and Powers Risk Strategies - SEERIST's John Goolgasian.

• Listen to new NeedleStack podcast episode, E86 | Using OSINT to protect celebrities and athletes.

• Listen to new James Intelligence Podcast episode, Assessing NATO's funding commitment.

OSINT Pro Tips

1. UNISHKA's OSINT for countries - A series of articles (constantly updated), each with dozens of tools for collecting information about people, cars, domains, companies and other objects of interest in different countries.

2. Enter email to check if it is connected to some PGP key (it can then be used to gather information in document archives, leak databases, forums, etc).
   https://keys.openpgp.org/

Newsletter Spotlight

published Time Cop: Wrangling Disordered Digital Evidence, explaining Time synchronisation techniques when your digital media gets unruly.

OSINT for Beginners

A free beginner-friendly webinar on Open-Source Intelligence: Tools and Tips for Getting Started on 10 Sep, 5:30 am - 6:30 am IST. Claim free tickets now.
From the Twitterverse
@shambhugarg179 shares My Ultimate Toolkit for Blockchain & OSINT Investigations. It’s a list of 19tools useful in crypto investigations.

OSINT Toolbox

Onetime Secret - This allows you to send sensitive information in a safe way knowing it's seen by one person only. Think of it like a self-destructing message.
TripRecon - Advanced Domain Recognition and OSINT Tool. Automate the collection of subdomains, DNS records, leaks, Dorks, APIs, and more with hacker-style and visual HTML reports.
Filmot - Search within YouTube subtitles, captions and transcripts.
geomastr - Huge database of unique objects for different countries on road photos like Bollards, Fuel Stations, License Plate, Post Company, Road Lines, Street Signs, alphabet and more.
Detect AI - AI Detection & Media Verification - Advanced Testing Mode.
(Credit for this section goes to )

OSINT Tool Updates

NotebookLM got some new features. Learn more.
Suggest some OSINT tools that were useful but have gone outdated now, we will try to provide an updated version of that or will build a new one from scratch. Tell your fav OSINT tool that you are missing.

Mystery Box

FR-OSINT Unleashed - The French Open Source Intelligence Survival Kit — Tips, Tools, Techniques, & the Ultimate Website Directory for France-Focused Investigators.

Missed Last Week?

Nothing important got missed last week.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions for this new version. You can contact me at @dheerajydv19 on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram.

Today’s Newsletter includes -

• Content Sharing

• Blogs Reads

• External Reading

• Videos Worth Watching

• OSINT Podcasts

• OSINT Events & Challenges

• OSINT Toolbox

• Mystery Box

Content Sharing

• published a new blog post in their newsletter, Google vs. AI: when to use which.

• Published a new blog post in their newsletter, Want to make millions with AI? These books probably won't help.

Blogs Reads

1. OSINT tools and techniques for research on Reddit

2. Don’t Trust Your Gut (Until You’ve Tested It): Assumptions in Image Analysis and Geolocation

3. Reverse Image Search: A Proven Standard-Practice OSINT Technique

4. Meta’s Suit Against Hong Kong Firm Was Just the Beginning – More Companies Linked to CrushAI ‘Nudify’ Apps

External Reading

• DOGE Denizen Marko Elez Leaked API Key for xAI

• Poor Passwords Tattle on AI Hiring Bot Maker Paradox.ai

• Guide to Investigating Land Conflicts in South Asia

• Violence in the Name of Cows: The 'Animal Welfare' Groups That Beat Up Truck Drivers in India

• SceneCheck: A Breakthrough in AI-Powered Image Intelligence for OSINT Professionals

• Corporate Security Monitoring: 9 Key Benefits

• What Can We Learn About Cyber Security From The Romans?

Videos Worth Watching

OSINT Podcasts

• James Intelligence Podcast released a new episode, Unpacking the Myanmar crisis.

• Stage Talks with Bellingcat released a new episode, Monitoring US Immigration Raids with Bellingcat, Evident and CalMatters.

OSINT Events & Challenges

Nothing new this week.

OSINT Toolbox

WebCapture - Simple python tool for extracting sensitive data from web pages.

Reveresely.ai - AI reverse image search.

LeakIX - A search engine for web services where common types of vulnerabilities have been found.

File Pursuit - Open Directory Search Engine. Search audio, video, archives, documents, mobile apps and other files.

Go for Dorks - Online generator of advanced search queries for Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, LeaklX, Shodan, Refseek, Fofa, Yandex and other search engines.

(Credit for this section goes to )

Mystery Box

We will be launching a new version of our newsletter next time. Suggest to us what more we should try.

Did we miss something important? Want to submit a tip? Drop a dm to @osintupdates247 on Twitter/X. Give us a Testimonial.

Today’s Newsletter includes -

• Content Sharing

• Blogs Reads

• External Reading

• Videos Worth Watching

• OSINT Podcasts

• OSINT Events & Challenges

• OSINT Toolbox

• Mystery Box

Content Sharing

• published, How AI bots quietly dismantle paywalls via web search

• published a new post, A Free OSINT Lesson: The "Velvet Sundown" Squatter Who Duped the News Media.

Blogs Reads

1. You’re Not an OSINT Analyst, You’re an AI Prompt Monkey (And it Should Terrify You)

2. Dive into the shadows of an Iranian cybersecurity organization

3. UK Arrests Four in ‘Scattered Spider’ Ransom Group

External Reading

1. 8 Most Common Cybersecurity Mistakes Journalists Should Avoid

2. Briefing: Grok goes on a Nazi bender and YouTube hints it will go after AI slop

3. Masked, Armed and Forceful: Finding Patterns in Los Angeles Immigration Raids

4. Boiler Room Investment Frauds: Evolution, Detection, and Prevention

5. The Unfair Standard: Why We Expect AI to Be Perfect When We’re Not

Videos Worth Watching

OSINT Podcasts

• Authentic8 published a new podcast episode, An OSINT investigator’s toolkit.

• James Intelligence released two episodes, AI for automated OSINT reconnaissance - part one and AI for automated OSINT reconnaissance - part two.

• Stage Talks with BellingCat also realesed a new episode, Investigating cold cases with Peter Barth.

• OSINTCombine released a new podcast episode, The Craft of Responsibility - Journalism and OSINT.

OSINT Events & Challenges

Osama Shilbayeh created three TryHackMe challenges focused on OSINT, with difficulty levels for beginners, intermediate, and advanced users. Give them a try.
OSINT Level 1
OSINT Level 2
OSINT Level 3

OSINT Toolbox

• ODCrawler - Open directory search engine, Search videos, audio, images, archives and more.

• IDCrawl - Search social media profiles by username.

• The Time Machine 3.0 - Weaponizing WaybackUrls for Recon, BugBounties , OSINT, Sensitive Endpoints and what not.

• VormWeb - Search engine for .onion domains. Not too many indexed sites, but there are Darkglossary definition hints.

Quick Note -

Hi everyone, this is Dheeraj. As most of you know, i am publishing wednesday after almost 4months. I have been busy in some other projects which includes OSINTCon and Profiler.me (a new product by us, still under development). Apart from that, their have been a few reasons due to which i wasn’t able to give time in the newsletter. But from now onwards, their will be regular posts in the newlsetter including weekly updates with lots of new updates and improvements. I am open for any suggestion and feedback for improving this newsletter. so, feel free to reach out to me at @dheerajydv19 at linkedin/telegram. Thank you for being part of this journey.

Mystery Box

OSINT Tools Bangladesh - A collection of OSINT sources and public data tools specific to Bangladesh, following the paulpogoda/OSINT-for-countries-V2.0 template.

Did we miss something important? Want to submit a tip? Drop a dm to @osintupdates247 on Twitter/X. Give us a Testimonial.

We want to share something important and personal with you.

Just this morning, we opened CallSpy for free for 48 hours—a small gift to our community to celebrate a big milestone. You’ve supported us, believed in our mission, and helped us grow. This was our way of saying thank you.

But something happened that none of us wanted.

🚨 A Malicious Attack on Our System

Within hours of launching the free window, a single user attempted to abuse the platform by flooding it with over 10,00,000 automated queries, targeting random phone numbers.

This wasn’t normal use. It was a clear and deliberate effort to:

• Exploit our system

• Waste resources

• Disrupt service for thousands of genuine users

🕵️‍♂️ We’ve Identified the Attacker

Thanks to our monitoring systems, we could quickly trace the origin of this abuse.

We now have full details of the malicious actor, including:

• Their full name

• Residential and company address

• The organisation they are associated with

• And even the team members who may have been involved or aware of the act

We are preparing to take serious legal and organisational action against this individual. This behaviour is unethical and harmful to the entire community, and we will not tolerate it.

💔 Why This Hurts

CallSpy was built for curious minds, researchers, cybersecurity professionals, and students. People who genuinely want to make the world more transparent and secure.

Seeing something we built with love and trust targeted like this hurts, not just emotionally but also as builders who believe in openness.

To protect the system and ensure fairness, we’ve had to disable CallSpy temporarily.

❤️ What’s Next — and What We Promise You

We’re not backing down.
This attack has only made our resolve stronger.

✅ We are hardening our system with better abuse detection
✅ We will relaunch CallSpy stronger, smarter, and safer
✅ And we will do right by the community that believed in us

If you were one of the many who came in during the free window, we know you had good intentions, and we will be offering priority access and compensation once CallSpy is back online.

Thank You for Standing With Us

This was a test, and your support helps us pass it.

If you have thoughts, questions, or want to connect, reply. We’re here, we’re listening, and we’re not giving up.

With trust and strength,
– The Profiler.Me Team