Don't follow these "OSINT" accounts

Staying away from toxicity in an exciting field

Hello! I know what you’re waiting for right now. You’re waiting for me to name and shame OSINT, or “OSINT,” as the case may be, accounts that I dislike.

While there’s a number of those, this would be too easy. I also don’t want to contribute to toxic social media callout culture, because it’s stupid and tedious and, most of the time, changes nothing.

Instead, what I want you to focus on are the warning signs that a self-proclaimed OSINT expert is not someone you should immediately trust.

Here is what to look for:

Does this person misuse OSINT tools in order to threaten and harass random people?

In the wrong hands, OSINT tools and knowledge can be severely misused. If you see someone using them to settle petty personal scores all of the time — you know what I mean, “lol I don’t like you, so now I’m going to hassle you, not because you’re some criminal or a propagandist for a fascist regime, but because IT MAKES ME FEEL IMPORTANT, dammit” — you’re better off staying away.

Even if a person like this is gifted, they can frequently be unstable. And nothing will stop them from turning their skills on you should they decide they don’t like you.

We all seek validation online to one extent to another, but people with a chip on their shoulder take it too far. At best, you’ll be exposed to their constant drama. At worst, they’ll use a sock account to post your address online. Save yourself the trouble.

Does this person frequently swipe other people’s content with no attribution?

Within online OSINT communities there is a big emphasis on, well, community. Crowd-sourced investigations continue to be important. This is great! What’s not so great is when people abuse community trust and do not give credit where credit is due.

It’s especially uncool when these same people will produce content styled as BREAKING NEWS in order to draw attention to themselves — because they’re trying to score a book deal or whatever — while not having done any of the research themselves.

This is dishonest and obnoxious. It can also be a big clue that the “online detective” in question doesn’t actually know what they’re talking about, and therefore depends on cribbing other people’s research.

Are you dealing with a “throw shit until it sticks” kind of individual?

There is a lot of precision that goes into any kind of OSINT-related research. Or — there should be.

This is why I get annoyed when people send me random guesses in order to solve my geolocation games. As I say Every. Single. Time. — geolocation is not a guessing game.

Guessing games, however, can be dangerous, not just annoying, when you’re dealing with a real investigation where innocent people can become compromised. Think of people falsely accused by “online detectives” of crimes they did not commit. The Maryland bicycle trail case is one of my go-to examples.

Some people refuse to think before they post. Some people are so addicted to online attention that they’re actually OK with others suffering fallout for their sloppiness.

You can call these “BROSINT” accounts, as in, they back up their information with a “trust me, bro.” If you’re aware of this behavior, you shouldn’t encourage it.

Are they a true crime fanatic who’s going off the rails?

I love true crime. At its best, it’s a fascinating genre.

At its worst, it’s a vortex of misinformation and hysteria. Some true crime fanatics contacted me over and over again, asking to collaborate, when the Shopping Cart Killer was caught, for example. Their hearts were in the right place, but their desire for sensationalism made me uncomfortable. They wanted juicy content, not a careful examination of the facts.

I didn’t want to work with them, and I didn’t want to follow them, and that upset them. And while I hate upsetting people, I also know that social media algorithms reward hysteria to an unhealthy extent. I don’t want to be part of that. It’s not something I recommend to my readers.

There are other examples, but these are ones I really wanted to call your attention to.

Follow people who err on the side of caution and admit their mistakes as needed (the horror!). You’ll be better off.

As always, thank you for reading and subscribing. It means a lot to me.