What is Open Source Intelligence?

This is my first blog and in this blog i will try to make my readers understand a very famous technique called OSINT, so let's start.

What is Open Source Intelligence Technique or OSINT?

Open Source Intelligence Technique or OSINT is a technique used to gather information about a company, organization, a person or any product from publicly available sources. It is widely used by many Gov Agencies to spy on neighboring countries and to catch criminals. Osint is not only used by gov's but it is also used by normal peoples but in a different and very normal way. Basically normal people  use osint to find someone on social media platforms,  finding reviews about a product, or to find study notes and all these things we do in our daily life is called OSINT.

Osint can be used in various ways like to spy on someone, to uncover something about someone which should not be available publicly, and etc. In osint investigation an investigator uses search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others to find information about their target and search engines are not the only way to find information about the target there are vast sources available on the internet FREE and PAID which is used by osint investigators to uncover the truth behind lies. This process can take upto 1month, 3month, 6month, or may be 2-3years to find the truth so this field requires alot of patience, curiosity, learning attitude and obviously a laptop/desktop and a working internet connection.

 

It is important for every osint investigators to cover their tracks and real identity while investigating any case, and to hide their identity they use sock puppet accounts or sock puppets.

What are sock puppet accounts?

Sock Puppet Accounts are basically fake accounts which is used by cyber criminals and osint investigators to hide their real identity. In the process of creating sock puppets investigators uses fake names, identity, burner phones or numbers, and other things to register on social media platforms for investigation purposes and the benefits of creating sock puppet is that it adds a layer of anonymity and it also makes harder for anyone to trace you back.

In osint industry one must follow all the laws and should respect their clients privacy. It is important for investigators that they should respect their clients privacy and never disclose any information about their clients at any cost. So that's it for this blog and i hope that you guys have understood about osint. In my next blog i will explain some more about osint and will also introduce to some osint categories and techniques.