Our weekly hack for those in the field doing the work & digging up critical intel.
The ability to uncover information on the internet is the primary skill of an online investigator. There are hundreds of thousands of surface, deep, and dark websites, but which are most pertinent to your unique case? Do you know how to utilize Google to its full potential? With new social media platforms coming online at a rapid pace, capturing leads and evidence in social media networks is more complex than ever. Do you know the latest tools of the trade?
Hg’s OSINT Tips of the week provides you with the latest intel how to be most effective in our tradecraft. We are always looking for new tools, so don’t hesitate to let us know if you have one you’d like reviewed in a future post!
Enjoy!
This week, we provide a list of Twitter tracking resources useful in OSINT investigations.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Tweetbeaver.com
Tweetbeaver will aid you with any social media investigation. Still an ongoing project, their website states they will be launching more tools in the coming months. You can download a user’s most recent 3,200 tweets, a user’s following and followers list (all into a csv file, by the way), check to determine if two users follow each other and access data about the account. If you’ve ever searched for a post or follower manually, this is going to be a huge time-saver. Most of the information you will find using the account data feature can be found on the account itself, such as their name, location if specified, or the date the account was created. One unique feature we noticed is that the Account Data feature will also tell you the number of geo-enabled tweets a user has. These features are only a small sample of what this free tool has to offer. There are also many powerful paid platforms that have these features, such as LifeRaft Navigator.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Tinfoleak.com
Tinfoleak will create a free report on any public Twitter user and reveal valuable information for analyzing a profile and establishing connections. For example, the report will provide all their hashtags used, all other users mentioned in their tweets, and show tweets where geo-location was enabled. Tinfoleak is free to use but does require the report to be sent to your email.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitonomy.com
A Twitter analytics tool that requires a Twitter account to use. Twitonomy can easily backup or export tweets and mentions and provide analytics on anyone’s activity. You can monitor Monitor a subject’s interactions with other Twitter users, including via mentions, retweets, and favorites. Data can be downloaded as a PDF or an Excel file. Twitonomy is also available as a phone app.
Have an OSINT tip for us? Contact us, and we will consider reviewing it in future posts!
Hg’s 2021 Back to School Training Packages
We open our arms to cooler weather, leaf peeping, children’s voices on playgrounds again, and a discounted offer to our colleagues and followers! Check out our expertly curated and always available training content to help you hone your tradecraft skills. Our themes this fall are Social Media Investigations, OSINT Skills, Due Diligence and Business Intelligence, and Dark Web Skills. We have designed the packages to include a combination of recorded and upcoming live webinars along with our Data2Know newsletters that provide timely and detailed information on how to navigate the ever-changing digital world as analysts and investigators.
We appreciate you and hope you find our fall offerings just what you need to further hone your open source skills!
~ The Hg Team + Hg Pups
**All discounts will be applied until October 1, 2021.
