white notebook and yellow pencil

Five tips to get you started in OSINT!

If you are one of the thousands of new people just learning about the powerful field of OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence), then you also are probably getting overwhelmed with all of the resources that you have to read and watch. In the past 5 years or so, the OSINT world has exploded with amazing, informative blogs and videos that can help you learn the field.

To better help you with your new journey into OSINT, we’ve asked our OSINT Curious team what their advice is for people new to our work. Here’s what some of them said:

Join a community

Join a community like (https://iam.osintcurio.us/discord) to receive support, find new areas of exploration, and learn from a diverse group of thousands of international, motiviated, OSINT people.

Micah Hoffman

Monitor Twitter

Create a Tweetdeck of your favorite analysts who do the type of work you want to do and it can then be a quick way to stay up to date on techniques.

Rae Baker

Rewatch and Reread

Maybe revisit the OSINT Curious YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/TheOSINTCuriousProject), it has hours of valuable content to get started with OSINT. Also sometimes clicking stuff is a great starting point. It actually is the first blog I ever wrote for OSINT Curious https://osintcurio.us/2018/12/17/clicking-shit-for-osint-curious-purposes/.

Nico Dekens

Practice, Practice, Practice.

OSINT techniques change. If something isn’t working, you might have to find another way to get the output. The time that you invest in research will help in all future engagements.

Michael James

Challenge Yourself

Challenge yourself by always trying to find one thing extra on whatever it is your looking for. For example, dating someone? Try to find 1 friend and 1 relative. Getting a new job? Find an old phone number of the company, or take a look at the old version of their website. Searching for a product? Find a small retailer selling the product and a big one by excluding the big from the search results, etc.

Lisette Abercrombie