How To Blow Your Online Cover With URL Previews
URL previews are a nice feature found in most messaging applications. They allow you to paste a URL to a friend or colleague, and have a handy miniature view of the website you are about to view. The...
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Tracking Illicit Transactions With Blockchain: A Guide, Featuring Mueller
In recent years, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have been used by terrorists to conduct funding campaigns, authoritarian governments to subvert its citizens’ human rights, and GRU agents to hack the...
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Creating Your Own Citizen Database
A Case Study, Featuring the Electoral Roll of the Kyrgyz Republic When conducting digital investigations, using the tools already made available by the government can be a real help. Let’s use...
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Using the New Russian Facial Recognition Site SearchFace
Update: SearchFace is dead, long live FindClone! This guide is now mostly for historical interest, as SearchFace has been taken offline and replaced with FindClone, a far easier tool to use than...
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How To Use Google Earth’s Three Dimensional View: Feat. Syria, Yemen, Sudan
It has become abundantly clear that geolocation and remote sensing is fundamental to knowing what happens in conflict areas where it is often too dangerous for journalists, observers and analysts to be...
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Bellingcat’s Invitation Is Waiting For Your Response: An Investigative Guide...
Whether you’re investigating a company purporting to have damning information on Robert Mueller or conducting research on anti-Islamic State foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, LinkedIn can serve as a...
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How To Track Illegal Funding Campaigns Via Cryptocurrency
After posting a tutorial on tracking GRU agents’ bitcoin (BTC) transactions, I’ve received numerous responses asking how to find out even more. I aim to please, so I’ve put together another tutorial...
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Using Phone Contact Book Apps For Digital Research
Popular apps such as TrueCaller or GetContact advertise the ability to see who is really calling you, even if you do not know the number, and alert the app user of spam or scam calls. However, the way...
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The Most Comprehensive TweetDeck Research Guide In Existence (Probably)
To some researchers, TweetDeck might seem superfluous in a world where Twitter Advanced Search exists. The platform would appear to be just a prettier version of what you are already doing through...
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How To Tell Stories: A Beginner’s Guide For Open Source Researchers
Many open source researchers rely on journalists to turn data into a narrative that will then reach a wider audience. Yet journalism today is in a crisis! You can trust me as a person who comes from a...
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A Beginner’s Guide To Flight Tracking
Flight tracking is an accessible and useful tool for open source investigators. Being able to track the movements of aircraft belonging to powerful individuals and armed forces can add important...
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Massive White Supremacist Message Board Leak: How to Access and Interpret the...
Update: The Internet Archive has removed the SQL leak; however, the information is freely available via a torrent file (download here) or a Magnet link (click here, or copy/paste the link into a...
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Guide To Using Reverse Image Search For Investigations
Reverse image search is one of the most well-known and easiest digital investigative techniques, with two-click functionality of choosing “Search Google for image” in many web browsers. This method has...
View ArticleInvestigating Coronavirus Fakes And Disinfo? Here Are Some Tools For You
There is no dignified way of putting it — the world has gone bananas as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. When the threat of deadly infection is mixed with the peculiar rush of going viral, people are bound...
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How (Not) To Report On Russian Disinformation
Whether you’re listening to NPR, watching MSNBC, or reading the New York Times, you will likely be barraged with stories about Russian trolls meddling in every topic imaginable. No matter how obscure,...
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Investigate TikTok Like A Pro!
TikTok videos have grown increasingly popular over the last few years, with short clips showing people dancing, lip syncing, doing viral challenges, and so on. This relatively new platform lets users...
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How To Track Desert Locust Swarms
Billions of desert locusts are swarming across East Africa, multiplying in numbers over several months of favorable rain and breeding conditions, creating what the UN Food and Agriculture Organization...
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Cleared for Takeoff: Exploring Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020’s Research...
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MFS2020) launched last week, promising players the ability to fly anywhere on the planet thanks to the integration of several technologies. The game pulls satellite...
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Using the Sun and the Shadows for Geolocation
Most people who have been verifying photos and videos for some time will already be aware of a tool called SunCalc, which chronolocates a video or image. What is less well known is that the position of...
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What Oil, Satellite Technology and Iraq can Tell us About Pollution
Few countries have oil reserves as deep as Iraq. The extractive industries bring jobs and tax revenues to a nation that has been hobbled by invasion, war and insurgency for close to two decades. Yet...
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