Social Media OSINT

Overview

Social media platforms expose enormous amounts of voluntarily shared personal and professional information. This skill covers the tools and techniques to systematically gather and analyze publicly available social media intelligence without violating platform terms of service or privacy laws. The primary tools are Sherlock (username search across 400+ sites), Instaloader (Instagram metadata), and manual techniques using search-engine dorks and the Wayback Machine.

Always verify you have authorization or a legitimate OSINT purpose before investigating individuals. Typical authorized contexts: a penetration test or social-engineering assessment with a signed scope, brand-impersonation monitoring for your own organization, due diligence, journalism, and fraud investigation.

Instructions

Tool 1: Sherlock — Username search across 400+ sites

# Install into an isolated environment
pipx install sherlock-project          # or: pip install sherlock-project inside a virtualenv