Sockpuppet & OPSEC

Investigation leaks in both directions: your target can see you back. This covers protecting the investigator and running research personas — for lawful, authorized work only.

Protect yourself first

• Separate environment — a dedicated browser profile or VM for research; never mix with personal accounts. Containers/multi-account browsers isolate cookies.
• Network — a VPN or the Tor Browser hides your IP and rough location from sites that log visitors. Assume every page you load records you.
• No live interaction from real accounts — viewing a LinkedIn profile logged in tips off the target; viewing a Story marks you as a viewer. Observe from a research account or logged out.
• Disable link previews in the tools you paste target URLs into — they fetch the URL and can leak to the target.