Right now, the task to find information about people is much more attainable than at any time in history. It is common for people now to expose their lives online. Users willingly utilize personal data to register on websites or post about their lifestyles on the Internet. Moreover, many government and non-government organizations publish their records online for easy accessibility and higher transparency. The challenging part is knowing how to reveal the data and what places to go in order to track down a target. X-Ray Research Team has compiled a comprehensive guide on how to look up anyone, with no previous OSINT experience needed.
Why May You Need to Dig Information About Someone?
A person of interest investigation is a valid task for pros who work in different industries to protect themselves from risky partnerships. You may be interested in leveraging OSINT in order to:
- Check a Person Before Hiring. Employers use OSINT to verify the background, qualifications, and reputation of potential hires. That’s how you can save up on costly lawsuits and reputation management caused by ill-intended or incompetent employees.
- Conduct a Journalistic Investigation. Investigative journalists rely on OSINT to fact-check their sources and collect contact data. It is one of the crucial steps aimed at minimizing disinformation by non-credible leads.
- Get the Contact Info of Business Leads. Networking is a core part of establishing new partnerships and persuading clients to buy from your company. You can facilitate the outreach efforts by finding contact details of people you need to communicate with.
- Ensure Privacy Compliance. Disregarding the niche you work in, cybersecurity is a key strategy to protect your business and follow the law. OSINT can be useful to find information about culprits who try to penetrate the system and bring them to justice.
- Better Your Private Investigation. Employ open source intelligence for tracking targets you were hired to do research without crossing any legal boundaries.
Methods for Finding Information About Someone
There exist various techniques you can engage to look up a person depending on your needs and resources. We will unpack all the main approaches to find info on anyone with the use of digital sources only.
Using People Search Engines for Deeper Information
The easiest and most exhaustive approach is to engage people search engine platforms. These services crawl through the Internet to collect openly available data on users from various sources. This information is then neatly organized and available to you in a few clicks. All you need to know is a nugget of information about a target’s identity. It can be their full name, email address, phone number, image, username, social media link, etc. It will serve as a starting point for a reverse data search. Here are some top-level tools you can investigate with:
- X-Ray Contact. It’s an all-in-one solution for your investigation, even if you have zero previous OSINT background. This service has 33+ data providers from the countries worldwide and various search types like Name, Email Address, Phone Number, Socials, Image, Username, Sanctions Check, and more. Choose a Package or a Subscription option, depending on your needs and resources. Also, an API alternative is available upon request at no extra fee.
- PimEyes. It is a facial recognition tool that allows you to upload an image and find matches across the Internet. This service is useful if you intend to track down where a photo has been posted before online. One convenient function is that you can sort the results in chronological order to see how the picture has been reposted after the original upload.
- Social Catfish. This service is specifically wired to expose scammers and prevent dating fraud cases. One unique feature is that the service provides a directory list of popular searches by state and name, so you can access common results.
- Intelius. It’s a public records search engine that you can use to find useful details like criminal history, public records, and past employment info. You can utilize thee findings to facilitate a target’s profile with database details.
- OnlyFinder. You can employ this service to find more info about someone’s work as an OnlyFans model. One can use usernames, social media handles, or specific content to reverse search on a person in order to expose their OnlyFans account.
How to Use Internet Search Engines to Find Information?
Facilitate your investigation by maximizing the potential of common search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Even though most people know how to look up something on such sites, we recommend you to use these tips and tricks to fine-tune the investigation process:
- Utilize Quotation Marks. It is possible to make your search results more exact by typing a keyword in quotation marks. For example, you can look up “Johnny Suh Facebook” to get results that include just these words.
- Use Search Operators. You can narrow down the search results by adding specific operators to your request. For example, “
site:” helps to search within a certain website, “inurl:” to search a keyword within a URL, “-” to exclude certain keywords from the search findings, or “intitle:” to search a keyword in a meta title, etc. - Sort the Content. Click on specific tabs like “Images,” “News,” “Videos,” “Shopping,” etc., to browse only search results in these categories.
Searching Social Media Profiles for Personal Information
SOCMINT investigations are a valuable source of insights about identity, connections, routines, lifestyle choices, and worldviews of a person. Use this advice if you are intending to find out about someone with the help of their social media links:
- Pay Attention to the Bio. Oftentimes, people mention vital details about themselves, like name, age, profession, and other social media links in a bio or an “About” section.
- Scan the Comment Section. You can notice patterns of who the person tends to interact with the most. Then, go to the profiles of these users to hopefully get more unique details about your target. For example, they can live in the same city or go to the same places together.
- Reverse Search a Username. In case you have a link to a profile of a person, try to look up the same social media handle on other platforms as well. It is common for people to reuse the same username for a few services or sites at once.
- Explore the Posts. People may expose their workplace, hobbies, or even tag their location on social media posts.
- Analyze Activity Time. You can learn more about the daily life of the person based on when they tend to use social media.
How to Use Reverse Phone Lookup to Find Information?
Most social media platforms are connected to a phone number, which makes it easier to locate them using such a search channel. You can do a reverse phone lookup with X-Ray Contact in a few clicks to extract more details about the identity, online presence, or place of residence of the person. Here’s how it goes:
- Click on the “Platform” tab in the site header.
- Select the “Phone Search” option.
- Type in the phone number in the search bar.
- Wait until the algorithm processes the request. If it goes well, carefully examine the findings presented in a Person Profile.
Analyze Online Databases to Find Clues
You can expose details about people with the help of publicly available databases. The scope of info you can dig up depends on the laws of your country. However, it is often possible to look up criminal records, car registration data, insurance info, property records, licenses, and education documents.
Human Intelligence: The Power of Direct Inquiry
Sometimes, the easiest way to expose insights about the person is to ask directly. HUMINT is a branch of OSINT that focuses solely on utilizing social engineering techniques to gather intelligence. Some useful pieces of advice are:
- You can contact a target or people from their network via online forums or social media DMs.
- Think about the appropriate communication style and tone. If you pretend to be a business, an official tone would be more trustworthy. However, if you reply to someone on a Reddit threat, using Internet slang and informal language seems more natural.
- You can craft a scenario that seems legitimate to persuade them that you should be trusted. People are more likely to answer to personalized messages rather than cold calls.
- Establish a relationship with a person first before asking questions of interest. You can engage with their content or start a conversation on an unrelated topic first to seem like an organic subscriber.
How Can You Protect Your Privacy?
If you don’t want to be exposed online without much trouble, you should take care of your own digital footprint. Don’t use your full legal name, post things that reveal your location, education institution, or workplace. It is better to use different phone numbers, email addresses, and usernames when registering on services, especially if you don’t want them to be public. Also, enable two-factor authentication on all your accounts and use services with end-to-end encryption to prevent data leaks. Choose strong unique passwords, change them often and don’t reuse the same one for different sites.
The Bottom Line
Finding info on people is easier than it may seem if you use the full potential of the digital instruments. We highly recommend respecting the privacy of users and not crossing the threshold of hacking. Otherwise, you will face both ethical and legal consequences of your actions.
