Find what's true. Leave people alone.
Open-source skills can protect people or hurt them. These are the rules every page on Osintian follows, and the reason some popular topics are covered here only from the defender's side.
What we teach, and where we stop
- 1Lawful use onlyWe teach open-source research for verification, journalism and fact-checking, fraud and scam defence, due diligence on businesses and organisations, security reviews of your own organisation, and checks on yourself. Every method page names its lawful purpose at the top.
- 2No stalking, no doxxingWe never show how to find a specific private person's home address, phone number, workplace, daily routine or family, and we never help anyone gather or publish those details to expose someone.
- 3No tracking a partner, ex, child or co-workerNo stalkerware, no location tracking, no reading someone else's messages or accounts. If you are worried about a relationship, the help lines below can talk it through.
- 4No getting past the locksNothing that gets around logins, paywalls, privacy settings, CAPTCHAs or rate limits. No fake accounts used to deceive real people. No scraping against a site's terms of service.
- 5No break-insNo password attacks, no leaked or stolen databases, no exploits, no scripts for tricking people into handing over information.
- 6People-search, only as defencePeople-search and background-check sites appear on Osintian in a few ways only: checking what they hold about you, removing your own record, checking that a seller, landlord or online match is who they claim through their public photos and listings, reporting on public figures acting in public, due diligence on businesses, and the laws that govern these sites. We do not link to their search pages, and we take no money from them.
- 7Fictional practice casesWorked examples use fictional people, organisations, places and events, or public figures in their public role. Never a real private person.
- 8Breach checks: your own email onlyWe cover services such as Have I Been Pwned for checking your own address. We never cover how to obtain or search leaked data about anyone else.
The laws that most often apply
- Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA, United States). Governs consumer reports used for decisions about credit, jobs, housing and insurance. Osintian is not a consumer reporting agency, and nothing here may be used for those decisions.
- GDPR and UK GDPR (Europe and the UK). Personal data about people in Europe and the UK is protected, even when it is public, and people have rights to access and erase it.
- State privacy laws (United States). California's CCPA and similar laws in other states give residents rights over the sale, sharing and deletion of their data.
- Computer-misuse laws. In the US the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in the UK the Computer Misuse Act, and similar laws elsewhere make access to systems without permission a crime.
- Stalking and harassment laws. Repeatedly following, monitoring or contacting someone against their wishes is a crime in most places, whether it happens online or offline.
- Terms of service. Every website sets its own rules for use. Breaking them can end your access and, in some cases, lead to legal claims.
Laws differ by country and state. Nothing on Osintian is legal advice; if you need it, speak to a lawyer where you live. Our terms of use say the same.
If someone is tracking or harassing you
In an emergency, call 911, or your local emergency number outside the US.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: call 1-800-799-7233, or chat at thehotline.org.
Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC): stalkingawareness.org.
Coalition Against Stalkerware: how to tell if a phone may be monitored, and what to do safely, at stopstalkerware.org.
To shrink what strangers can find about you, start with the digital footprint self-check and the remove your information case file.
How Osintian is paid for
Osintian is a free, independent guide. Today it carries no affiliate links, no advertising and nothing for sale. We sell no training or courses, and no instructor fronts this site.
We take no money from people-search or background-check companies. If we ever add paid links of any other kind, each one will be clearly labelled where it appears.