I’ve been using the hashtag #OSINTforGood and #OSINT4Good for a few years now. Once my network of OSINT professionals and enthusiasts was established I started to find more and more examples of people doing charitable or ethical work to help others by using their OSINT skillsets. One of the first examples I recall was a Vice article talking about a Europol site that you could help identify items in the background of photos that could shed some light on child sexual abuse cases. A simple identifier that could give a clue to the region that a photo was from and help law enforcement drill into a potentially stale investigation. What a great way to use OSINT for a good cause! Europol’s Trace an Object page can be found here https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse
You don’t need to be directly tied to law enforcement to find your own ways to do OSINT for Good. Last year I tweeted a google dork that I use to find Crimestopper and BOLO bulletins that I often use to hone my OSINT hunting skills. I found early on that if i was researching things that were happening in my own region there was certain sense of urgency that drove me to dig even further on an OSINT thread. The Google dork from that tweet is below and you can insert your own city and state into it to see what kinds of things you can help investigate in your own town. You can learn a lot and might even help out somebody in your neighborhood.
One of the most amazing things about OSINT for Good is the amount of organizations out there that have surfaced in the last few years doing this amazing work. These are a few of my current favorites:
Innocent Lives Foundation
Founded by Chris Hadnagy AKA Human Hacker, the ILF helps unmask child predators. Tapping his network of incredibly smart folks in the information security field as volunteers the ILF breaks the anonymity that child predators hide behind and interfaces with law enforcement to open investigations.
The BADASS Army
The BADASS in badassarmy stands for battling against demeaning & abusive selfie sharing. In other words revenge porn and image abuse. Founded by the vicious Katelyn Bowden (its pronounced bow as in bow down) this non profit assists those who are victims deal with the aftermath of revenge porn as well as education to keep us informed of ways to protect ourselves from becoming victims.
TraceLabs
The TraceLabs Group has turned OSINT for Good into a Capture the flag contest. Using real missing persons cases already in view of law enforcement you can help uncover new leads with OSINT investigation and Trace Labs validates the information and formally turns it over to LE for help in recovery of lost loves one. They hold these contests live at conferences and also have a virtual CTF like the one that is happening next month. Details are on their twitter page. I highly suggest participating if you have OSINT skills and want to help out.
Other OSINTFORGOOD Groups
There are many other groups out there doing #OSINTFORGOOD. If you know of any others please leave them in the comments of my twitter page as I plan to compile them for a future post on the OSINT Curious project’s blog page. I strongly support the groups doing good things with OSINT and will continue to signal boost the OSINT for good cause in several other ways this year.
Happy OSINT-ing and Happy New Year!
