Resources
Resources and Tools for Investigative Journalists and Civil Activists
In today’s world, where technology plays a crucial role in transforming investigative journalism, it’s more important than ever for journalists and anti-corruption advocates to embrace advanced tools and techniques. To help researchers, activists, and journalists around the globe, we’ve put together a carefully curated list of resources. This toolkit serves as a complementary resource alongside our video series titled “Tracking Corruption,” available on our YouTube Channel (Link).
UNISHKA’s OSINT World Series
UNISHKA’s OSINT World Series is a collection of country-specific OSINT toolkits that compile open data portals, business registries, people search tools, and other resources for each country.
Link to The OSINT World Series
Crowdsourcing Opportunity
Do you know of a website or database not included in this resource? If so, please email abawer@unishka.com with a copy to admin@unishka.com
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Business Registries
Cyber Security
- Signal
- Session
- Wire
- Wickr
- Mega
- ProtonEmail
- Tails
- Virus Total – URL/File Scan
- Check if your email address is in a data breach
- DeHASHED – Breach Checker
- LastPass – Password Manager
- 1Password – Password Manager
- Dashlane – Password Manager
- Website Scan for Virus
- GIJN Digital Security
- Secure Drop – Share and accept documents securely
- Cover Your Tracks – See how trackers view your browser
- Hushed – Temporary & Second Phone Number App
- Google Voice – Virtual Phone Number
- VeraCrypt – File Encryption Tool
- ExploitDB – Cyber Exploit Archive
- PulseDive – Threat Intelligence
- PolySwarm – File and URL Scan
- Fofa – Cyberspace Search Engine
Websites
- Osint-tool.com – gives you access to a suite of OSINT utilities directly on any webpage you visit
- VisualPing – Website Change Tracker
- Tackly.io – Website Change Tracker
- Klexon – Website Change Tracker
- Carbon Dating The Web
- DNS Cyrillic Check – Check if malicious or Cyrillic domains are registered
- Geo IP Tools – Check if your VPN is working
- Moz Link Explorer – Analyse URLs.
- Shodan – Internet of things search engine.
- SpyOnWeb – Check if websites belong to the same owner.
- Whatcms.org – What content-management system is this website using?
- _IntelligenceX – Advanced Search Engine
- Who.is – Domain Lookup
- Toby – Bookmark Manager
- Security Trails – DNS Data
- DorkSearch – Google Dorking
- DNSai – AI enhanced domain lookup & DNS Insights
Maps & Satellites
- Google Street View
- Google Earth Pro
- Bing Maps
- Yendex Maps
- Open Street Map
- Moriwo – Map of Nigeria
- WikiMapia
- LiveUAMap – Timeline of news and zones of control in conflict
- GeoVisual Search
- HERE WeGo – More recent satellite imagery from places like Afghanistan and Iran than Google has.
- Kakao Map – Mapping service for South Korea
- Mapa.sk – Mapping service for Slovakia
- Mapillary – Street View
- F4 Map Demo – 3D Buildings
- Dual Maps – 3D Buildings
- Earth Explorer
- MapCarta
- Qwant – Shops/Places Tags
- Image Hunter (Apollo Mapping)
- Military Grid System
- Newspaper Map
Databases and Leaks
- Global Organized Crime Index
- The ENACT Organized Crime Index
- Retraction Watch – Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
- The Subnational Corruption Database
- Distributed Denial of Secrets
- WikiLeaks
- Global Leaks
- ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database
- ORRCP Aleph – 442 million public records
- Open Corporates
- Catalogue of Research Databases
- OpenSanctions
- Sanctions Explorer
- OSINT Tools Map
- Public Records (Various)
- Corporations Search (Corporation Records by State)
- County Search (All County Records by State & County)
- Citizen Audit (Nonprofit Tax Audit)
- ZoomEye – Various Data Search
- GrayHatWarfare – Search Amazon Public S3 Buckets
- LeakXI – Identifies Services that use weak passwords
- Offshore Leaks ICIJ
- ProPublica – Non-Profit Explorer
Data Tools
- Google Pinpoint – Explore and analyze large collections of documents
- Tesseract – Data extraction tool
- Tabula – Extracts data from pdf files
- DataBasic – Easy-to-use web tools for beginners
- DataWrapper – Charts, maps, and tables
- WorkFlowy
Social Media
- NodeXL (For mapping crowds around certain topics.)
- 4CAT (Analyse and process data from multiple online social platforms.)
- CrowdTangle – Usefull for analizing and tracking Facebook accounts.
- IntelTechniques
- IntelligenceX
- PhantomBuster
- Snscrape
- Social-searcher
- SMAT (Disinformation tracker)
- TweetDeck
- Twitter Operands List
- Twitter List Copy
- Twitter – Twint
- Twitter Advanced Search
- DiscordLeaks
- Skopenow
- HaveBeenZuckered
- Search For Telegram Groups Based on Location
- Thread Reader
- ROOM101 – Turn Any Reddit Username Into an OSINT Profile.
- SpiderFoot
- Gephi
- Maigret
- YesItsMe
- Tosint
Tutorials/Resouces
- What is Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)?
- The Kit – Tutorial into investigative process
- Tutorial: TOR + VPN
- Bellingcat Guides
- Security in a Box – how to use social media and mobile phones more safely.
- Data Journalism Handbook
- Security Planner
- Surveillance Self-Defense
- Tech Solidarity – Do and Don’ts for basic security
- Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (SEAH) Investigation Guide
- An activists guide to archiving videos
- OS Skills List
- Sector035 – Week in OSINT
- YouTube: OSINT at Home
- The OSINT Curious Project (TOCP)
- Techopedia
- OSINT Tutorials
- How do we work together to detect AI-manipulated media?
- IntelTechniques – Course
- Verifying Online Information – PDF Book
- Academic Literature on Open Source Research & Methods
- Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations
- Setting Your Moral Compass: A Workbook for Applied Ethics in OSINT
- A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency coverage
- Video as Evidence: Verifying Eyewitness Video
- How to Maintain Mental Hygiene as an Open Source Researcher
Image & Video
- Fotor Unblur – Sharpen Images
- InVID Verification Plugin
- Google Lens – Reverse Image Search
- TinEye
- Metadata2Go – Get All Metadata Info of Your Files
- Compare Images
- Forensically
- Youtube DataViewer
- Shadow Analysis – Make an approximation of the time of the day using shadow direction.
- Image Verification Assistant
- EXIF Purge – Remove metadata
- Foto Forensics – Photo Forensic Analysis
- PimEyes – Face Search Engine & Reverse Image Search
- Search4Faces
- Amazon Rekognition
- Practical face restoration for *old photos*
- PureRef – Arrange images in groups
- Cleanup.Pictures – remove objects from an image
- ThisPersonDoesNotExist – Generate Fake Images of People
- Am I Real? – Detects if faces were generated by ThisPersonDoesNotExist
- Mattw.io – Search YouTube Videos by Coordinates
Transport
- Marine Trafic
- Vessel Finder
- My Ship Tracking
- MariTime Database – Ship Company Details
- Military Ship Tracking
- Vessel Registry EU
- Vindecoderz – Detailed information about a vehicle’s history.
- Thats Them VIN Search
- Flight Aware – Flight Tracker
Crime Data
- Criminal Search (Criminal Records by State & County)
- Inmate Search-Nationwide (Past & Present Inmates)
- CrimeMapping
- Public Records Search
- Nationwide County Court Records (By State & County)
- Pigeonly – Search and find your inmate in over 4,000 facilities in USA
AI
JAIS – trained to understand Arabic language.
People Search
- _IntelligenceX – Email Searcher
- hunter – Email Searcher
- PeekYou – People Search
- ThatsThem – People Search
- ZebaSearch – People Search
- Foller.me – People Search
- Spokeo – People Search
- TrueCaller
- GetContact
- Whats My Number
- Epieos – Tool for email and phone reverse lookup
- Watools – the WhatsApp Online Tracker
- Search Systems
- Nigeria Phonebook
- Hitta – phone numbers/names (Sweden)
- Person Lookup – South Africa
- 192.com – Finding someone’s address in UK
- Check Usernames on 160 Social Networks
- Blackbird – Usernames on 500+ websites and social networks
- Radris – People Search
- URLscan – Scan a URL to check it’s safe
- Malicious URL Tester
- Tella App – encrypting data on your phone and for securely transfering files
- Phone Search
- 3ayli – Finding family members in Lebanon
Archiving
- Archive.org
- Way Back Machine – Websites Archive
- Way Back Machine
- Auto Archiver – Archiving Tool
- TV Archive
- Hunch.ly
- Pinpoint
- Archive.is
- Arweave – Decentralized (blockchain) archiving.
- Wayback Machine Downloader
- Perma.cc
- Fact Check Archive
Academic Research
- Google Scholar
- Core
- Talk To Books
- Text Analyzer JSTOR
- The Library of Congress
- Open Knowledge Maps
- UK Research and Innovation
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- BASE – Academic Search Engine
- NATO Library
- Project MUSE
- World Bank Open Data
- Open archive of the social sciences
- ArXiv – archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles
- AnswerThePublic – Keyword Research Tool
Other
- Dumpster Diver – Tool to search for secrets in various file types.
- Bitcoin block explorer
- Google Journalism Studio
Other Toolkits
- OSINT Dojo
- Top OSINT & Infosec Resources
- Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit
- The BBC Africa Eye Forensics Dashboard
- Marc Kranat OSINT Dashboard
- OSINT Essentials
- Terrorism & Radicalisation Research Dashboard
- OSINT China – French-oriented
- OSINT Framework
- Digital Investigative Journalism in Africa Toolkit
- Open Source Intelligence Network
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