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OSINT means open-source intelligence: research built from information anyone can access, such as public profiles, archived pages and published records. A username is one of the most useful starting points, because people often reuse a handle across forums, games, code hosts and social apps. Finding those profiles is the easy part. Working out which ones belong to the same person, and documenting how you know, takes most of the effort.
The posts here cover the username side of that work. Some are for beginners and explain what a username search can tell you and where it goes wrong. Others compare the open-source tools people use, such as Sherlock, Maigret and the WhatsMyName dataset, and say plainly where each one does better. There are also workflows for journalists checking whether a source is who they claim to be.
Two rules run through every guide. Treat each result as a lead to verify by hand, because sites change their pages and detection rules lag behind. And stay inside legal and ethical limits: public information only, research you are entitled to do, no harassment, and no use of results for decisions about jobs, credit or housing.
When you are ready to try it, our free search checks one handle against every site in our list and exports what it finds as JSON or CSV for your notes.
Newest in OSINT
Sherlock, Maigret and WhatsMyName compared from their own documentation: site coverage, output, profile parsing, setup, and which one fits your username investigation.
· 6 min read
Ten free OSINT tools for username investigations, from Sherlock and Maigret to SpiderFoot and the Wayback Machine, with what each one does well and where it falls short.
· 5 min read
How journalists can use username searches to verify sources and accounts, what the ethics demand, and how to keep sources and your own research safe.
· 5 min read
A comparison of username search engines in 2026: site coverage, result detail, export, domain checks, pricing, and which one fits your job.
· 6 min read
An introduction to username OSINT: what it is, when it is appropriate, a careful step-by-step workflow, and the legal and ethical lines every beginner should respect.
· 4 min read
