online investigations Archives

Drowning in Data: Why Online Investigations Take Time

In 2025, the average internet user has more social media accounts than ever before. From legacy platforms like Facebook and Instagram to emerging players like Threads, Bluesky, and BeReal—it’s not uncommon for a single person to have 10+ digital footprints scattered across the web.

A 2024 report by Statista found that the average global user is active on 7.5 social media platforms. Additionally, a 2023 Digital Report by DataReportal revealed that users now spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media, increasing both the volume and complexity of content investigators must sift through. When you add in secondary apps (dating, payment, forums), that number climbs even higher. And each platform holds a unique layer of insight: location tags, habits, connections, affiliations, and behaviors.

The Myth of “Instant” OSINT

With so much software available, it’s tempting to believe that online investigations can be wrapped up in minutes. But even the best tools can’t:

Catch all spelling variations or aliases
Access private or ephemeral content
Understand context or intent behind posts

Good OSINT takes strategy, time, and a human touch.

Why Manual Review Still Matters

Automation can gather data, but humans interpret it. A trained eye sees what bots miss:

Emojis that suggest drug or gang activity
Relationships revealed through comment patterns
Posts scrubbed or altered but still archived elsewhere

Tools to Get Started (for PIs)

If you’re a private investigator looking to expand your own OSINT skills, here are a few solid starting points:

Namecheckr: Check username availability across platforms
Social Searcher: Track mentions and sentiment
PimEyes: Reverse image search with facial recognition
IntelX: Find breached data, archived profiles, and more

Top OSINT Books for Private Investigators

Want to level up your skills even further? These books are excellent resources for both beginners and experienced investigators:

Open Source Intelligence Techniques by Michael Bazzell (Amazon link)
The OSINT Handbook by Michael Bazzell (Amazon link)
Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking by Christopher Hadnagy (Amazon link)
Hiding Behind the Keyboard by Brett Shavers (Amazon link)
Cybervetting: Internet Searches for Vetting, Investigations, and Open-Source Intelligence by Edward J. Appel (Amazon link)

Why Partnering with a SOCMINT Team Saves Time

At eChatter, we know where to dig and how deep to go. Our combination of software and expert analysis uncovers:

Hidden usernames and burner accounts
Deep and dark web mentions
Patterns across time and platforms

Even if you have access to some of the same tools, our analysts know how to interpret the digital noise—and turn it into actionable insight.

Don’t get buried in data. Let us help you connect the dots.

Visit e-Chatter.net to learn more about our customizable OSINT reports and real-time social media analysis services.

Facial Recognition – Online Research

Facial recognition is something that you may want to zero in on before you begin any type of reverse image searching. If you just want to see if the photo itself is being used anywhere else online, then leaving the photo as is works well. However, what if you have a photo of a person but can’t identify the person? In that case, you may want to search a bit differently.

Google Reverse Image Search

Google doesn’t really focus all that much on the facial recognition aspect of a photo. Instead, it is geared more to searching content. That means it takes into consideration what the photo is about. Is it a photo of a person eating at a restaurant? You may get a large number of results showing you a photo of a person who looks similar, eating at a restaurant.

It doesn’t focus as much on the facial recognition aspect.

One work around to this is to crop your photo before searching through Google Image. Take out all the background and just focus on the face of the person if possible.

Yandex

Yandex’s image search is far superior for facial recognition. I highly recommend using it. Take a look at the difference between searches. I use a standard head shot in all my marketing online. It should come up in a Google reverse image search without any problem. However, it doesn’t.

Look at how much more you information you get from Yandex than from a basic Google Image Search. While there are photo selections offered to the right, Yandex allows you to further crop an area of the photo. This allows you to try the search in more than one way.

Notice also how it offers you sites containing information about where the image is online. It highlights several sites where this exact photo is being used.

Tin Eye

Tin Eye is used all the time in investigations. For this particular exercise, it did not fair as well as the others, however. The result I received from a basic search was a website that is not even up and running anymore.

Who is Tied to This Email Address?

We have had a few requests over the years asking if there is a way to search an email address to see who it is tied to. There are actually numerous ways in which to do this on several different sites. Many of them require payment of some kind. You can try basic searches in Google, Bing and Yahoo first, however if you come up empty there, where do you go?

Interestingly enough, data breaches over the years have become an open source researchers’ best friend. In part this is due to the fact that when there is a large-scale data breach, it is often obligatory for the business to provide a site in which a user can check to see if they are part of the breach.

When searching for an email owner, we may want to know if the email is valid. Does it even exist or is it a made up, dummy email? By using some of the resources in this post, you can at least get confirmation that the email is valid. For example, if you discover the email has been part of a data breach, chances are it is a real email address. We can go one step further to say, with a degree of confidence, that it is most likely tied to other discoverable items in the deep web.

Not all data breach sites allow the user to look up another person’s email address. Most want to verify you are indeed the owner of the email address and genuinely want to know if your email has been compromised. There are a few that are not as strict. Two example sites that offer a quick and easy scan are:

Have I been Pnwed?

A quick search here will tell you if the email address has been part of a data breach or not. While it isn’t going to give you any details, it will give you a number of times it has been included in a breach of some kind.

You can see that a quick scan of this email address indicates it has been a part of 5 breached sites but doesn’t tell you which ones. It does let you know that it is most likely a “real” email address.

Avast Email Check

Another site you can try is Avast. This is one of the newest sites that provides users the opportunities to scan for a “friend’s email address”.

Marianne’s email was linked to MySpace, which leads me to think that she had an account at some point tied to this email address. I would search on the site to see if anything still exists in MySpace.

You may also want to try variations of the email address just in case you find closely configured email addresses. Use Google, Bing to search them to see what you come up with.