Run a lookup

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What public records can tell you

Guides on reverse lookups and the tools behind them, written to be useful to somebody who is not an investigator.

Envelopes in a sorting tray Guide

Reverse email lookup: who is behind the address

One address in. The accounts registered to it, the breaches holding it, and the name attached to it where a name is public.

Read it → Hand tools arranged on a workshop wall Comparison

The best OSINT tools in 2026

Ten tools that earn their place, what each is actually for, and the weakness every one of them has.

Read it → A telephone handset Guide

Reverse phone lookup: who is on the other end

One number in. Whether the line is real, who carries it, what kind of line it is, and which public accounts are attached.

Read it → A crowd of people on a street Guide

Username search: the accounts behind a handle

People reuse handles for years without thinking about it. One handle checked against 217 platforms finds what that habit left.

Read it → Archive shelves of documents Guide

Finding someone by name

The narrowest search there is, and the one whose result depends most on who you are searching for.

Read it → A camera lens Guide

How to check a photo's metadata

A photo carries more than the picture. This is how to read the rest of the file.

Read it → A padlock Guide

Check whether your password has already leaked

Whether a password is already in a public dump, checked without the password ever leaving your browser.

Read it → A building at night with most of its windows lit Guide

How to find someone's social media accounts

The answer depends almost entirely on which identifier you already have, and hardly at all on how hard you look.

Read it → A worn intercom panel with labelled buttons Guide

Which social accounts use this email address

Every sign-up form has to tell you when an address is already taken. That obligation is the entire mechanism.

Read it → A single lit window seen from the street Guide

What can someone find out about me online

The uncomfortable part is not what you published. It is the third of it that you never did.

Read it → A figure in fog under a streetlight Guide

How to verify someone you met online

You are not looking for something incriminating. You are looking for ten boring years, and worrying when they are missing.

Read it → A corridor of numbered electrical panels Comparison

Epieos alternatives, ranked

They all run the same trick underneath. What separates them is price, coverage, and whether they tell you what failed.

Read it → A library stack corridor in amber light Guide

What is OSINT, and why does it work

Everybody defines it by expanding the acronym. That tells you nothing about why it works, which is the only interesting part.

Read it → A dim corridor lined with doors Comparison

Find an account by email or username

Nearly the same reach, and almost nothing in common in what comes back.

Read it → A lit suspension bridge running into fog How-to

How to find someone by email address, in five steps

The steps are ordered on purpose. Doing them out of order is how an afternoon disappears.

Read it → Overlapping footprints in dark sand Guide

How to find information on anyone

Collecting is the easy half. The hard half is noticing the moment you stopped looking at the same person.

Read it → A silhouette working at a laptop by lamplight Guide

How to find someone online for free

Almost all of it is free. What you pay for is not access, it is an afternoon.

Read it → A night alley of closed shutters, one light on Guide

Which platforms can actually be searched

Of the five platforms people ask about most, exactly one can be checked. Here is why, and what still works.

Read it → An empty bed lit by one lamp at night Guide

Signs a partner might be cheating

Most of the signs on every other list describe a person whose life changed. That is not the same finding.

Read it → An old stone bridge at night in fog Guide

OSINT techniques and methods

Three integrations on this site stopped working in one day. None of the techniques below noticed.

Read it → A numbered ticket Platform

How to find someone's Discord account

A Discord user ID is not a random number. It has the account's date of birth inside it.

Read it → A stack of boxed games Platform

How to find someone on Steam

A Steam profile has a permanent number under it, and that number outlives every name the account ever uses.

Read it → A crowded departures board Platform

How to find someone's X (Twitter) account

X closed almost everything it used to give away for free. The profile itself is still there.

Read it → A flock of birds against an open sky Platform

How to find someone on Bluesky

Bluesky publishes the exact second an account was created. No other platform in this series is that open.

Read it → A record shop listening booth Platform

How to find someone's Spotify account

Spotify tells you whether an address has an account. The playlists tell you the rest, and people forget they are public.

Read it → A wall of pinned photographs Platform

How to find someone's Pinterest account

Pinterest boards are plans. People make them months before they tell anybody, and they make them in public.

Read it → A row of language dictionaries Platform

How to find someone's Duolingo account

Nobody thinks of a language app as a social network. It publishes a daily attendance record with a country attached.

Read it → A bank vault door Crypto

How to check a crypto wallet before you send

The chain will tell you almost everything about an address except the one thing you want, which is who holds it.

Read it → An empty restaurant table set for two Scams

Pig butchering scams: how to spot one early

The relationship comes first and costs them months. That patience is the whole design.

Read it → A brass nameplate on a door Crypto

Who owns this ENS domain?

An ENS name is the one place on a blockchain where somebody can attach their Twitter handle to their wallet, and thousands have.

Read it → One lit window in a dark facade Guide

Finding the accounts somebody kept separate

You have an address or a number, and a suspicion that it belongs to more accounts than the one you were shown.

Read it → An unengraved brass plate beside a dark door Guide

The real name behind a username

You have a handle and you want a name. Everything below turns on whether the person ever wrote one down.

Read it → Two identical shop signs, one letter apart Guide

Someone is using my username

Three different problems arrive at this search and they have three different answers. The first job is working out which one you have.

Read it → A wall of numbered filing drawers in low light Comparison

The best people search sites, ranked

None of them would show us a price before a search, several are the same company under different names, and the regulator settlements are all public.

Read it → A backlit doorway at the end of a dark hall Guide

Is it legal to look someone up?

The question has four parts and they have different answers, which is why a single sentence about public records never settles it.

Read it → Identical crates stacked in a dark warehouse Guide

Has my email been leaked?

You can find out which published breaches hold your address in about a second. Almost everything people read into that answer is wrong.

Read it → A shopfront lit hard against a dark street Scams

Is this website a scam?

You are about to enter a card number into a site you have never used. Here is what can be established in about two seconds, and what cannot be established at all.

Read it → A worn maker's stamp on dark metal Platform

How to find someone's GitHub account

You hold an address and you want to know whose account it is. Nearly every guide on this teaches the opposite direction, and the opposite direction is the weaker one.

Read it → A single lit laptop in an otherwise dark room Security

Were my credentials in a stealer log?

This is the category people find after the password reset did not work. It is not a breach, and the usual advice is in the wrong order for it.

Read it → A sealed envelope under a single hard light Guide

Is this email address real?

Somebody has given you an address and you want to know whether there is anything behind it. The honest answer has more shape to it than a green tick.

Read it → A wall of paper filing drawers Privacy

How to remove your information from people search sites

Every publisher runs its own form, several brands share one owner, and the record behind the listing is never the thing you delete.

Read it → A photograph held in a hand Photo

How to check a profile photo with reverse image search

One picture in. Whether it has been published before, where it appeared, and why an empty result settles far less than it looks.

Read it → A phone screen showing an incoming call Phone

Who called me from a number I do not know

A number you do not recognise just rang. What to check, what each answer means, and why calling back is the one move that costs you something.

Read it → A wall of numbered filing drawers, most of them shut Comparison

Is Spokeo legit, and what does the record actually say

A live company with a public paper trail. The useful question is not whether it exists, but what it returns and what you may lawfully do with it.

Read it → A busy cafe window seen from the pavement Guide

How to run a background check before a date

Four of the five checks cost nothing at all. The fifth buys assembly rather than access, and it is worth knowing which is which before you pay anybody.

Read it → A grid of square prints on a gallery wall Platform

How to find someone's Instagram account

Instagram stopped answering the email question on purpose, and every route that still works starts somewhere else.

Read it → A phone lying face down on a kitchen table Scams

Romance scams: the checks that catch one early

The money is never mentioned first. By the time it is, the relationship it borrows against has already been built.

Read it → A row of shop signs above one shared doorway Comparison

BeenVerified alternatives, ranked and priced

Switching is only switching if the new site is a different company, and several of the obvious ones are not.

Read it → A printed page of records on a desk Guide

What a people search report actually contains

A guided read of the sample report — what each section holds, what the empty sources mean, and what it will never tell you.

Read it → A parish noticeboard layered with pinned cards Platform

How to find someone's Facebook account

Facebook stopped answering the email question in April 2018, and most tools still selling it are selling a copy of an old list.

Read it → A wall of brass name plates beside a lobby door Platform

How to find someone's LinkedIn account

You hold an address, or a job title somebody has claimed, and the results page is full of tools selling a lookup LinkedIn does not offer.

Read it → A phone screen lit in a dark room Scams

Sextortion: what to do in the first hour

The first hour is about evidence, blocking and reporting. It is not about working out who they are.

Read it → Price labels along the edge of a shelf Comparison

How much does a background check cost?

Three different products answer to the phrase, and one of them is free at the source.

Read it → A handle on a door plate Platform

How to find someone's Telegram account

Every Telegram account is registered to a phone number, and a username is what lets the owner stop you from ever seeing it.

Read it → A hand holding a phone with a message open on the screen Scams

Is this phone number a scam?

A number is in front of you — in a text, a listing, a delivery notice, a job offer — and you have to decide about it before you know anything at all.

Read it → Rows of bound record volumes on a shelf Guide

Public records search

Seven kinds of record, the office that holds each one, and the price that office charges for it.

Read it → A square code being scanned Platform

How to find someone's Snapchat account

Snapchat is the one platform of the five people ask about most that still answers a stranger at all.

Read it → A channel page with a name that moves Platform

How to find someone's Twitch account

A Twitch handle can change every sixty days, and the name you wrote down can belong to somebody else by the spring.

Read it → A cork noticeboard covered in pinned paper notes Platform

How to find someone's Reddit account

Reddit publishes almost nothing about who you are, and everything you have said for as long as you have said it.

Read it → An empty auditorium seen from the stage Privacy

Who viewed my profile, platform by platform

Two platforms built the feature. The rest never collected the data, which is why the apps selling it have nothing to sell.

Read it → A tablet propped on a kitchen table Platform

How to find a Roblox account, and what it actually tells you

A Roblox account can change what it calls itself twice before lunch. The number underneath it never changes at all.

Read it → A lone runner on an empty road at first light Privacy

What a public Strava profile reveals

A training log is a map of where you live and when you are out of the house, published by somebody who meant to log a run.

Read it → A channel ID that outlives the name in front of it Platform

How to find out who owns a YouTube channel

YouTube prints more about a channel than any other creator platform prints about a profile, and almost none of it is where people look.

Read it → A phone on a small tripod, filming an empty room Platform

How to find someone's TikTok account

TikTok's public profile hands over more than Instagram's does, and the one route everybody asks for is the one it never opened.

Read it → A phone screen showing a chat with an unsaved number Guide

Find a WhatsApp account by number, and read what it shows

The number is the account, so one link settles whether it exists — and four privacy settings decide everything you see after that.

Read it → A phone screen being photographed by a second phone Privacy

Does Instagram notify screenshots?

The honest answer changed once, it never changed on every surface at once, and most of the pages ranking for this question froze on the wrong year.

Read it → A row of terraced front doors on a residential street Guide

How to check a landlord before you rent

The law that stops a landlord screening you with a report like ours does not stop you reading the register that names them.

Read it → A wall of numbered letterboxes with the name plates removed Platform

Find an X account by email or phone number

You hold an address or a number rather than a handle. X will tell you whether an account uses it, and one of the two ways of asking tells the account holder as well.

Read it → A payment handle and the fields behind it Platform

Find a Venmo or Cash App account from a payment handle

A payment handle is the identifier people hand to strangers most freely, and it is the one they have read the least about.

Read it → A currency exchange booth with the shutter half down Crypto

Is this crypto exchange legit?

Four things about an exchange can be established from records somebody else keeps. The balance it shows you is not one of them.

Read it → A noticeboard where one person has pinned every card they own Guide

What a link-in-bio page reveals

One page, assembled voluntarily, holding the list of accounts that everything else on this site has to reconstruct.

Read it → A closed door with no name plate Platform

Find a Signal account by number, and what will not come back

Signal registers every account to a phone number and then goes to unusual lengths to make sure that number reaches nobody who was not already told it.

Read it → A set of keys left on a bare kitchen counter Scams

How to verify an Airbnb host before you book

A copied listing looks exactly like the original, because it is the original — what changed is who answers the message.

Read it → A collection tin on a shop counter Guide

Check a charity before donating

Every register you need is public, free and answers in under a minute, which is the part almost nobody uses.

Read it → A lanyard and a printed offer letter on an empty desk Scams

Is this job offer a scam?

A message you did not ask for names a company you have heard of, quotes a rate, and never once puts a face on a video call.

Read it → A folding table of second-hand goods at a weekend street market Guide

How to check a marketplace seller before you pay

A stranger, an item and no escrow: the payment method you agree to settles more than every check you run on the seller.

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