R/OSINT: A Cyberstalker's Review

On August 9th 2025 I bought a piece of shit Subaru from a scammer. The car is a nightmare and I'm suing the scammer. I'm able to sue the scammer because there is something broken in my brain and I have unearthed every piece of scam bullshit in his scam life. In the process of finding his home address and childrens' school, I ended up glancing off of r/OSINT several times and finding myself frustrated by some of the shit recs in their 'wiki' (c'mon guys use some bullet points, have some self respect).

As such, I'm here to review their recs from the perspective of an insane person who is hunting down the object of their obsession like a jealous ex rather than someone trying to put together a serious OSINT profile.

Review Standards

• Accessibility - I looked primarily at browser-based sites that could be used effectively in Firefox Mobile, nothing that I had to run locally.
• Is the rec pure shit? Is the site exploitative, expensive, and does the site owner think you're so, so fucking stupid?
• Is it multi-useless or a multi-tool?
• Do you need to register/create an account?

The Good

Not garbage! Worthwhile to use, would rec to a tech-clueless friend and not worry about them getting ripped off.

Whatsmyname.app

• Searches 600+ sites for instances for a username.
• Provides a printable report and links back to findings
• Is missing some social sites
• Requires that cookies be enabled

Instantusername.com

• Checks availability of usernames on a number of social sites
• Moderate error rate
• Doesn't tell you a lot but is extremely easy to use
• Makes it very easy to search multiple permutations of usernames

ViewDNS.info

• Multi-tool - many options for DNS/whois/registration/IP info lookup on a single page
• Extremely easy to use
• Fast lookup for reverse whois
• Good for tech-y people to get a lot of info, good for non-tech-y people to find basic info.

Mever Image Verification Assistant

• Photo editing artifact analysis
• Helps identify splicing, filtering, and image degradation

ImgOps

• Multitool!
• Exif data quickviewer
• One-click rehosting
• OCR
• QR Decode
• Specialized reverse search links

The Meh

Somewhat inaccessible, not particularly useful to crazed people searching on their phone at 4AM, but totally functional for broader research.

OSINTCombine free tools

• Multiple free social media and data visualization tools
• Handy curated bookmarks for OSINT geeks
• For people who actually want to report on disinfo or find groyper hangouts, not for people driven to ruin one particular person's life.

Broadcastify

• Online fire and police scanners
• Fiddly, hard to find very specific dispatch groups
• Free for HTML Web Player, paid for better listening options

Lookify

• Paid
• Requires registration
• Requires phone number of the person you're preparing to rain down hell upon
• Easy to cancel
• One 'pro' search per trial
• Paid credits persist once sub is cancelled
• Doesn't treat you like a gullible child
• Works but only worth it if you're insane

Wayback Living Atlas

• Historical satellite photos
• Pain in the ass to see on mobile
• Variable history of images based on location

The Missing

• Findagrave.com - useful free verification for family names for morbid motherfuckers
• PACER - Account required, needs CC and wallet name, allows you to view court records
• RECAP - Chad browser extension that open sources court records, will let users know if records have already been downloaded and if used while paying to download new records, adds records to database. Information wants to be free and you can help.
• Wayback Machine Extension - In FF, not maintained, lets you instantly check for archived copies of a page and lets you archive pages in an instant. Incredibly useful
• Nationalpublicdata.com - will provide names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone in their database for free, as long as you can search by full name.

The Worst

These are the horrid sites that want you to pantomime research while they gatekeep their payment page to increase your frustration and tease you with hints of info to get you to pay for a report. They're all shit. They're all the fucking worst. Any of the stupid sites that give you popups warning you that the information contained herein is graphic, that ask you to check off contacts so you can pretend you're doing research (while it's gearing up to charge you for extra reports), that want your contact info before they'll show you anything, that make you wait through fifteen minutes of progress bars before they show you what that wasted time will cost you, none of them are worth your time and money. Don't bother with any of the below companies:

• BeenVerified
• Spokeo
• Truthfinder
• Whitepages
• PeekYou
• Intelius

They WILL give you a lot of information for your money, but less than they tempt you with in the leadup and only after treating you like a three year old looking at some shaking plastic keys who has to be distracted by moving progress bars and popup warnings to get you to the point that you're paying them out of frustration. I would respect them more if they had a button to skip the puppet show, but I would still not respect them much. Bullshit. Absolute garbage. Don't reward their bad behavior. Shameful recs from the OSINT-enjoyer page.