There is no dignified way of putting it — the world has gone bananas as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. When the threat of deadly infection is mixed with the peculiar rush of going viral, people are bound to spread fakes. Even those of us who mean well. Many Bellingcat team members are impacted by this…
Reverse image search is one of the most well-known and easiest digital investigative techniques, with two-click functionality of choosing “Search Google for image” in many web browsers. This method has also seen widespread use in popular culture, perhaps most notably in the MTV show Catfish, which exposes people in online relationships who use stolen photographs…
Update: The Internet Archive has removed the SQL leak; however, the information is freely available via a torrent file (download here) or a Magnet link (click here, or copy/paste the link into a torrent client). Today, the entire SQL database from Iron March, a now-defunct neo-Nazi / white supremacist message board, was posted onto the…
Flight tracking is an accessible and useful tool for open source investigators. Being able to track the movements of aircraft belonging to powerful individuals and armed forces can add important details to stories, or even uncover entire new narratives. There are several commercial and hobby websites that allow us to do just that. The purpose…
Many open source researchers rely on journalists to turn data into a narrative that will then reach a wider audience. Yet journalism today is in a crisis! You can trust me as a person who comes from a traditional journalism background — oh, the sheer amount of horror stories I can tell over whiskey. In…
To some researchers, TweetDeck might seem superfluous in a world where Twitter Advanced Search exists. The platform would appear to be just a prettier version of what you are already doing through Twitter. However, I am here to show you how TweetDeck can vastly simplify and organize your research while allowing you to collect a…
Popular apps such as TrueCaller or GetContact advertise the ability to see who is really calling you, even if you do not know the number, and alert the app user of spam or scam calls. However, the way that these apps gather information to determine the name of an unknown caller is not as broadly…
After posting a tutorial on tracking GRU agents’ bitcoin (BTC) transactions, I’ve received numerous responses asking how to find out even more. I aim to please, so I’ve put together another tutorial using Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ bitcoin funding campaign as a case study. What You’ll Need To effectively analyze any bitcoin address, I rely…
Whether you’re investigating a company purporting to have damning information on Robert Mueller or conducting research on anti-Islamic State foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, LinkedIn can serve as a useful resource for online researchers across a wide variety of subjects. This guide aims to provide helpful tools and techniques for identifying LinkedIn profiles and…
It has become abundantly clear that geolocation and remote sensing is fundamental to knowing what happens in conflict areas where it is often too dangerous for journalists, observers and analysts to be present on the ground. This is a satellite-based case study on vetting a three-dimensional view of an area via Google Earth, featuring examples…
