The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #87
Discovering and Tracking Data Breaches and Leaks
👋 Welcome to the 87th issue of The OSINT Newsletter. This issue contains OSINT news, community posts, tactics, techniques, and tools to help you become a better investigator. Here’s an overview of what’s in this issue:
OSINT case study
Meta is watching your AI prompts
OSINT != collection
Vehicle AI
Document OSINT
OSINT bookmarklets (Facebook Marketplace!)
🚨 With the upcoming holidays, there will not be a paid issue of The OSINT Newsletter on December 4, 2025. The last paid issue of The OSINT Newsletter for 2025 will publish on December 18, 2025. Thanks again for another great year.
🪃 If you missed the last newsletter, here’s a link to catch up.
⚡ Email OSINT That Goes Beyond Tools
Let’s get started. ⬇️
OSINT News
📰 OSINTing the OSINTers: Finding the Hidden FBIS Sites
This is an interesting, passive OSINT case study. Follow along with Matthias as he steps through the intelligence cycle. It isn’t tradecraft heavy, more process driven. It’s not what to do but how to do it. Definitely worth the read.
Not much to be learned about OSINT in this article - unless you weren’t familiar with the Google operators “site:” and “filetype:”. The real message here is how to tackle complex investigations using structured analysis techniques.🎩 H/T: Matthias Wilson
📰 Another Reason to Avoid Meta: Targeted Ads Based on Your Private Prompts
Some of us are old enough to remember when social media started to introduce advertising as a means to pay for the “free” service they were offering. As the saying goes, if you aren’t paying—you are the product. I’ve thought the same thing about LLMs. Sure, there’s a monthly subscription, but it’s not footing the bill. Meta is going to use your prompts to sell you things.
🎩 H/T: Tate Jarrow
📰 Welcome to OSINT Park
This is a rant from Aaron Roberts about collection fatigue. It’s a view I also share and is worth taking notes about. I’ve said for years that OSINT != tools. It’s been the tagline of this publication since it’s inception. OSINT is also not collection. It’s an outcome.
🎩 H/T: Aaron Roberts
OSINT Tools
🔎 Vehicle AI
This tool allows you to identify the make, model, and range of years for a vehicle. It throws an error on vehicle interior images but works great for external views.
🔎 DocuFinderJS
DocuFinderJS scans target domains to uncover publicly accessible documents like PDFs or spreadsheets, helping identify sensitive data exposure.
🎩 H/T: weekndr_sec
🔎 OSINT Bookmarklets
This collection of OSINT bookmarklets has a treasure trove of utilities. My favorite is the Facebook Marketplace User tool.
🎩 H/T: Henri
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✅ That’s it for the free version of The OSINT Newsletter. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this publication and independent research.
By upgrading to paid, you’ll get access to the following:
⚡ Discovering and Tracking Data Breaches and Leaks
In this issue, I’ll walk through how to identify data leaks, use search engines, APIs, and other services to access this information while it’s available, and set up ongoing monitoring as the data becomes more widely distributed.
👀 All paid posts in the archive. Go back and see what you’ve missed!
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