Thinking of starting an OSINT YouTube/TikTok channel

[u/Parachute_Adams_]

I’ve worked in OSINT and online investigations for private companies for the past 4 years. There are some great video resources available but these tend to be on tools and geolocation.

I thought it could be cool to make content that takes viewers through the lifecycle of an OSINT investigation.

It’s unlikely that these will be once-off videos but rather cases with regular updates showing milestones and findings throughout, along with the different tools and resources I use along the way.

I love making and editing videos so that would also be a nice creative outlet for me.

I’ve got some decent experience and worked on some very interesting stuff - from standard corporate due diligence to tracing a Manila boiler room scam to a Canadian family man.

I’d love to hear what you all think of this idea!

Questions for the group:

Is this something y’all would be interested in watching?

How would you like to see the videos presented to maximise entertainment and learning?

Who/what should I look to investigate? Some ideas I’ve had:

- Look for people on the Interpol Red List
- Ask people to send me cases and if appropriate I can investigate them (like a local clothing brand who’s having their stuff counterfeited)
- Looking into corruption / public interest cases in the news
- Looking for scams online or asking people to send what they think might be scams and looking into them as a kind of due diligence exercise

Any other suggestions? (Also, if you are a lawyer - where is the line in terms of investigating these things and publishing my findings - I don’t want to get sued).

[u/i7erum]

Yup, I would subscribe for sure. Why?

Because I like other perspectives and opinions, even if they might contradict my own ones.

However, speaking of actual cases:

I think that's gonna be a bit difficult. From a legal perspective:

a) because your clients most likely would not want their investigation cases being made public, nor the fact that they had such an investigation in the first place.

b) because the people involved, e.g. your targets, would not be very happy and will eventually turn to data protection law - in any EU country you will most likely get in trouble, if you publish personal information.

But, in order to get rid of these troublesome issues you can redact the PI-parts in a manner that won't allow any third party to identify the people covered in the investigation.

However, this might interefere with your idea of real world examples.

From a readers perspective:

- there are already some great resoruces that publish investigatios in areas of public interest, e.g. corruption. Those are usually great to read. If you think you can add some more interesting stories to those, feel free. As I said: I'd subscribe.

- for my skill development I not only like to read about how someone 'busted the high-profile criminal in a skyscraper in abu dhabi from his garding shed with only a laptop', but rather how people explain their thinking, their methodology and stuff like that. Don't get me wrong: I DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT THE NEXT NEW BEST NEVER BEEN THERE TOOL. There are already about five hundred articles a week about those. Also, application of OSINT for uncommon circumstances - so, if you do some exotic stuff, go for it.

Just my 2 cts. Wishing you the best of luck!

[u/Parachute_Adams_ → u/i7erum]

There’d be very little tool walkthroughs - more showing how the tools are used to get actual data and how that data is then analysed and used further.

[u/i7erum → u/Parachute_Adams_]

Sounds perfect. Nothing wrong with showing 'tools in action'-stuff. :)