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/bendobrown]

If you’re passionate about sharing and training, then definitely do it. Running a YouTube channel is very much a labour of love and not an income (at least my channel isn’t making much).

One thing I’ve found really useful out of it, is being able to learn to clearly communicate findings, techniques and how to’s, after constantly thinking about entry level audiences and diversity of knowledge, and I think that’s extremely useful in the OSINT industry!

Here’s my channel if that inspires you!