There’s no lockdown in cyberspace. We are all spending more time than ever roaming around the internet. The two essential questions about exploring cyberspace have not altered: how to find information, and how to stay secure and private while doing so. The answers can be found in the growing field of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). But just what is OSINT in cyber security?
What is OSINT?
OSINT means finding publicly available information on the internet, while not being tracked, by using a growing number of tools such as privacy based search engines, Virtual Private Networks and search strings.
These may sound complicated, but they are not. OSINT provides an easy to use toolkit for everyone from a beginner to advanced researchers. It’s an essential tool for writers.
OSINT can:
- Take you back in time to a newspaper archive from nineteenth
century frontier America or France in the 1920s - Show you how to search for particular documents or inside a website
once you have located it - Help you find old versions of websites with now-deleted content
- Show you how to operate in any language and translate the
results into English.
We cover all of these, and many more OSINT tools and techniques in my one-day online workshop.
But let’s start with the basics.
Improve your Google search terms
How do we take a deep dive into cyberspace? One way is through the use of search strings. The most basic is to put names (or telephone numbers) in quotation marks.
For example, a search for Tony Blair will bring up every webpage that mentions the word Tony or Blair. “Tony Blair” will return web pages that mention the full name. Searches can be honed with a minus sign. Search for “Coronavirus”-vaccine (no space between the minus sign and vaccine) will bring results that do not mention the word vaccine.
There are an infinite number of potential search strings and combinations. Search strings also allow us to search within a website for multiple words and phrases. All the search strings can be combined. For example, site:ft.com “tony blair”-Iraq will find all articles on the Financial Times website which mention Tony Blair but do not mention Iraq.
One of my favourites is to search within a website for particular document types, such as pdfs or excel spreadsheets, which often turns up all sorts of interesting nuggets.
In our workshop we focus on a dozen search strings, which especially when combined, give users a powerful tool kit.
OSINT tools can take you back in time to a newspaper archive from nineteenth century frontier America or France in the 1920s. It can also show you how to operate in any language and translate the results into English.
– Adam LeBor
Keep your data secure
There is of course another side to Google, which highlights the ever more important issue of privacy and security on the internet.
The old truism about free products such as search engines (and search engines are products) remains as relevant as ever: if you’re not paying for it, then you are the commodity. Or to be more precise, your data is the commodity.
If you use its products, Google knows an incredible amount about you. Google uses this information to build an advertising profile for you, based on your browsing history, your likes, dislikes and interests. Every search you carry out with Google is based on this history, meaning that the results and accompanying advertisements are customised for you personally. Don’t be flattered. That’s how Google makes money.
So how do we step out of this non-stop cyber-surveillance and commoditisation?
The first step is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN acts as an intermediary. Normally, each time you visit a website, the website notes your IP address. The IP address is the numeric identification that your internet service provider (ISP), such as Virgin or BT, gives to your computer. When you go to a website via a VPN, the website records the VPN’s IP address.
As Google’s ever more intrusive eco-system has grown, so have the number of privacy-based search engines. The two most common are duckduckgo and startpage. Their functionality is steadily and continually improving. Neither of these will track you or store your search history. We also explore privacy and security in much greater depth in the workshop.
Join us
The skills of OSINT are simple and easy to master. All you need is to be able to use a keyboard and browser. We cannot travel much nowadays but cyberspace still beckons.
Our one-day online workshop, Advanced Research for Writers, can show you how to find its hidden treasures and so boost your writing and research, while carefully ensuring your privacy and security.
