Osint

Publicly available information

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) refers to that type of activity in which the investigative agency must research, collect and analyse data, news and any other information from open sources (public databases, web, newspapers, newspaper articles, magazines, etc.) in order to have a picture and/or make an assessment on an individual, a company, an entity, or another type of organisation (association, foundation, state or paramilitary organisation, etc.).

The goal of this type of search, in the same way as the other intelligence services examined before, is to collect and analyse as much information as possible on someone or something in order to accrue knowledge.

OSINT reports can be requested to fulfil several needs, one of the most famous being the reputational aspect.

Reputational OSINTs are requested to find out whether news and information about a party's reputation can be found in open sources. By means of OSINT searches, it is indeed possible to find a great deal of information of this kind that speaks of news of crimes, raids carried out by the police, arrests, convictions, even with the names in plain text of those arrested and the geographical location where the arrests took place. It cannot be ruled out that often a single OSINT investigation can be exhaustive and even decisive in gaining knowledge about someone or something, without therefore triggering other investigations that draw on other channels.

Still on the issue of reputation, the party commissioning the investigation is often the same party on whom the research is then performed. In other words, it may happen that a company or individual requests a reputational OSINT on itself.

A company, for instance, may be interested in knowing how it is positioned online and, in particular, what opinion circulates about it on the web, in social networks, in newspapers, etc. Think for instance of the reviews (both positive and negative) that users and customers post on the web every day. It can be absolutely reasonable and cost-effective to request such a service from the detective agency because you care about your company's reputation and image.