Tools that still work.

56 on the table

• WhatsMyName

  Username · Free

  Community list of username checks, kept current by people who actually run them.

  Open

• Sherlock

  Username · Free

  The usual first sweep. One name, a few hundred public profile URLs.

  Open

• Maigret

  Username · Free

  Sherlock's more thorough cousin. Slower, wider, better when the easy sites are empty.

  Open

• Namechk

  Username · Freemium

  Quick look at whether a handle is sitting on the big networks.

  Open

• KnowEm

  Username · Freemium

  Brand and username availability across social and domain names.

  Open

• Blackbird

  Username · Free

  Fast username search with a clean report you can actually read.

  Open

• Instant Username

  Username · Free

  Browser sweep of the obvious networks. Good for a first pass, not a last one.

  Open

• Have I Been Pwned

  Email · Freemium

  Whether an address showed up in a known public breach. Troy Hunt's list, not a dump site.

  Open

• Hunter

  Email · Freemium

  The pattern a company uses, and the addresses that follow it.

  Open

• Holehe

  Email · Free

  Asks sites that forget to hide the 'this email is registered' response.

  Open

• Epieos

  Email · Freemium

  Pivots an address toward accounts that forgot they were public.

  Open

• EmailRep

  Email · Freemium

  Reputation sketch of an address: age, profiles, and whether it looks disposable.

  Open

• Gravatar

  Email · Free

  The old avatar directory. Still keyed off the MD5 of the mailbox.

  Open

• Snov.io

  Email · Freemium

  Domain search and address finder used when Hunter comes back thin.

  Open

• Shodan

  Domain · Freemium

  What is actually listening on the internet, not what the homepage claims.

  Open

• Censys

  Domain · Freemium

  Hosts, certificates, and services, indexed like a census.

  Open

• VirusTotal

  Domain · Freemium

  Reputation for a domain, URL, or file hash, from a pile of scanners.

  Open

• crt.sh

  Domain · Free

  Certificate transparency. Subdomains people issued a cert for and then forgot.

  Open

• urlscan.io

  Domain · Freemium

  Opens a page in a sandbox and shows you what it called, loaded, and redirected.

  Open

• DNSDumpster

  Domain · Free

  A map of DNS records and the hosts hanging off a domain.

  Open

• SecurityTrails

  Domain · Freemium

  Current and historical DNS. Useful when the site moved and left the old address behind.

  Open

• BuiltWith

  Domain · Freemium

  The stack a site is running: analytics, CMS, tag managers, the quiet third parties.

  Open

• Netlas

  Domain · Freemium

  Search engine for internet-facing assets, responses, and certificates.

  Open

• GreyNoise

  Domain · Freemium

  Is this IP scanning the whole internet, or is it actually interested in you?

  Open

• OWASP Amass

  Domain · Free

  The heavy subdomain mapper. Slow on purpose.

  Open

• theHarvester

  Domain · Free

  Pulls emails, names, and hosts from public sources for one domain.

  Open

• Whois

  Domain · Free

  Registration record. Often a privacy proxy. Sometimes a real name and a phone.

  Open

• ViewDNS

  Domain · Free

  A drawer of small lookups: reverse IP, DNS history, port checks.

  Open

• Google Lens

  Image · Free

  Best first reverse-image search. Finds the page the picture was cropped from.

  Open

• TinEye

  Image · Freemium

  Oldest match, not the cleverest. Good when you need the earliest copy.

  Open

• Yandex Images

  Image · Free

  Often beats Google on faces, places, and pictures from outside the US web.

  Open

• Bing Visual Search

  Image · Free

  A third opinion. Sometimes the only one that names the place.

  Open

• FotoForensics

  Image · Free

  Error-level analysis. Shows where a JPEG was resaved, edited, or spliced.

  Open

• ExifTool

  Image · Free

  The full metadata reader. This desk does the common tags; ExifTool does the rest.

  Open

• Google Earth

  Maps · Free

  Terrain, 3D buildings, and historical imagery when the street view is too new.

  Open

• SunCalc

  Maps · Free

  Where the sun was. Use shadows in a photo to test a claimed time.

  Open

• EO Browser

  Maps · Free

  Sentinel satellite imagery. Fresh enough to check whether a site changed.

  Open

• OpenStreetMap

  Maps · Free

  The map volunteers drew. Often has the alley Google still calls unnamed.

  Open

• Wikimapia

  Maps · Free

  Labeled outlines of buildings, lots, and places that never got a Wikipedia page.

  Open

• Flightradar24

  Maps · Freemium

  Live and recent flights. Tail numbers, routes, and who was overhead.

  Open

• ADS-B Exchange

  Maps · Free

  The unfiltered flight feed. Includes aircraft the commercial apps hide.

  Open

• MarineTraffic

  Maps · Freemium

  Ships, by AIS. Name a vessel or watch a port.

  Open

• Reddit search

  Social · Free

  Old posts survive here longer than people expect. Search the handle, then the phrase.

  Open

• X advanced search

  Social · Free

  From, to, since, until. The only way the firehose is usable.

  Open

• Social Searcher

  Social · Freemium

  A cross-network look at a name or phrase, without opening twelve tabs first.

  Open

• Wayback Machine

  Archive · Free

  What the page used to say, before someone edited the biography.

  Open

• archive.today

  Archive · Free

  A snapshot you take yourself. Works on pages the Wayback Machine misses.

  Open

• OpenCorporates

  Records · Freemium

  Company registers from a lot of countries, in one search box.

  Open

• OCCRP Aleph

  Records · Free

  Leaks, gazettes, and corporate records, indexed for cross-border work.

  Open

• ICIJ Offshore Leaks

  Records · Free

  Panama, Paradise, Pandora. Officers, intermediaries, and the companies between them.

  Open

• OpenSanctions

  Records · Free

  Sanctions, politically exposed people, and wanted lists, in one dataset.

  Open

• CourtListener

  Records · Free

  US opinions, dockets, and oral arguments that are actually public.

  Open

• SEC EDGAR

  Records · Free

  US public-company filings. The footnotes are where the names hide.

  Open

• Companies House

  Records · Free

  UK companies, officers, and filing history. Unusually open.

  Open

• LittleSis

  Records · Free

  Who sits on whose board. A map of influence, sourced.

  Open

• DocumentCloud

  Records · Free

  Primary documents journalists already OCR'd. Search the PDF, not the article.

  Open