Investigating Email Addresses: Your How-To Guide for OSINT Investigations
Five fundamental techniques and a structured approach to uncovering what a single email address can reveal.
Hi, the OSINT Jobs Team here.
An email address is often all you have. This week we show you how far you can take it.
Five fundamental techniques, zero tool lists, straight to the principle and the value behind each one. Plus last week's tradecraft tips and industry news, so you never miss anything in the OSINT industry.
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Investigating Email Addresses: Your How-To Guide for OSINT Investigations
In our newest deep-dive guide, we’re tackling one of the most common starting points in any investigation: the email address.
Whether you know who’s behind it or not, an email is often all you have and the question is how far you can take it.
We’ll be sharing the tips, tools, and techniques we’ve gathered over four years of running this newsletter, combined with the in-house expertise of public and private OSINT professionals.
Our focus stays on free tools throughout, but we’ll flag where paid platforms can give you a meaningful edge and explain why.
Before diving into techniques and tradecraft, it’s worth stepping back to look at the overall investigation workflow. For this, we highly recommend the workflow visual created by Michael Bazzell. To our knowledge, he was the first to visualize workflows, including email, domain, and people searches that many in the OSINT community have since adopted and built upon.
We won't repeat that or other workflows. Instead, we share a practical approach to investigating email addresses with little to no access to paid tools.
This is not a list of tools and resources. We walk you through the core principles and techniques built on over four years of covering weekly tradecraft tips and our team's daily hands-on investigation and intelligence expertise — building blocks you can reach for at any stage of an investigation.
