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Podcast: Ritu Gill on OSINT for Good and Building Community
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Podcast: Ritu Gill on OSINT for Good and Building Community

We sit down with the best and brightest practitioners in the field to learn more about their careers and skillsets.

A former OSINT analyst with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ritu Gill has been at the forefront of the field since the early 2000s.

You probably recognize her name from LinkedIn, where she blasts out challenges, tips and tricks to her thousands of followers. Or maybe you’re a loyal user of her Chrome extension, Forensic OSINT, used for forensic-grade screen captures.

In this episode, we talk about the philosophy behind "OSINT for good," how Ritu got her start in open-source investigations, and the absolute best resources out there for beginners.

Below, you’ll find lightly edited and condensed highlights from our conversation with Ritu.

On the importance of knowledge-sharing:

I want to share the knowledge because when I first started in OSINT, obviously I was starting with little knowledge and I had to figure it out on my own. And I wasn't very visible online.

But the way I look at it is I'm doing “OSINT for good.”

I'm sharing the knowledge I've learned over the years and things that will help other people that are doing similar work. So for me, getting that information out there is important. And also when you have something that you know can help other people, why not share it?

On what "OSINT for good" means in practice:

I think of something like Trace Labs. They do events where they help law enforcement find missing people, they do CTFs (Capture the Flags). In my eyes, that's an “OSINT for good” cause. And we want to promote that in the community, because we want good OSINT people, and we want good OSINT people sharing the knowledge online.

There's going to be bad actors and I think when you have more of the positive, hopefully that can override the negative.

On archiving your work with Forensic OSINT:

Forensic OSINT is a Google Chrome extension for documenting your online research.

So someone might say, “why would I need that?” Well, if you're an online investigator, if you're somebody who does OSINT work and you see something really interesting — you need to make that capture because somebody might delete it, or you might need it for some purpose later on.

What we wanted was something that was easy to use but also did the job, and also met the criteria for court standards, having forensic grade.

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