OSINT At Home #1 - Starting an investigation with image reverse search

This tutorial is part 1 of the OSINT At Home series. It covers how to do an image reverse search to find more information about an image, or the screenshot of a video.

The image reverse search is a great way to start any piece of research as it allows you to take an image on the internet and not only find where else it has been used, but also by who, in what context, and what location. Through such a quick act you are able to identify much more open source information out of that simple act.

By mastering this investigative skill, using tools like Yandex image reverse search, Google, Bing, Baidu or TinEye, you can identify the origin of logos on a piece of clothing, military symbols, store signs and sometimes faces.

While this tutorial only covers an introductory use of the image reverse search, it is recommended that further research be done on specific use cases to help you in your research.

The OSINT At Home series is useful for those looking to find digital breadcrumbs and pick up some methods of open source intelligence (OSINT), digital investigations and good old plain research. No matter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can follow these tutorials from home with publicly available information to answer questions such as who, what, where and when.

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CREDITS FOR THIS TUTORIAL
MUSIC INTRO: World’s Fair – God Mode

[maciej]

Google had taken down the option of image search replacing it with Google Lens, way inferior tool. Its results are way worse, it has no option to filter by resolution or sort by date.

[DonnyDarko]

Just watched the first episode. I know I'm very late but I'm thankful to you for providing these really informative and resourceful videos to all those who want to learn about OSINT. Thanks a lot Ben!

[AndrewWayneV]

I must say this is kind of scary. I took a picture I have had on my pc for years. Came across it on the internet and thought it was cute but had no context. Using the google search and after reading a couple of posts that were linked in the search found the exact location of the image in less than 10 minutes on google maps. Wild.

[magma]

it's amazing how useful this was and how youtube started recommending me this sort of stuff that is simply invaluable to learn. I'm using it to find out more information about my missing gf

[charliejaay]

just watched your first episode, which I discovered today. Really useful. Thanks Ben. Will do some practice now and watch episode 2 tomorrow. Thank you!

[Koptanjozif]

لا اعرف كيف اشكرك .. انا متاخر جدا اعلم ذلك وهذا ليس مجالي بالمرة لكني احب التحقيقات منذ الصغر واحاول التعلم كهواية ليس اكثر ولذلك وصلت الي هنا لمحاولة آلفهم والتعمق... اود ان اشكرك لاني لا أفهم الانجليزية جيدا لكن فهمت من شرحك المبسط.. ممتن لك
واتمني ان تزور بلادنا وتستمع بالاثار وسوف اكون رفيقك

[MacMcCaskill]

Excellent tutorial. Easy to follow and using readily available apps & tools to do interesting & useful stuff.
I'm hooked!
👍🙂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[elliotalderson]

Fun stuff. OSINT/infosec Twitter brought me here. Keep it up.

[samaxe]

A friend sent this link to me. Thanks Ben, this is very useful.

[tonyyarbray]

decided I better start with #1 I think I watched #9 first but it made me want to watch the whole series...I wish everyone that uses social media would at least watch #1 or at least my family ...well they wont even do a google search about anything they think is true and start blathering about it I guess reverse photo search may be beyond them as well

[SoundzAlive]

Thanks Ben, I used your profile pic as a test and boy it was hard to find out where it was taken but I did it. Using Google and Yandex but capturing a result of the bigger part of the building from another photo I was able to save it as a JPEG and put it back into the search engine. Sounds easy but took an hour so you could give it to someone who is new to see if they have got what it takes. To prove I found it without giving it away. There are two by the same name. André in Sydney

[RuonaJMeyer]

Thanks SO MUCH, Ben!
We really appreciate this.

[jheimissantos]

I'm watching all the videos. It is help with my academic paper that is about OSINT and War Ukraine.

[TellurdogIsayhi]

This is SO sick! Thank you so much for uploading this series! Can’t wait to watch the remaining videos and soak up some good knowledge.
I’d love an OSINT analyst job of some sort; doing this type of stuff would be so fun.

Really wish yandex wasn’t primarily in russian. Would be a lot more useful.

[ThaiRyder]

Hi Ben, thank you for the tutorial, I enjoy learning from you. Keep it up.

[grbkset-]

Very useful tutorial Ben. Were you able to authenticate the banh mi?

[adritoghosh]

You are a real god my friend keep making these video

[way]

Great resource especially with the numbering system. Thanks' Ben

[geoffreyzziwambazza]

Do these images have original residual meta data or have they changed hands so much that this would be considered unreliable (such as a screenshot, would reset the meta data)?

Also are Google and Yandex using cross image comparison and recognition?

[brianr]

Very informative. Good presentation. I am looking forward to the next one.