Facebook knows us better than we know ourselves.
All social media platforms are rich seams of data for an OSINT investigator. But when it comes to getting to know a suspect, one has the edge: Meta’s Facebook.
Unlike the majority of social media platforms, Facebook requires users to input a real ‘government’ name - not to mention the host of other data, posts, photos and videos users happily upload. If you want to see somebody’s face? It’s on their Facebook. Their age? Facebook. Where they went to school? Facebook. Where they got married? Facebook. The names and horoscopes of their pet leopard geckos? Facebook too.
It’s amazing what people put up there, thanks to the share-all culture on Meta’s platform. A user’s Facebook Friends are a constellation of who-you-know and who-you-don’t, mapping a complete social graph of personal relationships with extensive archival data over time. With each new feature Facebook’s usefulness for OSINT investigators only grows; Facebook profiles now link to Threads or Instagram, and Check-Ins are an increasingly strong source of up-to-date GeoInt.
And, as the statistically hardest platform to quit, almost everybody’s signed up.
Meet OSINT_Tactical.
Every day: 2.11 billion users, and over 4 petabytes of data.
It’s enough OSINT to make an Investigator’s mouth water. One problem.
Sink your teeth into a Facebook profile, and a chunk of this rich juicy data would still be tricky to get at. All the data on Facebook Marketplace was tantalisingly out of reach. Even investigators using OSINT Industries would find it wasn’t possible to pivot from a comprehensive, positively-identified Facebook profile straight to a Marketplace account - until OSINT_Tactical.
OSINT_Tactical thought it wasn't fair that our Investigators were getting dinner and no dessert. For him, cooking up a connection from the entree - a positively-identified Facebook account - to a second course on Marketplace would be a cakewalk.
So he built it.
This ingenuity is what puts OSINT_Tactical at the top of the OSINT food chain. Known throughout the OSINT network, OSINT_Tactical has brought his expertise to corporate sector investigations. Busting insurance fraud in Switzerland, OSINT_Tactical was striking at the heart of white-collar crime in the third richest country in the world. Here, insurance fraud was serious business. Last year, for example, Swiss insurance fraud investigators discovered a fraudster involved in a $100 million scam: inflating the value of insurance claims to funnel illicit funds with ties to Russian state interests and oligarchs.
From this world of mega-millions, OSINT_Tactical came to OSINT Industries.
OSINT_Tactical’s addition to our platform gave our users open access to the hustle and chaos of Facebook Marketplace.
A link from a profile to Facebook Marketplace, OSINT_Tactical found, serves up a number of unique investigative solutions for fighting fraud:
- For insurance fraud, suspects often declared an item stolen, ie. a ‘stolen’ laptop, only for it to appear days later for sale on their Marketplace account
- Lots of posts on Marketplace could suggest a suspect has money problems, and a potential motive for crime.
- Legitimately stolen items often showed up on Facebook Marketplace.
- Putting something for sale on Marketplace triggers geolocation, giving GeoInt and location data for suspects.
- Lastly, individuals who are missing, ‘disappeared’ on social media, or even presumed dead may list things on Marketplace post-disappearance.
Between the lowball bargaining, unfiltered chat and mostly DIY customer service, this hotbed of eCommerce opportunism is an OSINT feast. It’s not Swiss banks - but it’s double the mayhem.
OSINT_Tactical now uses OSINT Industries’ Facebook Marketplace module in his investigations. He reached out to share two of his favorite cases where his creation changed the game.
1: iFraud
An individual had made an insurance claim for a stolen iPhone X 64GB.
The claim seemed legitimate at first. After all, a phone is reported missing every four minutes in the UK alone.
Perhaps the claimant was the victim of a common scam themselves: iPhone theft-for-sale by criminal gangs to fuel second-hand electronic markets located in the Chinese subdistrict of Huaqiangbei. Here, in the Shenzhen region, phones stolen from Europe are unlocked and resold - or dismantled and sold in parts to recycling plants.
Demand is enormous, leading to widely-reported phone-snatching by operatives on e-bikes, and victims reporting feeling ‘helpless’ and ‘frustrated’; if they fight back they’ll receive death threats from the thieves. One Chinese iPhone trader posted on BiliBili - the ‘Chinese YouTube’ - that he delivers bulk orders of 500 stolen phones each, stocking over a million phones from 'first-hand sources'.
‘But China is the last place thieves want to send [iPhones]. The criminals will always try to sell them in the UK first, or… get the victim to unlock them there either through a phishing attack or threats, because they will make more money.’ - Silviu Stahie, Global Security Analyst at Bitdefender [Source: Sunday Times]
Even if this were the case, the claimants' stolen iPhone may not have left its country of origin. The first place to look was Facebook Marketplace - and what better way to start than searching the claimant’s Facebook username on OSINT Industries?
It was here that OSINT_Tactical saw a listing for the ‘stolen’ device… on the claimant’s Marketplace account, with geolocation data matching their known location.
This wannabe insurance fraudster had vastly underestimated OSINT_Tactical’s OSINT skills.
2: Resurrection
Four years ago, the UK’s Cambridgeshire Police had a remarkable success with OSINT.
They were searching for a body; a Lithuanian man, Ricardas Puisys, presumed murdered to the point a suspect had been arrested. At last, in 2020, Puisys was found - alive.
Although he seemed to have ‘disappeared’, Puisys had escaped brutal modern slavery to survive on scraps for five years in isolated Wisbech woodland. What gave him away? That OSINT investigator’s old faithful: a new, geolocated profile on Facebook.
As the now-solved case of the ‘No Body Murder’ highlights, Facebook is ideal for OSINT investigators seeking missing persons. If the trail they’re following is financial, there’s nothing better than Marketplace.
‘Not many people get to meet a ‘murder’ victim and speak to him.’ - DS Mark Devine, Cambridgeshire Police [Source: Fenland Citizen]
What’s more, OSINT_Tactical says that often somebody who has disappeared on Facebook itself will still put something up for sale on Marketplace. These ‘zombie’ accounts post listings - complete with location data - that give instant proof that your subject's online, placeable… or even still alive.
OSINT_Tactical gave a ‘fantastic example’ of his own.
Hired to ‘search for a person that had left Ukraine’, he initially found nothing in terms of placing the subject, even with OSINT Industries. It seemed OSINT_Tactical’s subject had vanished into thin air. With no location data, no SOCMINT, and no identifying material on Facebook, the search was all but dead.
Then OSINT_Tactical plugged into the Facebook Marketplace module.
They may have been invisible on Facebook itself, but a pivot to Marketplace via the subject’s Facebook ID showed a listing for an iPhone.
“The good thing is the geolocation feature on Facebook Marketplace, which provides a good indication of where the person is.” - OSINT_Tactical
One distinguishing factor that marks out Facebook Marketplace for OSINT investigation is the geolocation feature. Before selling any item, Marketplace requires you to input your location; this facilitates the location search function, streamlines postage and lets users trade locally or collect-in-person.
This listing had been posted in County Limerick, Ireland. In fact, Marketplace listing geolocation is so precise that OSINT_Tactical could see the listing location mapped to a small, insignificant Limerick town: Abbeyfeale, population 2,206. Known mostly for its nearby fishing spot and local church.
OSINT_Tactical had located Abbeyfeale’s 2,207th resident; he’d confirmed his subject’s location after leaving Ukraine.
3: OSINT Industries X OSINT_Tactical
If it’s possible to be OSINT-famous, OSINT_Tactical is.
At OSINT Industries, we’re honored to work with an investigator and OSINT practitioner as passionate about #OSINT4Good as we are.
‘I use [OSINT Industries] on every investigation… It’s the first place I go to.’ - OSINT_Tactical
OSINT_Tactical has made our platform a vital part of his everyday OSINT toolkit; even better, he’s contributed to OSINT Industries in a way that improves his tool of choice for other users. We thought our platform couldn’t get better, but we thank OSINT_Tactical for proving us wrong.
Have you got an idea, concept or tooling you’d like to see on OSINT Industries? Hit us up @OSINTIndustries on socials.
To find out more about OSINT_Tactical’s work, visit:
https://c3n7ral051nt4g3ncy.github.io/
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