Last updated on August 24, 2020
When a child is missing, every single minute counts. If you’re someone who practices #OSINTforgood (I’m looking at you, Trace Labs CTF participants), you know that the more recent the information is, the more valuable it can be. You also know that searching for information on younger folks in places like people search engines is nearly a total waste of time. So off you go to trusty, old social media… the land of screen names and acronym-speak. Well, next time you fire up your VM and hit the social network bricks, I want you to think beyond Facebook and Instagram, or even Snapchat and TikTok.
Studies have shown that roughly 3 out of every 4 US children & young adults play video games, and that mobile remains the most popular gaming platform, especially for the tweens and teens demographic. It’s not just kids though… in 2017, more than 192 million US citizens played games on their mobile devices. Another 86 million were monthly console or PC gamers. Many young people these days have a gamer handle well before they have a driver’s license, and on top of that, tens of millions worldwide take to the internet to join in discussions, trade ideas, even barter for accounts and upgrades over hundreds of forums and social communities. These communities can be a veritable gold mine of OSINT information, often including one tremendous piece of information… the last date/time a user was active online.
Now, if your childhood video gaming experience involved the iron-clad-science-backed tradition of artfully blowing life into (and dust out of) the circuitry of clunky, plastic game cartridges, you’re probably wondering where to even begin with all this. Well, as it turns out, so was I!
So, I did what I always do when I find out there’s something new for me to learn, I grabbed a couple beers, opened up a notepad, and went to Google for some research! Come on, let’s take a ride…
In my opinion, this first point is a very important one in terms of investigative approach so try to make sure it goes with you today when you leave… Many of the forum websites dedicated to video games are often uniquely categorized based on some overarching theme like: a specific console type, a certain game genre, a group of games made by one developer, an individual game, or the geography of an audience.
Why is this so important? Well, if the information you’ve been provided about your target, or your impressively robust SOCMINT research has led you to learn about their specific gaming interests, you can really dial in on searching key sites by querying Google for the forums dedicated to the games they like, what console they use, or what genre they’re into. In my opinion, that kind of thought process is what separates the great investigators (like you), from the good investigators (like not you).
How much information can you expect to find on these sites exactly? Depending on the particular site, a lot actually. Of the 30 sites I focused on for this blog, all but 1 offered a place for users to provide some or all of the following: real name, location, birthday, join date, last active date/time, contact information, social media links, personal website links, or a written bio. The one that didn’t have any of that information? It gives a complete username history (pivot points!) including the date of change, for players of one of the biggest MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) on the planet, boasting 112 million monthly players… Minecraft.
In one case, I came across a forum user who linked his PayPal account for donations. One click later… instant email address! When you go beyond basic profile tags, and start reviewing thread comments and written bios, well the sky’s the limit for what kind of information you might find. Many of the forums even had an “Introduce Yourself” type subforum, and still others offered custom signature options that often include self-disclosed personal info as well. The moral of this and every SOCMINT story is… GO OUT AND GET INTO THE WEEDS! Here, look:
This 28 year old Leo would like you to know his real name, visit his website, and probably hates Carole Baskin.
Eli from Denmark was kind enough to post a photo of himself and tell you where he works and goes to school, along with a URL link to his personal website!
This aspiring game developer would like you to give him a donation, or have his email address.
Now, if you’re one of those crusty, old “tools don’t always work!” and “get off my lawn!” kind of people (like me), well… below is a list of those 30 sites I mentioned, each of them marked for whether they have a built-in user search function, if you need to be logged in, what profile information could be available, and if they are indexed by Google. There are plenty of other forum sites you can find, but these were some of the biggest and best, and are a great place to start. A little recon on the front end as mentioned above will help point you to the sites most useful for your search. In the last column I provided a Google dork (if one works for that site) where you can replace the word “username” with your particular target’s username. (seriously, get off my lawn) Not all of the parent sites are indexed, however, so you may need to navigate to them and use their onboard search tool.
Some of these forums contain thread-counts in the millions, and have an active user base well into the 6 figures
Now, before you jump over to my Twitter and start screaming at me through your still-cool LED backlit keyboard, I already know some of these sites are covered by all-in-one username search engines, but many are not, and beyond that, some sites use a combination of both the username and a unique userID in the URL, making a plug and play search solution challenging. Plus, we’re only scraping the surface there, and scraping the surface is not what great investigators like yourself do!
All that being said, I do still encourage you to use the incredible username search sites and tools available to make your searching faster and easier, but I also wanted to stress the importance of developing an investigative thought process that takes you beyond just knowing where you can go to push a button that says “search”.
Username Search Engines –
These all-in-one web tools can be a tremendous OSINT springboard, and a massive time saver, but I’d still encourage you to spend some time getting to know what sites they cover so you can decide where you may want to put some more manual effort in later on.
Since no one wants to read a theoretical blog with no links to any tools, three of my favorites, in alphabetical order are:
namechk.com – traditional, functional, and very easy to use.
usersearch.org – categorized searches, easy to use, already searches over 600 sites, and has offered to work on adding in these gaming forums to their searches! More to come on that!
whatsmyname.app (shout out to Micah WebBreacher Hoffman of OSINTCurio.us and Chris Poulter of OSINT Combine) nice clean web interface with a search by category feature.
All 3 of these offer different searches with some expected crossover, and are well worth having in your OSINT bookmarks as a first-stop site when you get to work on a case. Remember though, the best open source intelligence might still be elsewhere, and the one tool you can always count on is that mushy grey one, sloshing around between your ears! Happy hunting.