Open-source intelligence is a multi-factor methodology for collecting, analyzing and making decisions about data accessible in publicly available sources to be used in an intelligence context. In the intelligence community, the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources.

What is a potential source for open source intelligence?

Information can also be considered open source if it is: Published or broadcast for a public audience (for example, news media content) Available to the public by request (for example, census data) Available to the public by subscription or purchase (for example, industry journals)

How is open source intelligence collected?

You can gather OSINT from: The Internet, including forums, blogs, social networking sites, video-sharing sites like, wikis, Whois records of registered domain names, metadata and digital files, dark web resources, geolocation data, IP addresses, people search engines, and anything that can be found online.