What OSINT Is and Is Not
Defines lawful open-source intelligence, separates information from intelligence, and establishes scope, confidence language, and responsible use boundaries.
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The Aldermere Systems OSINT Bible.
A professional six-volume open-source intelligence reference library for people who need to search, verify, record, and report public information with discipline. The OSINT Bible gives readers a structured method for lawful research: defining scope, judging source reliability, handling evidence, mapping entities, checking images and locations, writing clear findings, redacting sensitive details, and building defensive OSINT workflows that can be used in real investigations, due diligence, fraud checks, safety reviews, and professional reporting.
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6Volumes
60Chapters
410Total pages
Volume 01
Foundations
Ethics, Law, Consent, and Harm Reduction
Explains why legal access is not always ethical use, with rules for consent, proportionality, minimisation, redaction, and safe sharing.
The OSINT Mindset
Builds the operating habits of clear questions, controlled assumptions, source discipline, cautious confidence, and knowing when to stop.
Building Your Workspace
Sets up a clean research environment for notes, evidence, screenshots, browser hygiene, file naming, and repeatable investigation structure.
Notes, Evidence, and Source Control
Shows how to preserve what was found, where it came from, when it was captured, and how it supports or limits a finding.
Search Fundamentals
Introduces deliberate search planning, query refinement, source comparison, date awareness, and avoiding tool-first wandering.
Source Reliability and Bias
Teaches source assessment: primary versus repeated information, reliability, motive, age, context, corroboration, and uncertainty.
Identity, Entities, and Attribution Basics
Introduces careful attribution, entity separation, name-match risk, and the difference between clues, relationships, and proof.
Building a Safe Investigation Plan
Turns the foundations into a controlled workflow covering objective, scope, exclusions, sources, risks, outputs, and stopping points.
First Complete Mini-Investigation
Walks through a contained beginner investigation from question to source capture, verification, confidence statement, and short report.
Volume 02
Search and Sources
Search Operators and Query Building
Builds staged search queries and records what was searched, where it was searched, and why each result mattered.
News, Archives, and Cached Material
Treats news and archives as dated snapshots, preserving context before relying on excerpts, screenshots, or old material.
Government, Public Records, and Registries
Uses official registers carefully while separating legal existence, public record details, update dates, and real-world control.
Academic, Technical, and Specialist Sources
Checks technical and specialist sources for authority, age, narrowness, evidence, opinion, measurement, and speculation.
Company and Domain Research
Maps company and domain clues as relationships requiring corroboration across records, websites, domain data, and public statements.
Social Platform Search Basics
Uses volatile social material cautiously, capturing visible context and avoiding identity conclusions from a single platform clue.
Forums, Marketplaces, and Community Sources
Treats community sources as leads requiring verification, not final proof, because rumours and repeated claims can distort context.
Alerts, Monitoring, and Change Detection
Sets scoped monitoring terms, review cadence, and stop rules so alerts do not become uncontrolled collection or mission creep.
Building Source Lists
Creates controlled source maps with source type, reliability, update rhythm, relevance, and reuse limits instead of loose bookmarks.
Search Workflow Case Study
Demonstrates a repeatable search trail from question to evidence to finding, focused on discipline rather than search volume.
Volume 03
People, Companies, and Communities
Person-of-Interest Research, Safely and Lawfully
Starts people-related research with legitimate purpose, written scope, consent where needed, sensitivity, and a stop condition.
Username and Profile Correlation
Treats username overlap as a clue, checking context, dates, self-declared links, and corroboration before any identity claim.
Email and Contact Clue Analysis
Analyses public contact clues without testing private access, sending probes, or assuming shared details prove personal identity.
Organisation Mapping
Maps organisations as brands, departments, roles, domains, records, and public statements without overclaiming ownership or control.
Company Ownership and Directorships
Separates registered roles, beneficial ownership, employment, influence, and public representation when interpreting company records.
Job Posts, Leaks of Process, and Public Footprints
Uses job posts and public process artefacts as dated clues about workflows, tools, hiring, and exposure without treating marketing text as proof.
Community and Network Mapping
Describes visible interaction patterns, repeated signals, and clusters while avoiding assumptions about motive, coordination, or hidden relationships.
Reputation, Scams, and Fraud Indicators
Preserves and compares public warning signs as indicators, not verdicts, using official channels and careful escalation.
Handling Ambiguous Identity Matches
Keeps ambiguous matches explicit, separating rejected, unclear, plausible, probable, and confirmed rather than forcing a narrative.
Entity Investigation Case Study
Shows a defensible entity investigation from scope to sources, confidence, limitations, and a cautious final finding.
Volume 04
Images, Maps, and Geolocation
Image Search and Reverse Image Search
Uses reverse image search as discovery, recording where an image was found, capture timing, earlier copies, and reuse context.
Metadata and File Clues
Handles metadata as context that may be stripped, altered, or misleading, preserving originals before analysis or sharing.
Visual Geolocation Basics
Builds geolocation through independent visible clues, separating observed facts from candidate-location inferences.
Maps, Satellite View, and Street-Level Clues
Compares map, satellite, street-level, and local-photo evidence while recognising age limits and feature mismatches.
Weather, Sun, Shadow, and Time Clues
Uses environmental clues to support time and place analysis while guarding against seasons, edits, time zones, and weak assumptions.
Transport, Buildings, Signs, and Language Clues
Reads transport, architecture, signage, scripts, and local markers as context-dependent clues requiring corroboration.
Video Verification
Preserves original video, extracts representative frames, and checks upload context, visual clues, audio hints, and continuity.
Event Verification
Matches media to the correct event, time, place, and narrative while detecting old footage, partial clips, and misleading captions.
Geolocation Reporting
Reports the claim, clues, comparison sources, confidence, and limitations without exposing unnecessary private-location details.
Geolocation Case Study
Demonstrates the trail from image to map comparison to proportionate, sourced, uncertainty-aware location finding.
Volume 05
Analysis, Workflows, and Reporting
Turning Clues into Findings
Shows how a clue becomes a finding only after testing, sourcing, context, restrained wording, and separation of observation from inference.
Link Analysis and Entity Graphs
Uses entity graphs as analytical aids with sourced nodes, labelled edges, confidence levels, and limits rather than proof by diagram.
Timeline Building
Separates event time, publication time, and capture time so sequence, gaps, contradiction, and uncertainty are visible.
Confidence Levels and Analytical Language
Matches wording to evidence strength so reports do not imply certainty where only possibility or probability is supported.
Contradictions and Alternative Explanations
Actively looks for ways a conclusion could be wrong and considers benign explanations before suspicious ones.
Report Structure and Evidence Packs
Builds readable, sourced, proportionate reports with evidence packs that allow significant statements to be traced.
Redaction and Privacy Protection
Treats redaction as part of analysis, removing unnecessary personal data while preserving original evidence securely.
Automation Without Losing Control
Uses automation for monitoring and organisation only with logs, human review, scope limits, and stop conditions.
Quality Control Checklist
Checks analytical logic, citations, confidence language, redaction, sensitivity, and release readiness before sharing a report.
Full Investigation Report Case Study
Combines scope, evidence, analysis, report structure, limitations, and release decision into a complete investigation example.
Volume 06
Defensive OSINT and Professional Practice
Personal Digital Footprint Audit
Uses defensive OSINT to reduce personal exposure without creating a dossier, prioritising practical risk reduction and review cycles.
Family and Small Business Exposure Review
Reviews household and small-business exposure with extra restraint, consent, role separation, mitigation actions, and safe reporting.
Scam, Fraud, and Impersonation Checks
Triages suspicious claims, preserves evidence, compares official routes, avoids risky engagement, and escalates credible risk safely.
Brand and Domain Monitoring
Builds recurring defensive checks for brands, domains, impersonation, change, and exposure without uncontrolled alerts or panic.
Incident Support and Evidence Preservation
Captures and preserves incident evidence calmly before removal, with controlled redaction, escalation, and handover.
Working With Clients or Teams
Sets scope, ownership, review, communication, evidence handling, and handover so team outputs remain traceable and safe.
Legal Boundaries and Escalation
Defines legal and ethical stop points when authority, necessity, proportionality, sensitivity, or safety is unclear.
Tooling Maintenance and Updates
Maintains tool reliability and repeatability by documenting source changes, tool changes, workflow updates, and review intervals.
Building Your OSINT Playbook
Turns practice into repeatable playbooks with scope, evidence rules, review points, outputs, and stop conditions.
Capstone Defensive OSINT Operation
Brings collection, evidence, analysis, redaction, reporting, and review together for an exposure-reduction operation.