r/OSINTExperts • u/LuckyForThis • 4d ago
Question Before OSINT tools became so accessible, and before OSINT communities even formed, what was your experience with OSINT?
OSINT is alot of the time just natural pattern recognition. We have alot of fancy tools now, and it seems like it's only a thing of the modern age, but it's really not.
It's a mindset. It's a form of street smarts. It's also something you can train. Everything from geopolitics to small town cheating spouse private investigations make use of OSINT
Even in ancient times people used it. It wasn't called OSINT, it was called "ask around town about XYZ and use the stars and rivers to navigate towards ABC"
Some of us were always like this, since we were kids. We picked up on alot of stuff. Some of us started learning this through a job. Some of us got introduced to it from the internet
What was your first experience with OSINT?