Think like the adversary
Tactical walkthroughs of the open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques used to identify and locate first responders. How they work, how to run them on yourself, and what to do about what you find. Many of these techniques lead back to a data broker page. That page ties your name to a home address and the people who live there. Clearing it cuts off a source adversaries rely on.
Search-engine
Google yourself
The first thing any adversary does. What they see — broker pages, social profiles, news, court records — and how to read your own results like one.
Reverse image search yourself
A face photo can be matched to your name, your work, your family — and from there to your home. Walk the technique on yourself before someone else walks it on you.
Social media
Scrubbing old social media
College Facebook. High-school yearbook PDFs. The blog you ran in 2009. The accounts you forgot you made. Each is a thread an adversary can pull.
Pictures that give away your location
A photo of your back porch. A check-in at your gym. A sunset shot from the front yard. Each one narrows the field for someone trying to find your house.
Family member OSINT leaks
You locked down your social presence. Your spouse posted a school PTA newsletter that lists you as a parent. Your kid tagged you in a sports photo. Your in-laws have everything public.
Dating app OSINT
A profile photo, a first name, a neighborhood. Combined with reverse image search and a broker page, that's a real name and a home address inside an hour.
Wedding registry and life event OSINT
The Knot, Zola, baby registries, obituaries, engagement announcements. Each one publishes name, address, family, and timing — for free, indexed by Google, forever.
Strava and fitness app leaks
Your morning run starts at your house and ends at your house. Your Strava heatmap publishes that, indexed and searchable. Same for Garmin, Apple Fitness, Peloton, MapMyRun.
Public records
Voter registration records
Your voter registration is technically public in most states. The downstream effect: your home address, party affiliation, and voting history are searchable on broker sites that buy the file from candidates.
Court record OSINT
Court dockets publish names, addresses, case details. State court systems vary in what they put online. Federal PACER is its own ecosystem. All of it gets scraped by court-record aggregators that feed broker pages.
Property records OSINT
County recorders publish your deed, your mortgage, your tax record. Free, indexed, scraped by brokers within weeks. The single largest broker-feeding pipeline in the country.
Business registration OSINT
Every LLC, S-corp, and DBA you've registered names you publicly. Some states make this trivial to search; some make it harder. Either way, the data exists.
Personal data
License plate OSINT
A photo of your plate at the gym, the precinct, the driveway. Looked up through one of several paths — legal, regulated, illegal — and converted to a name and home address.
Your car's OSINT footprint
Make, model, color, bumper stickers, dealership decals, roof rack — all narrow the field for someone trying to identify your vehicle. The plate is one input among many.
Defensive techniques
Social engineering defense
OSINT enables better social engineering. The more an adversary knows about you — kids' names, partner's job, prior addresses — the more convincing the call, email, or in-person pretext becomes.
Threat-model yourself
You can't defend against everything. Start by naming who realistically wants your information and why.
Operational privacy hygiene
The day-to-day habits that prevent the leaks brokers can't fix later.
OPSEC for first responders
Pre-incident habits that compound. Built for shift work, not for spy novels.