List of OSINT Exercises – Challenge Yourself!

These OSINT exercises, also called challenges, give you the chance to practise your skills, explore new methods and techniques, and most importantly, have fun all for free! Each challenge focuses on the three essential skills I believe are crucial to becoming an excellent OSINT analyst: finding data, verifying data, and analysing data.

On each exercise page in the list below, you will find a task briefing, and a set of questions to help you practise your skills. The difficulty levels range from easy to hard, catering for both beginners (🥸) and OSINT experts (🕵️). Each exercise page includes a link to a YouTube video where I provide the solution and a comprehensive walkthrough, guiding you from the task briefing to the answers.
At no point you will need to contact anyone or obtain personal information from online users. Please refrain from harassing or stalking people!

I recommend starting with the most recent exercises, at the end of the list. Check the difficulty labels and choose the ones that match your skill level. Jumping into tasks that are too hard might lead to frustration, so it’s best to start slow and build your skills gradually. Always make sure you read the briefing carefully as it will contain crucial information. It is ok to take a break and come back to a task later. I have lost count of the times I was stuck on something for hours, gave up for the day, and then completed it in minutes when I returned later. Sometimes the brain just needs a rest. Take it easy.

If you have successfully completed all the tasks on an exercise page, consider writing your own walkthrough detailing the process and sharing it with me. You can submit the link using the sidebar input field, or message me directly on social media. I thoroughly enjoy reading them and will gladly add a link to your write-up or video on the respective exercise page. Any language is welcome, this is why we have translators! You can find the current list of people’s walkthroughs on each exercise page. Given that there are multiple ways to approach the same tasks, reading through others’ processes can be equally insightful and helpful.

Absolutely! Feel free to share these exercises with your community, students, or colleagues, but please don’t take credit for them. I invest numerous hours in creating and developing each of these exercises, and they are all available for free. My only request is that people credit me when sharing them online.

Predicting the release frequency of these exercises can be a bit tricky. It really depends on how busy I am, the complexity of the exercise, and the number of tasks on a page. Typically, creating each exercise, including recording and editing the walkthrough, takes me about three weeks. I can’t make any promises about how often they will be released.

All exercises are announced on my social media accounts. I share them on LinkedIn, Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon, and my YouTube channel. You can find a list of all the links on the “About Me” page. You really can’t miss them! Please note that the subscribe option on this website (located in the sidebar) will not alert you to new exercises; it’s only for blog posts. I keep those two things separate.