Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Tracking down elusive individuals is the bread and butter of OSINT work, but what can you do when armed only with a single photo or username? In this session, we’ll walk you through examples of how we cracked some of the most difficult cases (eg, tracking down an Iranian fugitive in the U.S. or the father of a posh Ukrainian living in Italy). We will unveil the power of combining image recognition, social media sleuthing, advanced Google searches, and exploring leaked data. You will discover some new techniques, and creative ways of thinking to raise your investigative game.

How many times a day do you go to a search engine? And how often is it Google? This session will point at less-known features of the search giant as well as less-reflected shortcomings of the tool that most journalists use every day.