10 Investigative Tools You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Wednesday, 29 August 2018GIJN

Investigations, the saying goes, are just regular stories with a lot more labor put in. Investigative reporters spend inordinate amounts of time sifting through documents, verifying sources and analyzing data — and that’s if they can even get the data. As an investigative reporter with way too many stories I want to do, these are the tools I use to keep up with sources, stories and leads at a rapid rate.

Let’s take a look at 10 of the best new tools for unearthing, accelerating, and keeping track of investigations:

Hunter.io

Tracking down people’s contact info is a big part of the job and Hunter.io is a nifty resource. It sniffs out email addresses on a certain domain — like a government agency, for instance. Even if it doesn’t turn up the email you’re looking for, Hunter will give you its best guess at the formula they use (“{last name}{first name}@company.com,” for example). Then you can hop over to the Email Verifier to make sure it won’t bounce. I have the Chrome extension installed, which adds a “Find their email” button to LinkedIn profiles.

IntelTechniques

We’ve all done some Facebook stalking in our day — well, okay, I have. IntelTechniques is a one-stop shop for searching through dozens of social media and website platforms. You can use it to background a source, track someone down or even delve into someone’s online life. The Facebook tools, for instance, will show you all the photos a Facebooker has liked, or the videos they’ve been tagged in.

Credit by - GIJN

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