Day 1: First Contact
This session introduces three core skills: digital footprint analysis, breach awareness, and environmental reading. By the end, you'll have concrete knowledge about your own online exposure and a new way of seeing images.
Exercise 1: Username Enumeration
The Gaming Connection
In Hypnospace Outlaw, you play a volunteer moderator investigating users on a retro internet. You piece together identities by finding the same username across different "pages." This is exactly how real OSINT analysts work—except the stakes are higher and the internet is bigger.
Why This Matters
Most people reuse usernames across platforms. A single username can connect a throwaway Reddit account to a LinkedIn profile to a dating app. Intelligence agencies, journalists, and security researchers use this technique daily. The Bellingcat team used username correlation to identify Russian military intelligence officers involved in poisoning Sergei Skripal.
The Exercise
- 1.Open WhatsMyName.app in a new tab.
- 2.Enter a username you've used online (gaming handle, forum name, etc).
- 3.Click "Check" and wait for results. The tool checks hundreds of platforms simultaneously.
- 4.For each hit, click through to verify it's actually your account (not someone else with the same name).
- 5.Write down: How many platforms returned a match? Any accounts you forgot existed?
About WhatsMyName
WhatsMyName is an open-source OSINT tool that checks if a username exists across 500+ websites. It works by making requests to each site's profile URL pattern (e.g., twitter.com/[username]) and checking if the page exists.
Limitations: It can't find accounts with different usernames, private profiles, or recently deleted accounts. It also produces false positives when someone else uses the same username.
✓ Success Criteria
You've completed this exercise when you can list at least 3 platforms where your username appears, and you understand that this same technique could be used to research anyone.
Exercise 2: Breach Exposure Check
Exercise 3: Environmental Reading
Exercise 4: Debrief & Reflection
What You Learned Today
Username Enumeration
A single username can connect identities across platforms. Tools like WhatsMyName automate this process. This same technique is used in professional investigations.
Breach Exposure
Your data is likely in multiple breaches. Knowing which breaches and what data lets you take defensive action. This is foundational OpSec awareness.
Environmental Reading
Images contain location clues beyond GPS metadata. Learning to read signs, infrastructure, and nature is the foundation of geolocation intelligence.
Complete all 4 exercises above to finish Day 1 and unlock recommended next steps.