Open Source Evidence

Open source evidence is that which may be captured online from services such as social media, government and corporate databases, and news sites. The value of open source material is that it is freely available so that obtaining it rarely requires a search warrant. The most commonly searched open source sites are social media sites, such as Facebook, where many a criminal with an open profile has been caught bragging about their crimes or leaving behind evidence of their associates. While some criminals are very protective of their social media profile, others are very careless, and the evidence they leave open to investigators has been used in court by the prosecution. The chapter presents examples of the forms of open source material available to an investigator and discusses their benefits. Some examples are blogs, dark web, domain lookup tools, email tracing, email services, image search, internet archive, internet protocol address tracing, maps, and network tools.