A practical, free toolkit for open-source intelligence work — verifying images, checking exposure, and researching what's publicly available. Several of these run right here on KOSEC; the rest are well-known free resources. Use them for research, journalism, and defense.
Start with reverse image search →The starting point for verifying any photo: find where it appears online, whether it's been reused, and what it actually shows. Run an image through several engines, since each indexes a different part of the web. Our reverse image search sends one upload to Google Lens, Yandex, and Bing at once; see also the engine comparison.
Photos often carry hidden EXIF data — camera model, timestamps, and sometimes GPS coordinates. Reading it can confirm when and how a photo was taken; stripping it protects your own privacy before you share an image. Use the KOSEC EXIF viewer & remover to do both in your browser.
With synthetic images everywhere, verifying whether a photo was AI-generated is now part of basic image analysis. The AI image detector scans for signs of common generators and deepfake techniques.
A defensive staple: find out whether an email address appears in known data breaches, or whether a password has been exposed, so you can respond before an attacker does. The breach checker does this privately — passwords are checked without ever leaving your browser.
For investigating a website rather than an image, free resources like WHOIS records, DNS lookups, and certificate-transparency logs (crt.sh) reveal who registered a domain and how it's hosted. These are standard first steps when verifying the source behind a link.
A typical verification flow: reverse-search the image to find its source, read its EXIF to check when it was taken, confirm it isn't AI-generated, and — if a site or account is involved — check the domain and any exposed credentials. Each tool answers one question; together they let you verify a claim from public data alone.
Tools for finding and verifying information from public sources — confirming a photo's origin, reading image metadata, or checking breach exposure. Used by journalists, researchers, and security teams.
Yes — the core tools here are free and run in your browser.
Using public information for research, journalism, and defense is legal in most places. It should never be used to stalk or identify private individuals. Follow your local law and platform rules.