Straight answers.

Open-source intelligence, or OSINT, is intelligence produced from publicly available and lawfully obtained information: websites, social platforms, corporate and court registries, public records, media, imagery and much more. The information is open. The value lies in collecting it systematically, verifying it, connecting it and analyzing it to answer a specific question. Our methodology explains how we do that.

Questions that need a defensible answer rather than more data. Typical examples include who is behind a fraud, leak, threat or influence campaign; who really owns a company; whether a person poses a genuine risk to an executive; where a judgment debtor's assets are held; and whether a photo, video or document is what it claims to be. Our services overview describes each discipline.

Data platforms give you access to information. Alert services tell you that something happened. We deliver conclusions: named subjects with a stated confidence level, the preserved evidence behind every finding and a report that has survived review by a senior analyst who did not work the case. Many of our clients use data platforms alongside us. They come to us when the question is who, how and what to do about it.

Every engagement is led by a named senior investigator who scopes it with you and stays with it through the final debrief. They are supported by specialists chosen for the sources, languages and regions your question involves, drawn from our team of 160 analysts, investigators, linguists and engineers working in 41 languages. A separate senior analyst performs the red-team review. We do not subcontract analysis.

Our platform is built for our analysts and is not sold as self-service software. Clients on engagements and retained programs receive read access to their own case workspace, where they can follow findings back to the preserved evidence behind them. The platform page describes each module.

We use machine assistance to help analysts read more material: ranking what has been collected, drafting working translations and extracting names for a person to confirm. It does not make attributions, grade sources or write conclusions. Its output is never cited as evidence, and client data is never used to train it. The detail is in our article on how we use AI in investigations.

Collecting publicly available information is lawful in most contexts, but how it is collected, what it is used for and how personal data is handled are all regulated. Every Aldervane engagement has a documented lawful purpose, we comply with applicable data protection law in each jurisdiction we work in, and higher-risk matters are reviewed by our General Counsel's team before work begins. Our standards are published in full.

No. We do not access private accounts, devices or systems without authorization. We do not use pretexting or any other deception to obtain information. We do not buy stolen data and we never pay criminal actors.

We do use managed attribution: research infrastructure and research personas that cannot be traced to us or to you. They are used only to observe. They never deceive anyone into providing information and never engage subjects.

Our research is designed to be invisible. We collect through non-attributable infrastructure, we never contact subjects and we never interact with their accounts. Subjects usually learn of an investigation only when the client acts on it, for example through an interview, a referral or legal proceedings. We advise on timing so that evidence is fully preserved before anyone is alerted.

Yes, regularly. Every request is screened for purpose, proportionality and conflicts of interest, and we decline roughly one in seven. Examples of work we refuse include:

• Locating a private individual without a lawful and proportionate reason.
• Monitoring journalists, lawful activists or peaceful protest.
• Personal disputes in which our findings could enable harassment or harm.
• Any request where the client will not explain the purpose of the work.

Start at our Engage With Us page, which explains how new engagements are opened, what to prepare and what happens in the first conversation. Every engagement begins with a confidential scoping discussion with a senior investigator, who will agree the question with you, run our ethics and conflict checks, and propose a plan with a fixed fee and a firm timeline.

Each engagement has a fixed fee agreed at scoping. It reflects the number of subjects, jurisdictions and languages involved, the depth of analysis required and the urgency. There is no open-ended hourly billing. If the scope needs to change during the work, for example because a new line of inquiry appears, we agree it with you before doing anything extra.

Our median time from tasking to finished report is 11 days. Focused due diligence on a single entity can be quicker, and complex investigations spanning several jurisdictions can take a number of weeks. Whatever the scope, we commit to a firm timeline at the start and keep you informed with interim updates.

Yes. For urgent tasking we deliver a first assessment within 24 hours, and our analysts work across 14 time zones. Threats to people are handled around the clock. Clients on our monitoring programs have critical threats escalated to them within 60 minutes, 24 hours a day.

Yes. Many clients retain us for continuous threat monitoring, standing protective intelligence programs for their principals, or a retained investigative capacity with an agreed allowance of requests for information each quarter.

A finished report and a debrief with the investigators who did the work. The report contains:

• Key judgments up front, each with a probability term and a confidence level.
• A step-by-step account of how each conclusion was reached.
• The alternative explanations we considered and why they were rejected.
• An evidence annex in which every item is captured, timestamped, SHA-256 hashed and graded.
• Recommended next steps, whether legal, platform, law enforcement or operational.

Every judgment carries a probability term from a fixed scale and a confidence level of high, moderate or low. An attribution earns high confidence only with at least three independent lines of evidence from distinct source types, no unresolved contradictory evidence, a passed red-team review and full reproducibility from preserved evidence. Of the 412 attributions we have made since 2014 with a known downstream outcome, 91 percent were later confirmed by a court, regulator or law enforcement action. Read more in how we grade confidence.

Admissibility is always a decision for the court, but our collection is designed with it in mind. Every item is captured with a timestamp and a SHA-256 hash at the moment of collection, the chain of custody is logged, our methods are documented and reproducible, and our investigators can provide witness statements. Our guide to evidence handling explains the detail.

We tell you plainly. You will receive an account of what we searched, what we found, where the gaps are and what could close them, such as disclosure requests or legal process. We never fill a gap with an assumption, and we never report a name we cannot support. At scoping we also tell you candidly how likely a decisive answer is, so there are no surprises at the end.

Every engagement is covered by a confidentiality agreement. Case work happens in compartmented, encrypted workspaces that only the assigned team can access, and our non-attributable collection means our research never reveals your interest in a subject. We never disclose who our clients are, and every case study we publish is anonymized with identifying details changed.

Yes. Many of our investigations are commissioned through outside counsel so that our work product can be protected. We follow your legal team's instructions on how the engagement, communications and deliverables are structured.

Case data is deleted 90 days after an engagement closes unless a legal hold applies. Where litigation or a prosecution is anticipated, we agree a hold in writing with your counsel and keep the evidence intact, with its hashes and custody log, for as long as the hold requires.

Never. We do not resell data, we do not build commercial databases from client engagements, and we do not use one client's case material on another client's matter.

Yes. Screening is carried out with the knowledge of the person being screened and, where the law requires it, their consent. Checks are limited to what the role justifies and exclude private accounts and protected characteristics. We decline requests for covert screening.

No. We do not run general monitoring of a workforce. Insider risk work starts from a specific indication of harm, such as access offered for sale or a leak. It is scoped with counsel and tests the innocent explanations first. In roughly a third of the matters we close, the evidence points to an external cause.

No. None of our services requires a connection to your network or your procurement systems. Supply chain mapping starts from your tier-one supplier list and public records, and we never contact suppliers.

For clients with a geopolitical risk program, critical events near a named site are verified and escalated within 60 minutes. For crisis tasking, the first verified situation report is issued within 2 hours. Anything we have not yet been able to verify is labeled as such.

Our analysts work from open sources in the languages of the places they cover. We do not run human sources or field agents. Where a decision needs direct observation, we say so and work alongside the security provider you choose.

Our courses are built for professionals who use open sources in their work: corporate security and investigations teams, fraud and compliance analysts, law enforcement and government analysts, and legal teams. They are taught by the investigators who run our live cases. See OSINT training for details.

Yes. Private courses are tailored to your team's work, with exercises built around the kinds of cases you handle, and can be delivered in person or remotely.

No. We teach only lawful, ethical methods held to the same standards we apply on our own cases. Every course covers operational security, evidence preservation and the legal and ethical limits of collection alongside the investigative techniques themselves.