OSINT Beginners: A Page Capture Checklist for Open Source Research
Open source research uses publicly available information. Even when data is public, your workflow should be disciplined: document what you saw, when, and from where.
Ethical baseline
- Respect terms of service, privacy, and law in your jurisdiction.
- Do not use archival tools to bypass access you are not entitled to.
- Prefer primary pages over screenshots of screenshots.
Capture checklist
- Primary source page (profile, post, registry entry—what the claim rests on).
- Context page (about, methodology, “how we count this”).
- Time note in your clip notes: why this snapshot matters.
Why archive > bookmark
Investigations unfold over days. Sites edit or remove content. A full page capture preserves text and layout better than memory.
Tool fit
PageStash captures HTML + screenshot, supports folders/tags, full-text search across clips, and Page Graphs for exploring connections—useful when a case spans many entities.
