GDE-048 |
Start.me for OSINT | |||||||
OSINT tooling and workflow | ||||||||
September 2026 | ||||||||
01
What it is
Start.me for OSINT is the practice of using the Start.me dashboard platform to organise search engines, people-search tools, geolocation resources and archives into a single shared start page, so an investigation begins from one place rather than scattered bookmarks.
Start.me is a browser start-page platform that lets a user build a page of link widgets grouped into columns, plus notes and RSS widgets alongside them. It was not built for OSINT specifically, but a large, active community of OSINT practitioners publishes and shares curated Start.me pages as ready-made toolkits, and the platform's own start.me/osint page curates a selection of them.
Investigators use it to replace a scattered set of browser bookmarks with one organised, shareable workspace, to stand up a consistent tool set for a new case quickly, and to onboard new team members onto a common, pre-vetted set of resources rather than everyone building their own list from scratch.
| When to use this guide
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02
How do you build a Start.me dashboard for OSINT?
Six steps to turn Start.me from a blank page into a working, organised OSINT workspace.
The following resources are used across the steps below.
Start.me: The dashboard platform itself. Free tier supports one page; a paid tier adds more pages and shared team workspaces. No investigation data is stored beyond what you add to the page yourself.
start.me/osint: Start.me's own curated overview page, linking to public OSINT dashboards built by the community across investigation toolkits, source verification and threat intelligence. Free to browse.
OSINT Framework: A separate, free categorised directory of OSINT tools and data sources, useful as a cross-reference when deciding what to add to a new dashboard column.
| Before you begin Stop at the login. Start.me itself only requires an account to save your own page; browsing a public page needs no login. Nothing in this guide involves logging into a third party service on a subject's behalf. Any tool you add to a dashboard carries its own login rules, which this guide does not cover; treat each linked tool according to its own terms. Legal considerations. A Start.me page you make public is visible to anyone with the link, indexable in some cases, and can be found by others browsing the platform's OSINT directory. Do not publish case-specific notes or links to gated internal resources on a public page; use a private or unlisted page for live investigation work. |
Sign up for a free account and create your first page. No import is needed to begin; a blank page with a few columns is a reasonable starting point for a single investigator.
Browse start.me/osint, or a specific community-maintained OSINT dashboard shared through channels such as newsletters or forums, for a pre-built column layout. Clone the structure and check each linked tool is still current rather than assuming the page's age means it is reliable.
Group columns by workflow, such as search engines, people and username lookups, geolocation, and archives, rather than by the vendor of each tool. A stage-based layout is faster to scan mid-investigation than an alphabetical or vendor-grouped one.
Use Start.me's multi-page support to create a fresh page for each investigation, so a closed case's specific links and notes do not clutter the general-purpose dashboard used day to day.
Use Start.me's built-in notes widget to record what was searched and what came back, with a timestamp, rather than relying on browser history alone, which does not capture reasoning or negative results.
OSINT tools change URLs, shut down or add logins over time, and Start.me does not flag broken widgets automatically. Set a recurring reminder to click through each column and remove or replace anything that no longer works.
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03
What goes wrong with a shared OSINT dashboard?
Link rot, unvetted sources and visibility settings are the recurring failure points of a shared research dashboard.
A public dashboard's age mistaken for currency: a start page built and shared months or years ago accumulates dead links as the tools behind them change or close, and Start.me does not flag this automatically. Verifying check: test each imported widget once before relying on it in a live investigation, not only at the point you first found the page.
A shared collection mistaken for a vetted source list: anyone can publish a Start.me OSINT page, and a tool's presence on a widely shared page does not mean it has been vetted for accuracy, safety or continued maintenance. Verifying check: cross-check any unfamiliar tool against your organisation's own vetting process before relying on it for a case.
Public visibility mistaken for private notes: the notes widget on a public Start.me page is visible to anyone with the page's link, the same as every other widget on it. Verifying check: confirm a page's visibility setting before adding any case-specific note to it.
Chain of custody: a Start.me dashboard is a working tool, not an evidentiary record, and the platform gives no guarantee that a widget's target page will still exist or say the same thing later.
Screenshot or export the specific widget list and timestamp before citing a dashboard as a source list in a report.
Note which curated page a starting tool set was drawn from, since community dashboards are edited over time.
Keep case-specific Start.me pages private or unlisted for the duration of an active investigation.
Archive the state of a case-specific page once the case closes, if the tool set used forms part of methodology documentation.
04
Go deeper
The broader free OSINT toolkit this dashboard approach is built to organise.
Evidentiary standard
Signal & Shadow operates to the LST-001 evidentiary standard. All claims are graded against the LST-001 v1.0.3 confidence tiers (Confirmed, Corroborated, Reported, Alleged) per the canonical voice and structural specification.
About Signal & Shadow
Signal & Shadow is an independent forensic investigation and methodology practice publishing tutorials, reference cards, and forensic dossiers for working practitioners. Founded by Derek Bowler.