Infosec Tool

Username Recon Project

Description

This is a Python-based OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tool designed to check the availability of a given username across multiple popular social media platforms. It helps investigators, security researchers, and ethical hackers correlate online identities quickly. Many people reuse usernames across platforms. This tool helps trace a user’s digital footprint.

The tool sends HTTP requests to public profile URLs on various platforms and interprets the responses (status codes) to check if a username exists.

Key Features

• Scans for usernames on platforms like GitHub, Reddit, and more
• Simple CLI interface using argparse

I tried this with some of the major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, but it was wonky. Some users that did not exist were reported to exist and vice versa. I’m not entirely sure why it did not work on those platforms, but from what I found online, it was because these platforms block unauthenticated requests or just return misleading responses. Some would often redirect to login pages or show generic messages even for real profiles. I looked into using their APIs, but a lot had limitations or I would need to be in a paid tier.

There is some custom logic for Reddit because even if it returns a 200 OK, it still might show a “not found”.

if platform.lower() == "reddit":
return response.status_code == 200 and "Sorry, nobody on Reddit goes by that name" not in response.text

You can check out all of the code on Github here.

How to Use

You need to have Python on your system and after that you would just enter the command below on your command line, substituting “johndoe” for whatever user you want to search for.

python main.py --username johndone

You will get results that look something like this:

Found on github https://github.com/johndone
Found on reddit https://www.reddit.com/user/johndone/
Found on youtube https://youtube.com/@johndone
Not found on stackoverflow

Learning Outcomes

I don’t have a ton of experience with Python, but I have a lot of experience with PHP so I was able to quickly adapt to its syntax and logic. This project deepened my understanding of how Python handles HTTP requests, argument parsing, and modular design through separate files. I also learned how to troubleshoot issues related to status codes and platform-specific behaviors, such as misleading HTTP responses from Instagram and Twitter.