Track social media accounts using the Sherlock Project

Are our online identities and online privacy always secure?

The answer is no, there is at least a small threat if you have an online presence. Our privacy can be at risk especially if we have bad habits for online activities. Hackers are constantly trying to gain access to your sensitive information and use it for their benefit. Most of the security leaks happen on insecure web pages. It's advisable not to use any sensitive information on insecure websites. However, some websites have access to secure information.

          Ex:  Using 'Sign In with Facebook' option on a webpage. This webpage will have access to your Facebook profile. If                       the webpage is insecure, there is a greater chance that a hacker stealing your credentials.

Figure 1.1-Cross platform social media login

In this tutorial, I will show how to track social media accounts that use the same username. This can give you a rough idea about what web services have access to your data and accordingly, act upon it.

What is the Sherlock Project?

Sherlock project is free and open-source software that is available on GitHub. In this tutorial, we will use Sherlock to track down social media accounts with the same username. For additional information, visit the official GitHub page of Project Sherlock.

Getting started

In this tutorial, I will use Kali Linux to demonstrate. It is recommended to follow this tutorial on a Linux Distribution.

Step 1: Download or Clone Project Sherlock

Click here to visit the Project Sherlock GitHub page.

Figure 2.1-Sherlock GitHub page

Then click Clone or download section and copy the link given.

Figure 2.2-Clone or download section

Open a terminal window in Kali Linux in your Desktop directory and clone the project by typing git clone <copied_url>.

Figure 2.3-Cloning into the home directory

Next, change the directory to the sherlock directory by simply typing cd sherlock. To check the files and directories inside, type in ls -l and hit enter.
                                         

Now we can see an executable python file by using the command ./sherlock.py<space><social_user_name> and hit enter. The program will look for the user name for a list of given social websites and display in what social media sites have accounts with that particular user name.

Now you can decide how to fortify yourself with unwanted security threats. Good luck!!! 😃