This is a simple guide and some tricks that i use when performing tracelabs missing people capture the flag event.
First thing that I check is the case of the missing people. Watch the photo and some basic details provided by tracelabs.
After that I normally go search on google based on the name of the person and also the country of the person.
Per example if the missing people is from Australia I will use https://www.google.com.au/ to search for results about that person because using the search engine of the missing people country can result in more details.
After that I will search on social media for stuff like piercings, hobbies, vehicle model, plats, drugs usage, and other stuff mostly advanced subject info.
Always inspect likes and comments because most of the time you can find some information about the missing person and also family and friends.
In the profile of the family most of the times you can find day last seen because people share that information for reach and sometimes law enforcement don’t know about it and we can score some good points based on that information.
I also use a technique called username correlation to search for usernames in other platforms about the missing people.<
Some examples that i use is https://whatsmyname.app/ that is quite common and known resource and also a filtering on google like "@missingpeople" based on the country of the person.
Other techniques and platforms can be found at https://www.osintdojo.com/resources/
After inspecting social media of the missing people and correlate the usernames I also like to reverse image search some images in the profiles that can be used to trace some patterns and locations of the person.
For that I normally use yandex.ru to reverse image search some pictures but you can also use https://www.bing.com/ and other search engines.
Other thing that i like to check is data breach.
With the last facebook data breach you can find cellphone numbers and emails that belong to the missing person.
If you have the profile of the missing people base on UserID you can search in the dump if you have the dump with you and find the cellphone and possible the email for that person.
Also check the email and cellphone on the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ for password leaked.
In this event you need to have attention to details and flag category because sometimes we don’t check properly the flags category that we submitted and we ended submitting wrong stuff.
Also, attention to details in social media that can reveal much information.
And don’t forget that judges are here to help us and have a hard task validating stuff so be patient with them.
If you need training i recommend joe grey osint for missing people course - https://www.theosintion.com/courses/osint-investigations-people/ and Trace Labs OSINT Foundations Course from osint combine https://academy.osintcombine.com/p/tracelabstraining
Also check https://www.osintdojo.com/resources/ and https://twitter.com/OSINTDojo for free resources and challenges.
Have fun and #OSINTFORGOOD