About
Tracehound follows a public trail, and stops there.
What it is
An instrument for the first hour of an investigation.
Most investigations start with a fragment: a handle in a screenshot, an email in a complaint, a number on a listing. Checking that fragment by hand means opening dozens of sites, one at a time, and guessing at what each one is telling you.
Tracehound does that legwork in parallel and shows the answers as they arrive, with the profile details each site makes public. It surfaces other identifiers those profiles list, so the next step is one click away. Then it gets out of the way, because the judgment about what a result means belongs to you.
A tracking hound is a good model: it follows a scent from clue to clue, and it does not decide what happens once it finds something. That is our job description.
What we believe
Responsible OSINT is a design decision.
- 01
Public is not the same as fair game.
Information a person posts in public can still be used to hurt them. A good tool makes legitimate work faster and makes misuse harder, not easier.
- 02
Live beats stored.
Asking the source at the moment you search gives an answer that is current, and it means there is no growing file on anyone waiting to leak or be sold.
- 03
A match is a lead, not a verdict.
Usernames are shared, recycled and impersonated. We show where an identifier appears and leave the judgment to a person who checks the details.
- 04
People should be able to say no.
Anyone can stop searches for their email address with a one-time code, without an account and without explaining why.
What we will not build
Some features would sell. We are not shipping them.
Not here
A database of people
We do not compile, keep or sell profiles of individuals. Results exist for the length of your session and are not written to our database.
Not here
Breached or leaked data
No leaked credentials, no dumps, no stolen records, and no resale of them. Every source we query is one that publishes the information itself.
Not here
Background checks
Tracehound is not a consumer reporting agency. It is not built for, and may not be used for, employment, tenant, credit or insurance decisions.
Not here
Covert tracking
No location tracking, no monitoring of a person over time, no alerts when someone you searched for posts something new.
Read how this works in practice on the security page, the rules for users in the Acceptable Use Policy, or get in touch.
See what a public trail looks like.
Search a handle you own. It is the fastest way to understand what the tool does.