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Sherlock
github.comrepo

Sherlock

Sherlock is a command-line OSINT tool that checks over 400 social networks for the existence of a given username, outputting results to text, CSV, or XLSX files. It supports proxying, JSON-based site definitions, NSFW site inclusion, and browsing found accounts directly, making it a staple recon tool for investigators, red teamers, and social engineering research.

TL;DR CLI tool that hunts down social media accounts by username across 400+ sites.
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What it is

Sherlock (version 0.16.0, MIT licence, created by Siddharth Dushantha) is a command-line tool that checks 400+ social networks for a username. Found accounts are written to a text file named after the username, for example user123.txt.

What to do

Search one or several usernames:

sherlock user123
sherlock user1 user2 user3

The help text describes a {?} placeholder in a username. It checks similar names by replacing the ? with _, - or ..

Flags that change behaviour or output:

  • --site SITE_NAME limits the scan to named sites. Repeat the flag for more than one.
  • --proxy PROXY_URL or -p sends requests over a proxy, for example socks5://127.0.0.1:1080.
  • --timeout TIMEOUT sets the request wait in seconds. The default is 60.
  • --csv, --xlsx and --txt select output formats. --output (single username) or --folderoutput (several usernames) sets where results go.
  • --print-found and --print-all control whether found or not-found sites are printed.
  • --nsfw adds NSFW sites from the default list.
  • --json JSON_FILE loads site data from a local file, an online JSON file, or an upstream PR number. --local forces the bundled data.json.
  • --ignore-exclusions ignores upstream exclusions. The help text says this may return more false positives.
  • --dump-response prints the HTTP response to stdout for debugging a single site check.
  • --browse opens every result in the default browser.

Caveats

  • The README warns that third-party packages for ParrotOS and Ubuntu 24.04 appear to be broken. Users of those systems should install with uv, pipx, pip or Docker.
  • Packages for Debian (13 or later), Ubuntu (22.10 or later), Homebrew, Kali and BlackArch are community-maintained. The Sherlock Project does not support or maintain them.
  • The page gives no accuracy figures and no list of sites that produce false positives. It says only that ignoring exclusions may add some.

Organisations named here

  • Siddharth Dushantha

Technologies named here

  • Sherlock
  • Python

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