ZeroTrace OSINT
Username Search
Sweep a username across thirty-plus platforms in one batch — with profile-photo capture and last-active hints.
Username search takes a single handle and checks for it across thirty-plus platforms in parallel. For each platform, the tool returns whether the handle exists, when it was last active (where the platform leaks that), and the profile photo (where the platform exposes one).
It is the workhorse tool of cross-platform identity work — the act of confirming that @johndoe1990 on one platform is plausibly the same person as @johndoe1990 on another.
Platforms covered
The default sweep covers the major social, professional, communication, gaming, creator, and developer platforms. Categories:
| Category | Platforms |
|---|---|
| Social | Twitter / X, Mastodon (known instances), BlueSky, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest |
| Professional | LinkedIn, AngelList |
| Creator | YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Spotify, Twitch, Patreon, Substack |
| Developer | GitHub, GitLab (self-hosted templates), Bitbucket, Stack Overflow, Codeberg |
| Gaming | Steam, Roblox, Lichess, Chess.com, Xbox Live (where public), PlayStation Network (where public) |
| Communication | Telegram, Discord (where public), Skype |
| Email-shaped | ProtonMail (existence check via login form), Gmail (existence check) |
The list grows with each release. Custom platform additions can be configured in settings.
What you get per platform
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Status | Found / not found / inconclusive |
| Profile URL | Direct link to the profile when found |
| Profile photo | Thumbnail when the platform exposes one publicly |
| Display name | When different from the handle |
| Bio fragment | First line or two of the bio when public |
| Last-active hint | Last-Modified or ETag-derived date when the platform leaks one |
| Source attribution | Which check method confirmed the result |
Last-active hints
A handful of platforms leak last-active timestamps via HTTP headers (Last-Modified, ETag) on the profile URL. The tool surfaces these as a freshness chip:
- Active in the last 30 days — the account is in current use.
- Active in the last year — alive but not heavily used.
- More than a year stale — likely abandoned or pivoted away from.
- No data — the platform does not leak this signal.
For cross-platform identity confirmation, two profiles that share a handle and are both active in the same recent window are stronger evidence than two profiles that share a handle but where one was abandoned in 2014.
Profile photo capture
For platforms that expose a public profile photo, the tool captures the og:image URL or equivalent. The thumbnail renders in the result card.
This feeds directly into the photo clustering tool — paste several profile photos and the clustering tool tells you which ones are likely the same image (and therefore the same person reusing a photo across platforms).
Profile-photo reuse across platforms is one of the highest-signal cross-platform identity matches. People reuse selfies because uploading new ones is friction. The clustering tool surfaces these matches without any face recognition.
Bulk username sweep
Bulk paste accepts many handles. The tool runs the full sweep against each handle in sequence (one at a time per platform to avoid rate limits). The aggregate result table shows per-handle / per-platform status and is exportable.
For long handle lists generated by the permutator, this is the standard workflow.
Pivots
| Click on... | Pivot to |
|---|---|
| Profile URL | Site analysis, redirect analyzer, Wayback |
| Profile photo URL | Reverse image composer, photo clustering |
| Display name | (no pivot — copy and search externally) |
| Bio email / phone | Email analyzer / phone lookup |
What "not found" actually means
A negative result on a platform means the platform's profile-existence check returned "no profile by this handle." It does not mean the person is not on the platform — they may have changed handles, deleted their account, or be under a different name.
The tool errs toward false negatives over false positives because false positives waste investigator time on follow-ups that lead nowhere.
Sources
- Direct HTTP probes against each platform's public profile URL (rate-limited per platform).
- Per-platform existence-check logic, refined per platform release.
- HTTP
Last-Modified/ETagheaders from the platforms that publish them.
Every platform queried is named on the result.