OSINT Practice Exam

120 original questions to test and sharpen your open-source intelligence judgment. Free, no account, scored by domain.

What the exam covers

Critical Thinking and Analysis (28 questions)

Cognitive biases, source reliability and credibility, corroboration and circular reporting, competing hypotheses, observation versus inference, and estimative language.

Study first: How to Separate Observation from Assumption in an OSINT Investigation · Cognitive Biases That Derail Investigations · Saying How Sure You Are: Estimative Language and Confidence Levels

Collection Tradecraft (32 questions)

Search operators, web archives, image and video verification, geolocation and chronolocation, domain and DNS research, username pivoting, metadata, research environment hygiene, OPSEC, and timestamps.

Study first: Are you Dorking? · Geolocating a Photo: A Step-by-Step Method · Investigating a Domain: WHOIS, RDAP, DNS Records, and Certificate Transparency

Reporting and Communication (20 questions)

Bottom line up front, sourcing every claim, separating findings from assessments, confidence language, evidence logs, chain of custody, hashing, and presenting link charts.

Study first: Writing an OSINT Report Decision-Makers Will Use · Preserving Web Evidence: Captures, Hashes, and Chain of Custody · A Practical Evidence Log for Small OSINT Investigations

Law, Ethics and Proportionality (20 questions)

Public versus permitted, terms of service, data protection principles, consumer reporting cautions, unauthorized access, pretexting, breach data, and the privacy of uninvolved people.

Study first: Legal and Ethical Boundaries in OSINT Research · Searching U.S. Public Records Responsibly · Researching an Email Address Responsibly

Applied Scenarios (20 questions)

Short realistic case vignettes that combine several domains and ask for the most defensible next step.

Study first: Scoping the Question: Turning a Client Request Into Intelligence Requirements · How to Build and Test Competing Hypotheses in OSINT · Verifying Online Video: Provenance, Keyframes, and Context

Sample question

An analyst who believes a small import company is a front searches only for signs of shell activity and skims past invoices, staff profiles and customer reviews that suggest a real business. Which bias is most clearly at work?

1. Anchoring bias
2. Availability heuristic
3. Hindsight bias
4. Confirmation bias

How to use practice questions well

Treat each explanation as the point of the exercise. When you miss a question, write down which assumption led you to the wrong option, then read the related field guide. Retake the full exam after a few days rather than immediately, so the score reflects understanding rather than memory of the answer order. Options are shuffled every session for the same reason.

Good OSINT judgment shows up as consistent habits: checking provenance before sharing, separating what a source shows from what you infer, recording your method, and stopping when the research would exceed what is lawful or proportionate. The questions are written around those habits.