How to find usernames on social media using Sherlock

Usually users register on sites and social media with the same nickname (login). Therefore, if the task arises, how to find all user profiles on web sites, then ones need to search the sites for known nickname of the target user. Doing it manually requires much time, but the Sherlock program will help us.

Sherlock is a Python program that checks on many social media and popular sites whether a user with the specified username is registered there, that is, if there is an account with that username (nickname).

About 300 sites are currently supported, the full list is here: https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/blob/master/sites.md

Good news for Windows users – Sherlock can be run on any operating system. And for the quickest access to the tool, the Sherlock online service was created.

How to install Sherlock on Kali Linux

Installation in Kali Linux is very simple, just run the command:

sudo apt install sherlock

Usage:

sherlock USER_NAME

How to install Sherlock on Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and their derivatives

To install, run the following commands:

sudo apt install python3-pip git python3-setuptools
git clone https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock
cd sherlock/
sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 ./sherlock.py -h

Usage:

python3 ./sherlock.py USERNAME

How to install sherlock on windows

1. First install Python and PIP on Windows.

Let's look for the sherlock package in the PIP repositories:

pip search sherlock

Closest to found:

thesherlock (0.2.6)      - Sherlock the username detective

Perhaps this is the tool that interests us, but its version is 0.2.6, while the latest version at the time of writing is 0.10.4.

If you want to go the simplest way, then you can install it like this:

pip install thesherlock

But I recommend another option, thanks to which we get the latest version of Sherlock.

2. Download the archive with the program: https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/archive/master.zip

3. Unpack the archive and remember the folder, for example, I have it in the C:\Users\MiAl\Downloads\sherlock-master\ folder.

4. Now open the command prompt: Win+x → Windows PowerShell.

5. At the command prompt, go to the script folder using the cd command:

cd C:\Users\MiAl\Downloads\sherlock-master\

6. Install the dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

7. Check if everything is in order, for this we will display a help message:

python ./sherlock.py -h

8. Usage:

python ./sherlock.py USERNAME

How to find user accounts on social networks

Above are already shown the features of the launch depending on the operating system. I will show how to launch the program works on Windows computer.

For example, I want to find all profiles with the username miloserdov:

python ./sherlock.py miloserdov

If a profile is found, then the site name and a link to the profile will be displayed:

[+] Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/miloserdov
[+] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miloserdov

The inscription “Not Found!” means that it was not possible to find a user with the same name on this site:

[-] Dribbble: Not Found!
[-] Ello: Not Found!
[-] Etsy: Not Found!
[-] EyeEm: Not Found!
[-] F3.cool: Not Found!

How to show only links to existing profiles in Sherlock

A lot of information is displayed (verification is carried out on almost 300 sites), it would be nice to make it more readable, at least by deleting entries about not found profiles. This is easily done using the --print-found option:

python ./sherlock.py --print-found USERNAME

Now it looks much better and more readable:

How to search for multiple usernames on social networks

If you know the alternative names of one user or want to search for several users at once, then specify them divided by space:

python ./sherlock.py --print-found USER_NAME1 USER_NAME2 USER_NAME3

For instance:

python ./sherlock.py --print-found miloserdov mi-al mial

How to check only on some sites in Sherlock

It is possible that you only need to check on one or several sites and you do not want to wait for a full check on all social networks. In this case, use the --site option, after which specify the site name. The names of the sites are shown in the output of the program during the scanning, you can also find them in the data.json file in the folder of this program. The --site option can be used several times, that is, you can run a check at several sites simultaneously, command example:

python ./sherlock.py --print-found --site Facebook --site VK --site Badoo --site datingRU --site YouTube --site Telegram --site Twitch --site Twitter miloserdov mi-al mial

How to save results to a file in Sherlock

By default, a file for each username of the form USERNAME.txt is created in the program folder. If you wish, you can create a CSV file that can be opened by office programs for working with spreadsheets. In this file, the values will be separated by commas (can be used for processing by scripts or import into databases. To create a CSV file, specify the --csv option.

By default, these files are created directly in the Sherlock directory, if you want to specify a different directory, use the -fo FOLDER option:

python ./sherlock.py --print-found -fo results miloserdov

Instead of a file of the form USERNAME.txt, you can specify any other name, for this use the -o FILE_NAME option. Remember that this option is only applicable if one username is specified.

Sort sites by popularity in Sherlock

If you want the most popular sites are shown first, then specify the -r flag. Website popularity is determined based on the global ranking of Alexa.com.

How to do checks in Sherlock through a proxy

Sherlock supports sending requests through a proxy. To do this, use the --proxy PROXY_URL option (a short spelling of the option name is -p PROXY_URL). Proxy format example: socks5://127.0.0.1:1080

If you want to take proxies from the list, use the --proxy_list PROXY LIST option (a short spelling of the option name is -pl PROXY LIST). Proxies will be randomly selected from this list.

The file specified with the --proxy_list option must be in .csv format. In it, proxies should be described by the fields: 'ip', 'port', 'protocol'.

Together with the --proxy_list option, you can specify the --check_proxies NUMBER option (-cp NUMBER). In this case, the proxy from the .csv file will be checked for accessibility and anonymity. Specify 0 to remove restrictions on the number of proxies that have passed the test, or specify another number to set the limit.

How to use Sherlock via Tor

Start by Tor installation:

• how to install Tor on Windows
• how to install Tor on Linux

Since Sherlock can work with SOCKS5, after installing and starting the Tor service on any operating system, use the --proxy option with the value socks5://localhost:9050:

python ./sherlock.py --proxy socks5://localhost:9050 USERNAME

ONLINE service to search for username in social media

If you don’t feel like messing with Python, Tor, proxies, command line and options, then use the free online service based on Sherlock for finding a user in social media, its address is: https://w-e-b.site/?act=sherlock

Just enter your username there, and in a few minutes you will get the results directly in your web browser!