We, as members, contributors, and maintainers of the OSINT Mastery Guide repository, pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free, safe, and productive experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
We also recognize that this community operates in a domain — open-source intelligence — that carries real potential for misuse. Alongside general standards of respectful conduct, we pledge to hold ourselves and each other to a higher ethical bar around how OSINT knowledge, tools, and techniques are discussed, shared, and applied within this community.
- Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
- Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
- Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
- Accepting responsibility, apologizing to those affected by mistakes, and learning from them
- Focusing on what is best for the overall community, not just individual interests
- Sharing knowledge generously while being mindful of the ethical and legal weight of OSINT information
- Flagging content or discussion that appears to cross ethical or legal lines, even when raised by well-meaning contributors
- The use of sexualized language or imagery, and unwelcome sexual attention or advances
- Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
- Public or private harassment
- Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission ("doxxing") — this applies with particular force in this community, given the subject matter
- Requesting, sharing, or promoting techniques whose primary purpose is to stalk, harass, intimidate, surveil without authorization, or harm a specific individual
- Sharing real personal data about identifiable private individuals in examples, issues, discussions, or pull requests
- Advocating for or instructing others in unauthorized access to computer systems, accounts, or data ("hacking" outside of authorized, lawful contexts)
- Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
Because this repository exists at the intersection of security education and personal-data handling, we ask all participants to additionally commit to the following:
- Purpose limitation in examples and discussion. When illustrating a technique, use fictional subjects, redacted data, or your own information. Never use a real, identifiable private person as a working example in an issue, PR, or discussion thread.
- No targeting. Do not use this repository's issues, discussions, or pull requests to organize, request help with, or share the results of an investigation into a specific real private individual, including public figures' private (non-public-facing) information.
- Authorization matters. Techniques and tools discussed here assume the practitioner has a lawful basis and, where required, proper authorization to investigate. Contributions or comments that assume or encourage otherwise are not welcome.
- Respect platform rules. Discussion of techniques should respect the Terms of Service of the platforms being described. We document what is possible for awareness and defensive purposes; we do not encourage ToS violations.
- Report, don't engage. If you see content that appears to cross these lines, report it (see below) rather than escalating in public threads.
Community maintainers are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.
Maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.
This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces (repository issues, pull requests, discussions, and any associated chat or forum spaces), and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.
Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior — including content that appears to facilitate stalking, doxxing, or unauthorized access — may be reported to the community leaders responsible for enforcement at:
All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly. All community leaders are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.
Community leaders will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining the consequences for any action they deem in violation of this Code of Conduct:
Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behavior deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community.
Consequence: A private, written warning from community leaders, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested.
Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.
Consequence: A warning with consequences for continued behavior. No interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in community spaces as well as external channels like social media. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.
Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, or any content facilitating harm to a real individual (doxxing, targeted harassment, unauthorized-access instructions).
Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.
Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals — or any deliberate attempt to use the repository to enable harm against a real person.
Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.
This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, with additional domain-specific standards developed for the OSINT and cybersecurity education context. Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by Mozilla's code of conduct enforcement ladder.
For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see the Contributor Covenant FAQ. Translations are available here.
Document version: 1.0 Maintained by: Jamba Academy OSINT Team