How to use the "Sherlock" script to find usernames online

What is Sherlock?

Sherlock is a powerful command line tool written in python and used to find usernames across many social networks.

Installation

# clone the repo
$ git clone https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock.git

# change the working directory to sherlock
$ cd sherlock

# install the requirements
$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

After installing the above, you can run python3 sherlock.py from inside the /sherlock folder to see the below help menu.

$ python3 sherlock --help
usage: sherlock [-h] [--version] [--verbose] [--folderoutput FOLDEROUTPUT]
                [--output OUTPUT] [--tor] [--unique-tor] [--csv]
                [--site SITE_NAME] [--proxy PROXY_URL] [--json JSON_FILE]
                [--timeout TIMEOUT] [--print-all] [--print-found] [--no-color]
                [--browse] [--local] [--nsfw]
                USERNAMES [USERNAMES ...]

Sherlock: Find Usernames Across Social Networks (Version 0.14.2)

positional arguments:
  USERNAMES             One or more usernames to check with social networks.
                        Check similar usernames using {%} (replace to '_', '-', '.').

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             Display version information and dependencies.
  --verbose, -v, -d, --debug
                        Display extra debugging information and metrics.
  --folderoutput FOLDEROUTPUT, -fo FOLDEROUTPUT
                        If using multiple usernames, the output of the results will be
saved to this folder.
  --output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT
                        If using single username, the output of the result will be saved
                        to this file.
  --tor, -t             Make requests over Tor; increases runtime; requires Tor to be
                        installed and in system path.
  --unique-tor, -u      Make requests over Tor with new Tor circuit after each request;
                        increases runtime; requires Tor to be installed and in system
                        path.
  --csv                 Create Comma-Separated Values (CSV) File.
  --xlsx                Create the standard file for the modern Microsoft Excel
                        spreadsheet (xslx).
  --site SITE_NAME      Limit analysis to just the listed sites. Add multiple options to
                        specify more than one site.
  --proxy PROXY_URL, -p PROXY_URL
                        Make requests over a proxy. e.g. socks5://127.0.0.1:1080
  --json JSON_FILE, -j JSON_FILE
                        Load data from a JSON file or an online, valid, JSON file.
  --timeout TIMEOUT     Time (in seconds) to wait for response to requests (Default: 60)
  --print-all           Output sites where the username was not found.
  --print-found         Output sites where the username was found.
  --no-color            Don't color terminal output
  --browse, -b          Browse to all results on default browser.
  --local, -l           Force the use of the local data.json file.
  --nsfw                Include checking of NSFW sites from default list.

Scanning for Accounts

Before searching for accounts, you need to identify the username of the person you would like to search for. In sake of the tutorial, I will use the username that was used on their readme page: hackerman1337.

~/sherlock$ python3 sherlock hackerman1337

Result:

We will get a list of websites that have accounts under that username. It's important to note that many of these websites/accounts have nothing to do with the real person. Many times, people will use the same username as a person such as for a fan account. You can click on links from the results to be brought to the website that holds the account by that username. I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial -Mike