This chapter has gone through several ways by which a social engineer can collect information about a target, be it an individual or an organization. The chapter has broken down the information-gathering techniques into two categories—technical and non-technical.

This chapter has dug deep into the ways in which social engineers obtain information about their targets. One particular tool of importance is the Pipl website that has indexed almost half of the earth's population and is serving as a rich source of information for social engineers. We have looked at eight other technical information-gathering techniques that are mediated by technological tools and explained how the data collection occurs. We also visited the physical and rather traditional golden ways of collecting information about targets that are still useful today. Then we discussed five of them...