THINKPOL #1: INTERPOL, ghost data, Instagram next
Hi there,
This is the first THINKPOL newsletter: one email a month on what we find in the grey web, what we ship and where we will be. Here is everything since September.
On stage: INTERPOL, Vienna
At the 5th INTERPOL New Technologies Forum (29 to 30 September, around 100 law enforcement and government participants from 45 countries), I spoke on "Reddit as Criminal Infrastructure: Large-Scale Behavioral Intelligence for Law Enforcement".
5th INTERPOL New Technologies Forum, Vienna, 29 to 30 September 2026.
Where to find us next
- Bangkok, 29 October: INTERPOL IP Crime Conference, panel in Session 6, "Navigating the Online and Digital Battlefields: Innovative Technology for Effective Enforcement".
- Belgrade, 4 to 5 November: Digital Forensics Conference at Sava Centar, cybercrime investigations, AML/CFT and digital forensics.
If you are attending either, I would be glad to meet: pick a slot here. The full calendar is on our events page.
From the blog: what happens to deleted content
We tested, platform by platform, what can really be recovered once something is deleted, and what cannot.
- Deleted Telegram messages: gone for everyone on Telegram, but copies survive in public channels and groups.
- Deleted Discord messages: what the audit log shows, which logging bots work, and what gets you banned.
- Deleted Facebook posts: what Facebook keeps for 30 days, and what still exists when someone else deleted theirs.
- Deleted Instagram posts: your own come back for 30 days; someone else's do not come back at all.
Partners and recognition
- Fraud-as-a-Service on Reddit, our joint case study with Social Links: 16 platform-specific fraud guides sitting openly on Reddit, none of which looked suspicious on its own, and the three-operator network behind them reconstructed in a single session. Read the case study.
- Stanford SNAP now points researchers to THINKPOL as the alternative source for the Reddit data behind its GraphSAGE benchmark, since the original Pushshift dataset went offline.
- UserSearch released a "Reddit Search by THINKPOL" module inside its product.
Team
Our first OSINT analyst joins this month, to work on investigations like the ones above. We are delighted to be growing the team.
What we shipped
A new think-pol.com, live since 10 September.
think-pol.com
The THINKPOL workspace at app.think-pol.com: search the archive, deleted content included, open user and community profiles, and set up Streams that match terms on live traffic and deliver to an inbox or a webhook.
app.think-pol.com
Coming next: Instagram and Threads
Reddit is the archive today. We are working hard to bring Instagram and Threads into THINKPOL in the coming days, with the same approach: public content, searchable in one place.
If there is a platform, a case type or a question you would like us to dig into next month, just reply to this email: I read every answer.
For news between issues, follow THINKPOL on LinkedIn.
Best,
Mat
THINKPOL SAS, 59 rue de Ponthieu, Bureau 326, 75008 Paris, France. Privacy policy. Subscribe to the newsletter.