For Cold-case + missing-person investigators

Cold cases don't have time for procurement.

Cold-case work is mostly waiting — for a tip, a DNA hit, a new witness. The slow part is the periodic re-scan: has anything surfaced about this name, this nickname, this old phone number, this aged photo? Tracelight runs the re-scan for you on a schedule, surfaces what changed, and produces a citation-anchored summary your investigator can put in the file.

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Who this is for

Family-hired investigators on a missing-person case, journalists writing the long-form story, advocacy groups maintaining a cold-case docket, and PIs working as consultants to a defense or post-conviction team. We are NOT a law-enforcement procurement product — agencies with CJIS-bound workflows have to use platforms that have been through that compliance gauntlet. Tracelight is the civilian-tier equivalent for everyone else doing this work.

Family-hired PI maintaining a missing-person file
Cold-case journalist tracking a 10-year-old homicide
Wrongful-conviction nonprofit working a docket
Author / podcaster doing primary research on a real case

What's actually different about cold-case OSINT

Most OSINT tooling is built for the new case — fresh subject, recent data, fast turnaround. Cold cases have the opposite shape: the subject is years or decades old, the data is sparse, and what you actually need is to be told when ANYTHING changes. Tracelight's monitoring loop is built for this: schedule a quarterly re-scan, get an alert when a new breach mention, social profile, or news article surfaces — even if it's the only new signal in 18 months.

Aged-photo reverse search (where legally permissible)
Old-handle re-scan: usernames retire, but new accounts often reuse old ones
Long-tail breach corpus check: leaks released years after the original event still surface old contacts
Adverse-media re-poll in 8 languages — international cases benefit

What we explicitly will not claim

We do not place subjects at physical locations via Wi-Fi probe inference or device-telemetry purchase. That claim is being dismantled in U.S. courtrooms — the legal exposure for anyone publishing a report leaning on it is real. Tracelight's location signals are limited to: EXIF GPS on photos the subject themselves posted, last-known-region from public IP geolocation in breach exposure, and self-declared locations on social platforms. We tell you exactly what we did and didn't see.

What gets put in the file

Every Tracelight run produces a citation-anchored PDF that's hash-stamped on generation and exportable as a final document. The chain looks like this: a claim in the narrative ("subject's email surfaced in a 2019 breach corpus") points to an evidence row, which points to the raw API response that produced it, which is preserved in the workspace. If a tip comes in five years from now and someone asks where a finding came from, you can answer.

PDF report with content hash + generation timestamp
Per-claim citation to specific evidence row
Raw API responses preserved per workspace retention policy
Export the case as JSON for archival

Pricing

Cold-case work tends to be slow-burn. The Pro tier ($149/mo, 50 cases included) is right for an active caseload of 5–15 cases. The Starter tier ($49/mo, 5 cases) works for a single case under active monitoring + a couple of ad-hoc lookups per month. There's no LE-procurement vehicle; this is self-serve.

Recommended tier

Pro

$149/mo, 50 cases included, monitoring on every subject. Right for a working caseload of 5–15 cold cases.

See all pricing Start on Pro

Common objections

Will my report hold up in a wrongful-conviction filing?

Every claim cites the evidence row that produced it; every evidence row preserves the raw API response. Reports are hash-stamped at generation, exportable, and version-locked. That's the architecture Cybercheck didn't build, and it's the exact gap the NY / OH courts have been calling out. Standard caveat: defensibility-in-court depends on the methodology + the witness — Tracelight gives you the evidence chain; the rest is on you and your expert.

Can you do real-time location on a subject? Cybercheck claims to.

No. We don't do Wi-Fi probe inference or device-telemetry purchase, and we recommend you not buy from anyone who does. The Cybercheck variant of that claim is being dismantled in U.S. courtrooms right now (NY, OH). Our location signals are: EXIF GPS on photos the subject posted publicly, last-known-region from breach IP exposure, and self-declared social-media locations. We're explicit about what we did and didn't see.

I'm not law enforcement — can I still use this?

Yes. Tracelight is built for the civilian tier — PIs, journalists, family-hired investigators, advocacy nonprofits. LE-only procurement vehicles (CJIS-bound platforms) are a separate market.

What we don't do

Honest positioning matters more than feature-list maximalism. Here's what we're explicitly not, so you can rule us in or out faster:

We are not a law-enforcement tool. CJIS-bound agencies cannot procure this until we go through that compliance work — which we have not.
We do not place subjects at physical locations via Wi-Fi inference or device telemetry. We tell you exactly what location signals we did find.
We do not provide DNA / biometric / face-match data. Different legal regime, different vendors.