Justin Seitz Profile picture
Bullshit Hunter @bullshithunting. Author of a couple of @nostarch hacking books. Formerly @Hunchly. Fiery ally. ADHD. He/Him.

May 27, 2021, 19 tweets

Alright this was a fun one from @giselilla who asked the following #OSINT and #journalism :

How can Hunchly be used by journalists during a breaking story to collaborate in Google Drive or Sheets because every newsroom has it?

Let me show you how I made the following:

Today we'll cover codeless (but not free) Hunchly data forwarding with @zapier This will demonstrate how a team of freelance journalists, or a newsroom could have a quick shared Google Spreadsheet of interesting URLs that team members are finding. Read on!

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Sign up for a Zapier.com account, you *will* need a premium account. Codeless does mean costless :) We'll cover some free alternatives another day, but then you gotta code.

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Start a new Zap and name it Hunchly Data Forwarder as shown:

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Search for "webhook" or click the webhook button. Click the "Webhooks by Zapier" in the search results.

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Set the Trigger Event to: Catch Hook and click Continue.

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Now you will see your webhook URL, this is where we will point Hunchly. So click the Copy button and open the Hunchly dashboard.

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First we will set up a couple of case information fields so that the Google sheet we are writing to will include journalist's names and email addresses. Click your Settings icon in Hunchly. In the Case Information section click Add and add two new case information fields.

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Now we are going to paste our Zapier webhook URL into Hunchly's settings in the Data Forwarding section:

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Go back to Zapier and click Continue. It will ask you to test your trigger.

I recommend disabling Hunchly automatic capture in the Chrome extension, and then Google or browse to a *new* page and right-click -> Capture. This should trigger sending a hook to Zapier.

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In Zapier click Test & Continue you should see your Hunchly page data showing up in Zapier. Neat right?

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Cool, now we just want to jam it into Google sheets. In your next Zap step, search for Google Sheets and select Action Event to be "Create Spreadsheet Row"

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(I just spent 10 secs clicking on a screenshot of the previous Tweet instead of Zapier itself. Just thought I would share that with you. *clears throat*)

Where was I....

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You have to authenticate your Google account, and select the Drive and Sheet that you want to use.

I recommend just creating new Google Sheet called JOURNALIST_TEMPLATE and have it with the columns: Date, URL, Title, Journalist, Email

Name the sheet URL History
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Back in Zapier make sure everything is configured as shown (yours may be slightly different but should largely look the same as mine). Click the Refresh Fields button and you should be presented with fields for your columns that we can map to our Hunchly data.

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Click each field (Date, URL, Title, Journalist, Email) and then you use the little search bar to find the corresponding information in the Hunchly data. Look at the following screenshots. Slap that Continue button.

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You're done! Click Turn on Zap.

You can now send your colleagues the following instructions:

1. The zapier webhook URL goes in the Hunchly data forwarder.

2. Create two new Case Information fields in Hunchly: Journalist and Email. Fill them in.

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3. Turn Hunchly auto-capture off. Otherwise you will swamp the Zap and your account will be maxed out until next month. You've been warned.

As all of you work on a story, your shared history and who logged it will show up in that sheet.

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*gasps for air*

Note that it is up to you, the gods of security and whatever accounts you have setup to ensure this shared sheet doesn't get abused :)

More to come with some of these fun little things you can do with Hunchly, data forwarding and some creatitivity. #OSINT <fin>

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