Author: EF1500
Niconico is like Japanese BiliBili, it is a video hosting platform where users can host videos, create communities and other various activities. Depending on the age of the profile/community, you can discover various information that is crucial to any investigation. However, it may be difficult to pick out information if you are new to OSINT or do not speak the language. This writeup aims to make it easier to find information about Niconico communities/users.
Information you can uncover from Niconico may include:
- Email Addresses
- Skype Usernames
- Friend Usernames/Communities
- Social Media Accounts
In order to implement this technique, you need the following:
- Deepl or Translator (Optional)
- Eyes
- A working brain
- A browser with access to the internet
Now that's out of the way, let's get you familiarized with the site a little.
To start off, Niconico community pages have the following URL structure:
com.nicovideo.jp/community/co1089826
Let's break it down
- com.nicovideo.jp is the subdomain for niconico communities
- co1089826 is the ID for the community, all Nicovideo community IDs start with co and are followed by a string of numbers.
In the previous section, you saw how "co1089826" related to a Niconico community. There are also other forms of links that you will see.
These are links to videos, and their URL structure is as follows
www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm26862082
Links to various users aren't typically seen, but they do show up sometimes.
Their URL structure is www.nicovideo.jp/user/18874531, where 18874531 is the ID of the user.
mylist links are links similar to Youtube Playlists, they contain a playlist of all the videos that the user has been featured in. From time to time, they will contain links to their other communities, and should be checked. Their URL structure is slightly different from the rest.
www.nicovideo.jp/user/18874531/mylist/22993832
- 18874531 is the ID of the user
- 22993832 is the ID of the list
The actual community page itself is what will contain most, if not all of the information that we are seeking.
The main box contains a "description" of the community may include contact information. Most Nicovideo pages will contain an email address with a different character in the place of the "@" symbol, I assume because of scrapers, but I'm not sure. It is what it is.
I'd highly reccomend opening all of the short links you see, as they will contain very valueable information from time to time.
Just from browsing around a user's Niconico profile, you have probably discovered multiple social handles at this point. However, for some individuals, these aren't their personal handles. We will have to rely on another method to find their personal handles, email and socials.
Fortunately, the wayback machine has very good coverage of Nicovideo, and 9 times out of 10 there is an archived copy avaliable for you to flip through.
Start at the oldest copy avaliable for the user in question. Do not worry if you do not see anything that pops out right off the bat. Sometimes it takes time, don't fret. Feel free to copy paste sections one at a time into your translator if something doesn't make sense. DO NOT Copy-Paste the whole thing at once. It will hinder the translation. Trust me.
You may see one or multiple community links that are presented to you in the main box of the page. You may also stumble across various personal details, these are great.
First make sure to document the links and then decipher if the community link belongs to a friend or themselves. I will leave this up to your discresion. Open up these links (and any other ones you think will be useful) in a new tab for later use. TIP: A common site in Japan is mixi, so keep an eye out for mixi links.
Second, document anything you feel that is important in the text. This could be personal details, email addresses, skype usernames, or other information.
Then, once you feel that you have everything, go to the next saved copy in the wayback machine. If nothing on the page changes, skip it and keep going until you find one with new content. Once you find one, repeat the same steps.
Once you feel that you have gathered everything from the saved copies, go to the tabs you opened up earlier. If the community link belongs to the same target in question, follow the same steps outlined above. If they are a friend or accquantance, then I reccomend the following:
The same pattern of repetition through saved copies applies, but narrow your search exclusively to Social Media/Personal Handles. Document as many as you can, and save them for later so you can search through them for mentions or pictures of your target later.
Once you feel that you have gathered sufficent information, compile your findings, and/or apply tools and techniques of choice to your findings.
- Search for the community id on Twitter (
#<community ID>). Users may have tweeted about the community using, and you can locate tweets about the community this way. The same applies for sm links. - Always put the emails through a skype checker, this can yield even more personal handles or usernames, and may even contain birthday information and a profile picture.
- If you don't find anything useful, don't worry. Not every Niconico user has communities, and out of the ones that do, some of them don't include very many details in their Niconico community pages. You may find it useful at that point to explore the community posts page if possible, but don't count on anything spectacular.
- Make do with what you have. You won't always stumble upon a gold mine of information, and in the cases you end up with less than you had hoped for, make use of what little information you have to the best of your ability, even if it's just writing down your findings.