Find out whether a public username exists on a site — and see exactly why the answer is what it is.
Runs on your own machine by default. No account, no sign-in, and no data sent anywhere.
Early release · 10 sites · unsigned builds · read the limits first
Most username checkers give you a checkmark. SocialName shows the measurement behind it, so you can judge whether to trust the answer.
Every result carries an evidence class. The strongest,
E4, means the site's own structured response named
the exact identifier. The weakest states plainly that nothing
about the account was learned.
A timeout, a rate limit, a CAPTCHA, or a login wall is reported as an inconclusive measurement. It is never quietly turned into "this account does not exist".
Each result records the exact rule that produced it, when the observation was taken, and when it expires. The same rule and the same response give the same verdict.
The desktop application and CLI probe directly from your machine
with synchronization set to never. Nothing is
uploaded, and there is no account to create.
$ socialname search octocat --site github --allow-disabled
github status=complete source=local_probe sync=never
observation Found E4StructuredIdentity
observed=2026-07-28T06:49:17Z expires=+24h
profile https://github.com/octocat
Real output from this build. E4StructuredIdentity means
GitHub's own structured response named that exact account, which is
the strongest evidence the engine recognises.
Ten representative sites, chosen to cover different response shapes rather than to inflate a count.
Windows, macOS, and Linux. Search from a window; no terminal.
Verify your download against SHA256SUMS.txt in the
same release before installing.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yhay81/socialname/main/scripts/install-cli.sh | shVerifies the checksum before installing and needs no administrator rights. Read the script first — that advice applies to every installer of this shape.
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yhay81/socialname/main/scripts/install-cli.ps1 | iex
Installs under %LOCALAPPDATA%\SocialName for the
current user only.
Scheduled watches, change history, and team review are built into the server software and will be offered as one operated service, so evidence and rule health accumulate in a single trustworthy place.
There is no hosted service yet, and self-hosting is deliberately not offered as a product.
Full instructions, checksum verification, and the operating-system warnings are in the installation guide.
These limits are real. They are listed here rather than discovered after you install.
Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper will warn, because the project holds no code-signing certificate and no Apple notarization identity. The installation guide documents the exact warnings and how to proceed after checking the checksum.
No rule has yet passed the project's live validation gate, so the
CLI requires an explicit --allow-disabled flag before
it will probe. Results are real measurements; their long-term
reliability across regions has not been proven.
Continuous monitoring, notifications, and the developer API exist in the codebase but run only where you deploy them. There is no sign-up, and nothing is operated for you.
The same username on two sites is not evidence that one person owns both. SocialName reports presence, never attribution, and it will not bypass a login wall, a CAPTCHA, or an access control.