Method
How an AetherOSINT Entity Brief is produced
The brief is assembled by the AetherOSINT engine and then reviewed, corrected where needed and signed by the analyst. This page sets out the sources, the identity rule, the grading scale and the disclosure rules, so you can judge the work before you buy it.
Sources
Only official public data feeds and the company's own published material. Each is queried through the access route its publisher provides for automated use.
| Source | What it is | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|
| National company registers | UK Companies House; NZ Companies Register (NZBN); Australian Business Register; US SEC EDGAR | Legal identity, officers, shareholders, status |
| GLEIF Global LEI Index | The global register of Legal Entity Identifiers | Verified legal entity records and parent–subsidiary links |
| Official sanctions lists | UN Security Council; US Treasury OFAC; UK FCDO; European Union | Name screening against current designations |
| Domain registries | RDAP and WHOIS; DNS; certificate transparency logs (crt.sh, SSLMate Cert Spotter) | Who registered the domain, when, and who runs its infrastructure |
| The company's own website | Its published identity statements and links | What the company claims about itself |
| Wikidata | The structured knowledge base behind Wikipedia | Official website, country and corporate links, used to find the right entity; never as proof |
| News indexes | GDELT global news index; Google News | Public reports of litigation, regulators and controversy |
The identity rule
Naming the wrong company is the error that costs a client most, so the engine asserts a legal entity only when independent evidence agrees:
- a national register entry whose name matches exactly (legal suffixes aside) and whose country does not contradict where the business records itself; or
- a Legal Entity Identifier recorded on the company's own reference entry that the global LEI index confirms, in the same country.
A website input is first traced to the organisation that records it as its official site. A name shared by several organisations, two equally good register matches, or a match in the wrong country is reported as unresolved, and the analyst confirms the entity directly before the brief is signed.
Grading
Every item carries a two-part grade on the Admiralty scale (NATO STANAG 2511): the letter rates the source, the number rates the information. A single official record is graded A2. It rises to A1 only when an independent source confirms it, for example a national register and the LEI index agreeing on the same entity.
| Source reliability | Information credibility | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Completely reliable | 1 | Confirmed by other sources |
| B | Usually reliable | 2 | Probably true |
| C | Fairly reliable | 3 | Possibly true |
| D | Not usually reliable | 4 | Doubtful |
| E | Unreliable | 5 | Improbable |
| F | Reliability cannot be judged | 6 | Truth cannot be judged |
Sanctions screening
The company's name and its resolved legal name are screened against the UN Security Council consolidated list, the US OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list, the UK Sanctions List (the only official UK list since 28 January 2026) and the EU consolidated financial sanctions list, including every alias each list publishes. Names are transliterated first (Cyrillic, Greek and accented Latin), so a name written in another script still meets its listed form.
Organisations on the lists are also checked for near-spellings (Jaro–Winkler similarity of at least 0.90 on words of five letters or more, with romanisation variants such as Qaeda/Qaida treated as one). The threshold was set by measurement on the published OFAC and UN lists: at 0.90, 2 of 106 ordinary company names drew a near-spelling alert, while about 93% of misspelt names of listed organisations were still caught. Near-spellings are not applied to individuals, ships or aircraft, whose names are personal names and ordinary words; exact matches cover them.
Every hit states its basis (exact, alias, or near-spelling with its score) and is a possible match for the analyst to check against the official entry, never an identification. A no-match is reported with the number of entries screened. This is public-list screening, not a licensed commercial screening service, and not a sanctions clearance.
Disclosure rules
Every record is classified on a five-level scale, from official organisational records (L0) to sensitive personal identifiers (L4). Client briefs carry L0 and L1, and contextual L2 items only where relevant. Personal identifiers such as dates of birth, home addresses and personal email addresses are not collected from registers and are withheld if encountered.
Limits
The brief speaks as at its search cut-off. Absence of information is not evidence of absence. Coverage depends on what each register publishes; where a register cannot be queried automatically, the brief says so. It is not a legal opinion, credit report or background check, and must not be used for decisions about any individual's employment, tenancy, credit or insurance.