Finding Patient 0. When a mystery link reaches you — forwarded, reposted, dropped by an anonymous account — paste it here to reveal whose phone first pressed Share.
Original tool by @soxoj · Source: github.com/soxoj/sharetrace · This page is only a web wrapper — all OSINT logic, platform support and maintenance by soxoj. · Improved by Henk van Ess.
No friend around? Click a thumbnail. The share link behind it was generated by someone else — you'll see their name and avatar come back, not yours. That's the tool working as intended.
A share link is not a normal URL. It is a token baked into a URL the moment a specific person taps Share → Copy link. The token identifies that person — nobody else.
So three things follow, and this is where almost everyone gets confused:
To test the tool properly: ask a friend to open any Instagram reel or TikTok video in their app, tap Share → Copy link, and send you the result through WhatsApp/Signal/email. Paste their link here. You'll see their account, not yours.
Every time someone taps Share → Copy link inside an app, the platform quietly stitches a tracking token into the URL. The token is there so the platform can count shares — but it's also a fingerprint of the sharer.
When the link is forwarded — in WhatsApp groups, in tweets, in screenshots, in anonymous emails — the token comes along for the ride. The person in front of you may be hop #7, but the link still knows hop #1.
ShareTrace decodes those tokens — either by inspecting URL structure or by making a lightweight request to the platform — and returns user_id · username · display name · avatar. That's Patient 0.
ShareTrace only works on share tokens, not regular profile or post URLs. Here's exactly what to paste for each platform, and — just as important — what won't work.