MyRecon vs WhatsMyName

What WhatsMyName is

WhatsMyName is a community-maintained dataset of more than 700 websites, started in 2015 by Micah Hoffman (WebBreacher) specifically to deal with false positives in existing username checkers. Each site entry describes how to tell a real account from a missing one: an expected status code and a string that should appear when the account exists, and a separate code and string that indicate it does not. The data is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 and is used by a long list of other OSINT tools. The public front end at whatsmyname.app lets you run a search in the browser, filter by category and export to CSV.

Two answers to the same problem

The false-positive problem is simple to state. Many sites answer "200 OK" whether or not a profile exists, or show a login wall, or redirect every unknown name to the homepage. A checker that reads only the status code will report accounts that are not there.

WhatsMyName's answer is a stricter rule per site: a hit needs the right code and the right text, and the dataset also records what "missing" looks like. That is a real improvement over status-only detection, and it is why the dataset is so widely reused.

MyRecon's answer is to score rather than match. Status, page content, profile metadata such as an avatar or display name, and redirect behaviour are combined into a score, and the match is labelled high, medium or low. Anything that answered but did not clear the bar is listed in a "not confirmed" panel with its status code and the reason. The trade-off is honest: rules are transparent and easy to audit per site; scoring is more forgiving of small page changes and tells you how sure it is. Our Android app adds a third layer, requesting an impossible control handle on every platform so a site that answers both alike cannot produce a match.

Where WhatsMyName beats MyRecon

• Coverage. 700+ sites to our 123 on the web.
• A shared, open dataset. It improves every tool that consumes it. Our platform list serves our own tools.
• Transparent per-site rules. You can read exactly why a site reported a hit. That is excellent for training and for auditing a result in a report.
• Category filtering. Useful when you only care about, say, gaming or developer platforms.

Where MyRecon beats WhatsMyName

• It does not stop at the username. Email intelligence, breach exposure, RDAP registration data, DNS records, IP ownership, SPF and DMARC verdicts, and a k-anonymity password check, all on one page with one-click pivots between them.
• Graded confidence. A medium match is still shown, and labelled, instead of being a silent miss because one string changed on the site.
• Visible rejects. You see which platforms were reachable but inconclusive, so "not found" and "could not tell" are never the same thing.
• Profile enrichment. Avatars and bios on confirmed matches help you judge at a glance whether two accounts are the same person.

Which one should you use?

For a pure username sweep with the widest reach, use WhatsMyName, and read its results with the same care you would give any checker. For an investigation that will move from a handle to an email, a domain or an IP, or when you want each match graded, use MyRecon. Accounts that show up in both are the ones to trust first.

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