Paper Trail by Signal & Shadow

About

Paper Trail is an OSINT pivot bar that adds seven investigative tools to the right-click menu. Highlight any text on any web page, right-click, choose Paper Trail, then choose a tool category and database. The search opens in a new tab and is logged locally for chain of custody.
The seven tools cover the public records investigators reach for most often:
WALLET WATCH pivots a crypto wallet address to Etherscan, Blockchair, Arkham Intelligence, and Chainabuse.
CORPORATE TRACER pivots a company name to OpenCorporates, SEC EDGAR, Companies House (UK), and ICIJ Offshore Leaks.
COURT RECORDS pivots a case name, party, or citation to CourtListener, Justia, BAILII (UK and Ireland), and EUR-Lex (EU case law).
CAMPAIGN FINANCE pivots a donor or organisation to FEC, OpenSecrets (donors), OpenSecrets (organisations), and the UK Electoral Commission.
PROCUREMENT SPY pivots a vendor or contract to USAspending, OpenTender (EU), TED (EU tenders), and Contracts Finder (UK).
TAIL AND VESSEL pivots an aircraft tail or vessel identifier to ADS-B Exchange (registration and ICAO hex), FlightAware, Planespotters, MarineTraffic, and VesselFinder.
SANCTIONS CHECK pivots a person or entity name to OpenSanctions (the global aggregator covering OFAC, UK, EU, UN and 100+ other lists, used by Bellingcat) and the UK Sanctions List published by the FCDO.
Twenty-eight pivots across twenty-six public databases in total. All accept the search through their public web interface; none require an API key for the search results page. Some have rate limits or offer additional data behind a free login (noted in the popup).
WORKFLOW FEATURES
Open all in tabs: every tool submenu starts with a chain-pivot item that opens the same selection across every database under that tool simultaneously. One right-click, four to six tabs, all logged together under a single session id and marked with a teal stripe in the popup.
Selection-type hints: a lightweight detector recognises common entity formats (Ethereum and Bitcoin wallets, US tail numbers, European registrations, ICAO hex codes, IMO numbers, court captions, citations). When you click a tool that matches the detector's guess, a small green dot appears next to the log entry. The detector errs on the side of silence, so ambiguous text produces no guess rather than a false positive.
Inline notes: every log entry carries an optional 500-character note, saved automatically as you type. Notes export with the log in CSV and JSON. The selection text, hash, and timestamp on each entry remain immutable so the chain of custody story stays sound.
WHY THIS MATTERS
A working investigation rarely sits on one source. A wallet address turns up in a court filing, the court filing names a company, the company turns up in a procurement record, the procurement record points to a tail number, the tail number flies to a port where a vessel is registered, and any of those entities might be on a sanctions list.
Paper Trail removes the friction of switching between databases. A right-click submenu replaces dozens of bookmarks. A logged audit trail replaces ad-hoc note-taking. The chain of evidence is reproducible.
PRIVACY POSTURE
Paper Trail makes no outbound network requests of its own. Every pivot is a normal browser navigation to the public database URL the user explicitly chose from the right-click menu, identical to typing the query into the database's search box manually. Searches are disclosures to the database operator, who sees the query, your IP address, your user agent, and the Referer header from the source page. The extension itself does nothing with this data. For sensitive investigations, consider using Paper Trail in conjunction with a VPN, Tor, or a dedicated browser profile.
The extension declares only four permissions: contextMenus, activeTab, storage, downloads. No host permissions. No content scripts. No remote code. No telemetry. No analytics. Source available on request and shipped with a static privacy audit script.
CHAIN OF CUSTODY
Each pivot is recorded locally with timestamp, source URL, source page title, the selected text, a 16-character SHA-256 prefix of the selection, the tool category, the pivot service, the target URL, the auto-detected entity type (if any), a bulk-pivot flag, and your optional note. The log holds 5,000 entries with oldest-evicted behaviour; the popup warns at 4,500 so you can export before any entries are lost.
Export the log as a self-contained zip bundle with log.csv (12 columns), log.json, manifest.json, README.txt, and a SHA256SUMS sidecar. The bundle is verifiable offline with the standard sha256sum tool. The export format is consistent with chain-of-custody documentation requirements in the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations.
PART OF THE SIGNAL & SHADOW SUITE
Paper Trail is part of a suite of practitioner OSINT tools by Signal & Shadow. The other tools handle complementary parts of the verification workflow.