Chans, chans, chans!

By Tim Farmer, Co-Host of The OSINT Output

So, you heard that you need to go and look up some information on a chan. The very first thing you might think of is, “I’ve heard that they just have info that is completely trollish, contains all pornographic content, or just doesn’t have any content of substance.” I’ve been looking at chans for a few years now, and I can tell you that you aren’t wrong! However, beneath all the drivel that is on the majority of chans, you can find information that will be valuable for an investigation, you just have to know the history, basics of a chan, and terminology.

CHAN HISTORY

The reason why chans started attracting users to post objectionable, conspiracy theories, and white supremacy content is mainly due to its anonymous nature. Any person can begin a thread or reply to one without ever having to create an account or register for the website. The most popular chan is 4chan. It was initially created as the English version of 2channel, a popular Japanese chan.

Below are a few notable events that can be traced back to 4chan. Either the initial discussion of the events occurred on 4chan or the event attracted a large following immediately leading up to the event or after the event. As you can see, initial and post exploitation of chans following major events can be crucial when attempting to bring together the pieces of a puzzle for an investigation.

The Fappening	Term used to describe a hack targeting celebrities’ iCloud accounts in 2014. The initial release of the photos occurred on 4chan, which mainly included nude images of the hacked celebrities and their peers, friends, and partners.
Gamergate	A misogynistic, online movement targeting female video game executives, programmers, content creators, and others in 2014. Users on 4chan posted demeaning content disparaging feminine involvement in the video game industry.
Pizzagate	Preceding the 2016 Presidential election, many users on 4chan and other right-wing forums began the conspiracy that several senior Democratic party officials in the United States trafficked children for sexual abuse at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
Christchurch Mosque Shootings	Two consecutive terrorist mass shootings took place in Christchurch, New Zealand at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and almost immediately afterwards at the Linwood Islamic Centre in March 2019. The perpetrator frequented right-wing discussion boards on 4chan.
January 6th Riots	Many users flocked to 4chan and other right-wing forums prior to January 6, 2021 to discuss the possibility of fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. The discussions ultimately led to an assault on the United States’ Capitol Building.
Buffalo, New York Mass Shooting	An individual murdered 10 people and injured three others at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY. The perpetrator stated he regularly perused the Politically Incorrect board on 4chan.

TERMINOLOGY

First, let’s just begin with some basic words and phrases that you might hear on a chan. Here’s a helpful table of some words and their definition. Most are pretty straightforward, others you may have not heard at all!

Administrator	User(s) in control of the website.
Anon	Short for anonymous. Most users refer to themselves and others as anon when replying or posting on a thread.
Bump	A reply on a thread that brings it to the top of the board. Selected by default but can be turned off.
Catalog	Option to organize all threads by the original post.
Glowie	Used to describe a person acting on behalf of a government.
Janitor	A level between a user and a moderator. Has some rights and privileges on certain boards to ban users and alter content.
Moderator	User that has escalated privileges on multiple boards or the entire website to issue bans, delete content, or archive threads.
OP	Original poster
Pruning	The automatic or manual deletion of threads.
NSFW	Not Safe For Work
Sage	The opposite of bump by not bringing the reply to the top of the thread.
Trip Code	An optional string of characters used for identification on some bulletin boards. Can be used to uniquely identify a user and track content on a board over time.

POPULAR BOARDS ON A CHAN

The basics of a chan is that they are basically online bulletin boards where an individual can post an image, and then other people can post replies in a thread to that image and the caption. Each board is dedicated to a specific topic. Each board has its own abbreviation that begins with a forward slash “/”. There are boards that are common across all chans, below are just a few.

International \| /int	Usually a board underneath the /pol board as its own thread or its own board within the chan.
Politically Incorrect \| /pol	Board dedicated mostly to major international events and political figures.
Random \| /b	As the name suggests, completely arbitrary content; however, some content can be valuable for investigations.
Weapons \| /k	Mainly discussion of firearms and other related content; users routinely share schematics, policy, and hobby building.

CULTURE

The culture on a chan is almost completely counter to popular culture and is not politically correct at all. I’ve definitely gotten some weird looks when I have any chan up at work and people happen to peek at my computer. It’s always best to inform those around you that you may be viewing content that is objectionable. One thing that is almost universally true for authorized user agreements on computer systems is accessing content that contains nudity or other similar content is completely disallowed for certain organizations. Always check with your supervisor if you wish to check out these types of websites as they may be completely banned by your IT URL listing rules.

One reason to visit chans daily is due to the fact that content is DELETED DAILY! This is known as pruning. There are no universal backups of each chan. There are companies and databases out there (such as the Wayback Machine) that can generate a snapshot of content at a specific time, but those can never be depended upon when needed.

Almost all interactions on every board on a chan contain trollish, inciting, or demeaning replies or initial postings. This unique interaction between users on the website typically causes casual visitors to dismiss conversations occurring on the site. However, this regular dismissal results in many investigators almost certainly not managing to effectively exploit content on chans. Remember to always follow the information where it leads!

Image of 4chan captured on January 2, 2026

POPULAR CHANS

4chan is easily the most frequented and well-known chan. There are other ones as well! The one that has attracted the most attention especially following the Qanon movement is 8kun. 8kun began attracting users from other chans and right-wing forums following increased scrutiny and moderation.

8kun.top

Image of 8kun captured on January 2, 2026

4plebs attempts to archive popular boards on 4chan. It can be extremely beneficial if you need deleted content from 4chan.

4plebs

Image of 4plebs captured on January 2, 2026

BUNKER CHANS

What happens when popular chans go offline or begin disallowing certain content to appear on the site? Well, that’s where bunker chans come in to play. Bunker chans are less trafficked chans that contain similar boards but have less moderation for users to post content. Below are a few “popular” bunker chans that are regularly updated with content and online. Note: Some require the use of Tor networking, for more info on that, check out our blog on Tor!

Endchan (onion link)