Tenant referencing with AI OSINT
Catch the fake identities and stolen references that traditional tenant referencing misses. Just an email address — a report in around fifteen minutes.
What standard referencing misses
Credit, employment, and previous-landlord references answer narrow questions. They don't surface who the person actually is online.
Fraudulent applications using stolen ID, fabricated employment, and forged references. Traditional referencing validates the paperwork — not the person.
Previous evictions, disputes, or dissolved companies that don't surface in a credit file but are visible in public record and digital footprint.
Applicant claims that don't match their social footprint — declared employer versus LinkedIn, declared location versus Instagram, declared family status.
Guarantors with undisclosed financial exposure, dissolved companies, or a relationship to the tenant that isn't what was declared.
What BLACKEYES surfaces for letting teams
Tenant referencing through Homelet, Goodlord, Canopy, NRLA, Vouch and others answers a specific set of questions: can they pay, have they paid before, do their employer and previous landlord say they’re fine. Those answers are necessary — but they don’t tell you whether the applicant is actually the person on the paperwork. That’s the gap BLACKEYES fills. From an applicant’s email address, the platform returns a fifteen-minute digital-identity check: breach-record exposure, social-consistency cross-references, account graph, Companies House history, and residency indicators. Run it alongside your existing referencing on any let where identity verification matters.
Breach-Record Exposure
Historical breach records tied to the applicant's email. A strong signal for stolen-identity fraud — documentation can be fabricated but a decade of digital history usually cannot.
Social Consistency Check
Cross-references declared employer, location, and lifestyle against the applicant's own public profiles. Contradictions show up fast — and are hard to argue with.
Identity & Account Graph
One email can fan out into dozens of accounts, aliases, and forum handles. The pipeline builds the full graph — and highlights where reality diverges from the tenancy application.
Companies House History
Officer history, dissolved company records, adverse filings. Particularly relevant where the applicant's affordability depends on self-employment or business interests.
Historical Residency
Where has this applicant actually lived? Breach metadata, location tags, and historical online signals often tell a different story from a three-year tenancy history.
Landlord-Ready Dossier
An eleven-section report structured for tenancy file notes, deposit-dispute submissions, and portfolio-wide consistency. Every finding references its source.
Designed to work with your existing referencing
BLACKEYES is not a credit-reference agency. It complements your existing stack with a dimension traditional referencing doesn't cover — the applicant's digital identity and public-record history.
- — Credit reference checks
- — Employment verification
- — Previous landlord references
- — Right to Rent documentation
- — Affordability assessment
- — Optional rent-guarantee insurance
- Identity verification through digital footprint
- Dark-web breach exposure (3.8B+ records)
- Social media presence and consistency
- Alias and username mapping
- Corporate directorships and adverse filings
- Historical and current location signals
When to run a deep check
High-value lets
Prime central properties, HMO portfolios, corporate lets — where one bad tenant is a five-figure loss.
Flagged applicants
Where referencing has returned a partial pass, thin history, or red flag — dig deeper before committing.
International tenants
Where UK credit-reference data is sparse and traditional referencing struggles to verify background.
Guarantor verification
Confirm guarantor identity, financial exposure, and relationship to applicant before relying on the guarantee.
From £4.99 per applicant — £3 at volume
Starter packs for small portfolios. Agency pack at £299.95 for 100 credits — cost-justified against a single avoided bad tenant. Monthly subscriptions for high-volume letting operations.
Questions letting teams ask
Does BLACKEYES replace traditional tenant referencing?
No. Tenant referencing through providers like Homelet, NRLA, Goodlord, OpenRent, Canopy, and others remains essential — they verify credit, employment, and previous-landlord references. BLACKEYES adds a different dimension: identity verification, digital consistency, and breach-exposure context. The two are designed to work together.
Is this compatible with Right to Rent checks?
BLACKEYES does not issue Right to Rent documents — those remain your statutory responsibility via the Home Office's prescribed checks. BLACKEYES can, however, surface identity-fraud signals before you rely on submitted documentation, reducing the risk of fraudulent applications slipping through at the Right to Rent stage.
Is applicant consent required?
The answer depends on your lawful basis — a decision for you as Data Controller. Letting agents commonly rely on legitimate interest and disclose digital screening in the tenancy privacy notice. BLACKEYES does not advise on your lawful basis. We only confirm that the underlying data is drawn from public sources and historical breaches already in public circulation.
How reliable are the findings?
Findings are source-cited so you can trace every claim to its origin. The pipeline mixes API-driven lookups (Companies House, phone intelligence, breach databases) with AI analysis of social and digital signals. Multi-stage verification and Skeptic gating reduce errors, but AI can still misread ambiguous signals and third-party data can be out of date. Verify any material finding before refusing or approving a tenancy on the strength of it. BLACKEYES is not liable for third-party data accuracy or for tenancy decisions.
What does a tenancy investigation cost?
From £4.99 per check on a starter pack. £3 per check on the Agency pack (100 credits). Letting agents with repeat volume typically move to a monthly subscription — see full pricing. Most lettings operations cost-justify this as insurance against a single bad tenant.
How long does a report take?
Typically around 15 minutes from email submission to completed report. Multiple applicants can be checked in parallel.
Run your first tenancy check
One email. Around fifteen minutes. A full digital-identity report before you hand over the keys.
Reports are tools, not conclusive judgements — verify material findings before reliance. See the FAQ