Social engineering is not always criminal Some of the same tactics hackers use can give you an edge in business and marketing if you stay on the right side of the law From Social Engineering: Hacking Systems, Nations, and Societies here are 5 gray zone tactics worth knowing 1️⃣ OSINT mining of public data for competitive insights 2️⃣ Low stakes pretexting to learn process and pricing 3️⃣ Clickbait testing to find what triggers engagement 4️⃣ Job posting analysis to reverse engineer tech stacks 5️⃣ Narrative seeding in forums to watch sentiment shift The line between marketing research and manipulation is thin The key is intent and knowing where the legal boundary is Smart strategy or playing with fire