About People Searching

Whether it's a loved one you've lost contact with or an old friend from high school, trying to locate someone you haven't kept in touch with can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes, in the case of a deadbeat dad or someone who owes you money, it may be imperative that you locate the person. The Internet and other technologies have made people searching easier, more affordable and more accurate.

Function

People searching is the process of finding people that you can't locate by simply pulling out a phone book. Anyone from banks to single mothers to used car dealers have and will use people search services. People searching can make it possible for debts to be collected, unpaid products to be repossessed, child support to be paid, families to reconnect, and more.

Significance

The costs of goods and services rise when people run up debt and do not pay for their purchases. By doing people searches, finding defaulted debtors and repossessing their goods, retailers are able to keep costs of their merchandise from skyrocketing for the rest of us. Additionally, the burden on the government lessens when deadbeat dads are found and their wages garnished in order to pay back child support.

Time Frame

People searches can take anywhere from weeks to months to complete. Some people are able to evade people searchers indefinitely. Since most people who disappear don't do so by changing their name, a vast majority of people searches using a service are completed within weeks (if not days) of starting. Some people searches can take just minutes thanks to Google.

Misconceptions

Film noir teaches us that people searches are done at night by Private I's in trench coats who approach underground mafioso to rat out the missing person. The real world of people searches, however, is much less glamorous. By using the Internet, newspapers, credit card and phone records, most people searchers are able to find the missing person without talking to "Jimmy the Fink."

Types

A people search can be as basic as a Google search, or can involve research completed by a professional people searching service. There are many services that advertise on Google. They sometimes use paid databases like LexisNexis and county court databases to locate people. Since many counties require you to pay in order to search for someone and since you may not know what county the missing person resides in, people searching services can be an economically savvy choice.

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Photo Credit

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[MarkRegan]

on 11/20/2008 I am a fugitive recovery investigator and also a skip tracer and process server. The best search tool, of course, is Google. Another free resource is SkipEase.com.

Most pay per lookup sources on the internet are rip-offs, except for the BEST one, which requires (and verifies) listing of information proving your legitimate need to know and who you are (attorney, collection agency, insurance company, bank, etc.) That source is Accurint.com, which is now a subsidiary of Lexis Nexis. There is NO better source, unless you are a government employee, and those inquiries have to be channeled via government computers.