How to Use the Internet to Locate People

By eHow Internet Editor

Rate: (8 Ratings)

Put the Internet to work to find your best friend from kindergarten, a long-lost relative or the roommate who skipped out without paying the phone bill.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Modems
Internet Access
Computers

Step1

The person you're looking for may have a personal home page. To find out, simply type the person's first and last names into a Web search engine and view the results.

Step2

If the person you're looking for is a college student, he or she may have an e-mail account through the school. Visit the school's Web site (usually in the form of www.schoolname.edu) and check the campus directory.

Step3

The person may have an e-mail account through his or her job. If you know where the person works, visit the company's Web site and use its directory. If the site has no directory, try sending an e-mail message to the person at firstname.lastname@company.com.

Step4

The person may use the same Internet service provider that you do. Try searching in your ISP's member directory.

Step5

If none of the above suggestions work, try an online directory Web site.

Tips & Warnings

Search services often turn up old addresses, if they turn up any-thing at all.
Some online search services find e-mail addresses, some find phone numbers and postal addresses, and some find both.

Comments

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 1. In addition to web search engines, you can type a person's name into a newsgroup search engine. This will return any postings they may have made to various newsgroups. You can get their email addresses from these.
2. There are classmate/alumni directories on the web. If you are looking for someone you went to school with, or if you just happen to know where someone attended school, these sites can be helpful.
3. If the person you're looking for was/is in the military, there are quite a few military locator sites that you can search. (Note: Since 9/11 any information on military personnel is extremely difficult to obtain.)
4. There are websites that specialize in missing persons and the homeless. You can search these sites. Also if the person you are looking for is a missing person and you have the case number and some other information, some of the missing persons sites have investigators that will help you for free.
5. If you know what someone does for a living, you can try searching professional directories. Many of these are online and free to search.
6. Many public records (marriage, divorce, birth, death, etc) are searchable online for free.

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 The only way I've found to locate people that have skipped is to pay the folks that have connections. I've been looking for another way to find my skips, even paid for detective programs (that only refered me to pay only sights). Only 555-1212 has helped.

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 I don't know how many countries do already offer this way of locating people through an electronic telephone book, but it works. For example, in Italy it is www.paginebianche.it - There, you can locate persons living in Italy.

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