How to Trace Someone

There are many reasons why you may want to trace someone. It might be an old friend, roommate, an ex, or a relative. You can trace someone many different ways, both on and off the Internet. Read on to find out more.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Internet access
• Phone Books

1. Look. The first thing you will want to do when trying to trace someone is to start simple and look in the yellow or white pages. Look through last names, married and maiden names, and any aliases that you may have on the person.
2. Use the Internet. Try tracing someone by using the Internet. If you have a home phone number of the person you are trying to find, you can do a reverse phone look-up on www.reversephonedirectory.com. Simply type in the phone number you have and you may find an address of the person it is listed to. This can also work for cell phone numbers, as well.
3. Use social networking sites to trace someone, such as MySpace or Facebook. Each website has a way to type in a person's real name and, if they have listed themselves under that name, you can find their page. This is a good method to use because you can usually see pictures of the person and personal information about them. However, if they have chosen to sign up using a different name, you may not find them.
4. Use Google or a different search engine to try and trace someone. Simply type in their name and hit search, and you may pull up information on them. This may include any articles they happened to be in, and police reports or accidents, or even simply an address.
5. Trace the address. If the person you are trying to trace has sent you an email, you can trace the IP address at www.whois.net. This may give you insight as to where they are emailing from.
6. Trace someone by going to your local public records office. These are usually located within your city's courthouse. For a fee, you can usually search information on a person including last known address, marriages and divorces, owned property, phone numbers and more.
7. Use the website www.abika.com to try and trace a person. This website gives you many options for finding forwarding addresses for people, utility bills, marriages and much more. Many services will require a fee, so be sure to remember that when you need to find someone.