How to Find Long-Lost Family Members for Free
Losing contact with family members can be very troubling. People lose touch with relatives in many ways, through divorces, moves or even family feuds. Regardless of the reason, finding long-lost family members is not as impossible as you may think. Today we can access search engines, public record search engines, and the Social Security Death Index among other methods to help us reconnect with lost family members.
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Things You'll Need
- Internet search engine
- Public record search engine
- Social Security Death Index
Instructions
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Enter the family member's name into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. If the family member has his own website, this could give you a lead to his whereabouts. His name could even be on a group or company website with which he is affiliated.
Place quotation marks around your relative's name to maximize results. Use a deep-web search engine if the regular ones fail, such as PiPi.com. Deep-web search engines can comb through the deep-web, an Internet section filled with hidden content not accessible by standard search engines.
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Run the family member's name through a public record search engine, such as public-record-search-engine.com or peoplelookup.com. These engines contain millions of databases filled with people's personal records such as criminal offenses, DOB and financial records. The engines can also give you your relative's former and current addresses, making your search easier. Most of these websites charge a small fee.
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Post a query for your relative on a long-lost family bulletin board, such as yourfamily.com. Many times, people looking for lost family members turn to these boards, posting information about their lost relative in hopes the person will see it. Enter your family's name to see if your relative is searching for you as well.
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Use the Social Security Death Index if you believe your family member has died. Make sure you have his first and last name and his Social Security number. You will see his date of birth, death and residence he lived in prior to his passing. Access the index at ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com.
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References
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