From time to time, people ask me for help finding out about someone they’ve met in the course of business. I’m no Sam Spade, but people seem to think that, because I’m pretty good at using computers, I ought to be pretty good at using one to dig up information. It’s certainly true that there are lots of ways to find information about people on the Internet. And, of course, the ability to find out information about people you meet (or who your daughter is dating) can come in handy. So here are a few tricks.
First of all, it’s a lot easier to locate information about someone named Grenewetzki than about someone named Smith, simply because there are a lot more of the latter to wade through in your searches. The more common a name, the more you’re going to have to work at distinguishing them from all the others.
Second, you may have to pay to find out what you want. There’s a lot of information available in public records, but not all of those records are available online. If someone goes to the trouble of collecting data and making it available on the Web, they’re usually expecting to be paid for it.
Third, the more you know about someone, the easier it is to find out other facts about them. And that’s where an amateur Internet detective should start, by jotting down as much as they know about the individual. Sometimes, a small piece of information like their (wife’s) maiden name, the town they grew up in or their favorite pastime may help. Small pieces of information can help confirm (or exclude) results or suggest places to look (like the list of their high school graduating class).
The obvious thing to do, of course, is to type a name into Google. But, for example, are you looking for Mike Duffy, Michael Duffy or Michael E. Duffy? The smart detective will try likely variations of whatever name they have. It can be useful to have a spouse’s name when searching, as you can search for pages containing “Bill,” “Hillary” and “Clinton.” And of course, a married woman may keep her maiden name and also use her married name. It’s so complicated!
What you’re most likely looking for is an address or a phone number. My go-to site for information like this is Anywho.com. It lets you search for a name or a number. The minimum amount of information required to do a name search is just a last name and a state. But searching for “Duffy” in “California” generates too many results. You can narrow the search by providing a city, ZIP code or a partial or complete first name. Searching for “M Duffy” in “California” generates a more reasonable, but still daunting, 167 results. To find me easily on Anywho.com, you have to know the city I live in or my ZIP code.
Of course, sometimes people list phones under their (or their spouse’s) maiden name. If you happen to know my wife’s last name and first initial, there are only 27 results to sort through.
On the other hand, you may have the “Christmas card” dilemma—you have someone’s phone number but not their address. Anywho.com can handle this problem using its “Reverse Lookup” feature. Unfortunately, if a person has chosen not to list their street address, you won’t get it from Anywho.com. Another problem: You can’t look up a cell phone number.
Never fear, though. Google can be of service. Just type the number into the Google search box. I prefer to format it as XXX YYY ZZZZ, because Google ignores punctuation. One problem with using Google is that it can be prevented from cataloging the contents of a website simply by placing a file named robots.txt on your website with the right information (that’s a topic for another column). In other words, not all information is in Google, and there are other places to look for address and phone data. One that seems to work well (and doesn’t ask you to pay for basic results) is Zabasearch.com, which turned up both current and outdated information for my name.
I’ve also used Google Maps “street view” to look up the address of someone whose home I visited (they were driving). All I knew was that it was in the vicinity of the Kabalah Center in Los Angeles. So, I looked up the Center’s address, and then used that information to visually walk to my friend’s house.
If you’re trying to find out if someone has a criminal record, you can do a free search at CriminalSearches.com. You can search with as little as a first and last name, but you can also refine your search with address information. The site’s advanced search lets you search for offenders in a particular age range or with a specific date of birth.
BirthDatabase.com was able to find my birthdate with my first and last name, plus my ZIP code and estimated age (I rounded to the nearest decade, and it still found me). Not entirely surprising, since my birthdate is on public records—but I didn’t expect it to turn up quite so easily.
Another useful site is NetROnline.com, which has a nice directory of online public records. It doesn’t give you the actual information, but points to online public record data sources. For example, if you look up California, and then Sonoma County, you will see links to the Sonoma County Assessor, Recorder and Treasurer/Tax Collector.
I’m out of space, and I haven’t even mentioned the use of Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn to find people. You may also be able to find information on a person’s high school or college alumni site, and sites like Classmates.com or Reunion.com. For more well-known people, searching the New York Times website can be useful as well.
If you’re more serious about finding out information about people, there are a lot of “net detective” services available. Problem is, many are scams, charging you for “unlimited seearches” without telling you that, to get the actual details, you’ll need to pay more. Reputable providers, like AutoTrackXP from ChoicePoint (a division of LexisNexis), are more expensive—but straightforward.
Happy sleuthing!
Just a reminder: Check out my posts on the new NorthBay biz blog, now available for your viewing pleasure in the left-hand menu at www.northbaybiz.com. Please drop by and leave a comment!
