In this article I’ll explore what criteria you can use in order to search for someone’s information.

Search by name

You can find the following information if you know at least the person’s full name:

* address
* email address
* phone number
* public records information

In my experience, this is the most common criteria by which people search. For a reason. Some are looking for a close relative, some for old friends, some to do a background check.

You can find the following information if you know at least a physical address:

* name of each person living on that address
* the land line phone number of each person living on that address

There are various reasons why someone would do a reverse address search.

Search by Phone

Also a very common type of search many people do. For what reasons? Prank calls mainly. And curiosity.

You can find the following information if you know at least a phone number:

* The name of the person who owns that phone number
* The address of the owner of the phone number

Search by email address

Who owns a particular email address? The number one reason people do this type of search: curiosity.

You can find the following information if you know at least an email address:

* A social networking profile belonging to a person who used that email address to register, you usually find a person’s full name there
* Address, phone (it’s very rarely to find this information just from an email address alone)

You know what’s the beautiful thing here? Let’s say you know a phone number and you find the full name of the owner. Once you did that, you can now search by name and eventually find his address.

Same thing if you search by email.

Knowing by what criteria you can search is very, very powerful because of this.

What about some tools to search? Check out this list of 25 free people search engines for a start.