There’s been a lot of discussion on this subject. I’m here to share my extensive experience with you on doing a people search using someone’s SSN (or social security number.)

First and foremost, trying to find someone by their SSN is the most accurate ‘people search’ you can do. Why?

Let me ask you one thing…

How many people own a similar Social Security Number? Now, how many people own a similar FULL name? It’s a fact that a thing like SSN is unique for one person only.

This makes it easy for you to evaluate various ‘finder services’. Just enter the SSN, see if results appear and you’re done. No need to filter through duplicate names and so on like you would do if you were trying to find a person by a first/last name.

Generally, when doing this type of SSN search, there are 2 types of searches you can do:

• Finding deceased people (provided for free by Ancestry) where you can enter only the person’s SSN and see his name/address/date of birth and death and so on.
• Finding living people (which is probably what you’re trying to do), where you also need to enter the person’s LAST or sometimes his full name.

There are generally 2 ways to do the second type of search (for living people).

1. Use reputable background check services (for a small fee)
2. If it’s something URGENT and you need to reach the person urgently, I highly recommend you read this webpage (from the Social Security Administration).

Warning: While searching, you might have found some pages recommending various paid services. There are lots of scams out there when it comes to this industry…trust me. So if you’re dealing with a particular public record or background check company, please read the above post on the reputable background check services and the criteria I’ve used to evaluate them.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. People Search by Social Security Number in 4 Steps

There are basically 2 ways to search for someone using their email address:

• Using ‘common sense’
• Using private data (which is not part of your ‘common sense’ )

If I could give you one advice on finding someone by email, it would be: Utilize EVERY possible SEARCH ENGINE available!

For a start, take a look at these people search engines (they’re all free) and you’ll see that a lot of them have a ‘reverse email’ option. Wink, Spock and Spokeo are just some of them to start with. If you have multiple email addresses then just open multiple copies of the webpage because none of them supports bulk search.

Here are some more tips:

• Start by entering the email address into every major search engine (Google, Bing and Yahoo)
• Use com.lullar.com (it’s the best free service of its kind) to search whether that email address has a social networking profile
• Take a look at the above link on people search engines and look for

Finding information on someone is a numbers game. You need to get started with as much data sources as possible and then go from there. I call it ‘creating opportunity’ or ‘generating opportunity’.

Warning: There are a lot of services that promise to offer ‘private listings’ of email addresses and help you find ‘any email address’…if you just pay them. So far, I don’t know of any ‘private’ database of emails. Those people are selling you the idea of unlimited information. They lie. So I don’t recommend paying for a service unless they tell you what you get upfront.

Feel free to look around this site for more information on finding people.

Related posts:

1. Search for People by Name – 4 Tips

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.

Search by address

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.

Related posts:

1. Is it Hard to Find Someone by Their Name Only?
2. How to Search for Someone Using Their Email Address

You’ll be amazed to find the amount of information some background check services can provide for free.

That information may include:

• associated names
• history of locations where the person lived
• list of relatives and their age

Let’s start.

Find Associated Names

This is especially useful if you’re looking for a female person. Why? If she’s married, you can find her maiden name this way.

Background check services that provide this feature for free:

• People Finders

• Melissa Data, example of search results:

Find Cities/States where the person lived

Most background check websites provide this feature for free. It helps in identifying whether the person you’re looking for is the ‘right one’ since you probably know at least one location where he or she lived.

They also use this as a teaser in order for you to get some more information which includes the exact addresses (this isn’t free, of course)

Background check services that provide this feature for free:

• All of the above
• US Search
• Intelius , example of search results:

Find a list of a person’s relatives and their age

Most services provide only the first thing. Some of them, however, also give out the relatives age too! Luckily, more and more background check websites follow this practice. This is a great thing for all, in my opinion. You can get more information for free and decide whether it is worth to invest into getting their full report. They get more business and more satisfied customers in return.

Background check services that provide this feature for free:

• People Finders, example of search results:

• Melissa Data

Most free people search engines aren’t 100% free. But, as you can see from the examples above, most paid people search engines are not 100% paid either.

*All pictures on the post are random screenshots from the websites presented above.

Related posts:

1. Best Background Check Services For 2009

Here are the ‘people search options’ of some amazing social networking websites. You can use them to locate friends online and also trace people (hopefully, for good purposes):

7. Tagged

Quick facts:

• Tagged currently has over 30 million users worldwide
• Most of its users are outside of US (and they love sharing many funny stuff like these top 10 lists by ElistMania.)

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search by name, user name and email address
• Think of what was your friend’s nickname and enter it there if you can’t find him via his real name or email
• Take a look at the advanced search options, you can also search by age there

6. Bebo

Quick facts:

• Most popular in Ireland, UK
• Over 40 million users
• They’ve been bought by AOL in 2008

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search for a user’s videos except for first and last name
• Write as much information as possible in the search box, they don’t have advanced search options

5. Hi5

Quick facts:

• Over 60 million active members
• Most popular in Latin America

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• Narrow your search results (age, country)
• You can search by email, just enter the email address there

4. Twitter (registration is required)

Quick facts:

• You need to be registered to access their ‘find people’ option
• One of the fastest growing websites
• 25 million users

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• They still don’t have advanced system for searching for people
• Most people use user names, so enter your friend’s nickname here

3. MySpace

Quick facts:

• Still one of the most popular social networking sites around
• Over 100 million users
• Owned by NewsCorp

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• They have very user friendly search engine, you can search by name, user name, email
• Search by last or first name only if your friend’s first/last name is rare
• Use the email search option, enter your friend’s email address there

2. Facebook

Quick facts:

• The most popular social networking site
• 350 million active users online
• Most likely, you can find most of your friends there

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search by email address
• Import your contact list so Facebook will see whether your friends have an account there (it will search by email)

1. Linkedin

Quick facts:

• Business-oriented social networking site
• Over 50 million users worldwide
• People post a lot career information there

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• Linkedin is a business-oriented website, so you can search by company, industry and so on. You need to register to do that, though
• In case your friend worked in a particular company, you can search by company, find the people that currently work there and ask them whether they know something about your friend

In this post, I would like to share with you my opinion on whether it is hard to find more information on someone (for the purposes of reconnecting with him or doing a background check) if you only know his name.

By name I mean the FULL NAME. If you know someone’s first or last name only, then it is almost impossible for you to find more information on him (except if his first or last name is VERY, VERY rare.)

Anyway, let’s get started.

There are over 6 billion people in this would. Thus, the chances of someone sharing the same full name with the person you’re looking for is pretty huge.

This pretty much summarizes my point. Let’s say you try and use the WhitePages to find someone’s address, for example. You enter his full name there and come up with 8 results.

8 results, 8 different addresses. Probably 8 different states. How are you going to know which is the right one?

Well, I would guess the reality is that you know at least SOMETHING more on the person you’re trying to locate. Maybe an anecdote of his past or a name of a relative.

If you don’t have another more precise criteria to search by (as an address for example, or maybe a phone number or an email address) then use a brute force approach.

Try to call all the numbers there and ask whether the person you’re trying to locate lives there by telling even minimal information you know about him.

This is a bit inefficient since you don’t know the nature of the person you’re talking with, so he might give you false information or be very reluctant to give you any information at all. You can further persuade him by telling him the reason WHY you’re asking. People are much willing to do something when you tell them a reason why you’re asking them to do that thing.

Is there an easier way?

Yes, and that is, finding more criteria to search by. The person’s old address might be a good start. Or his telephone number, email or social security number. You can search by those 4 criteria also. So you have a lot more options to search by except the person’s name.

How do you find that information? Have you considered talking to people you already know, who might know something about the person you’re trying to find or might know some other people who can tell you more information about the same person? Don’t underestimate the power of leveraging people to achieve your aim.

Before using a new resource (like the numerous people search sites that exist), try seeing whether you got the maximum out of the resources you already know about.

I will suppose you know at lest the full name of the person you’re trying to find more information about. Seriously, this is a MUST if you ever expect to have some results in locating someone by their name. A first or last name only can give you some leads, but often times that is not enough. Anyway, let’s start.

1. Use various people search engines

You have various types of people search sites. Some of them are free and can give you basic information (current address/phone) while the more advanced ones are not free, but cheap and provide more advanced information (history of addresses, relatives and so on.)

I highly recommend you use every type of people search engine available. That way you increase the chances you can find additional information from someone’s name only.

2. Before searching, familiarize yourself of what you can use

I’ve shared with you some people search engines above. The thing is, these can not only search by name, but by various other criteria. For example, you can search:

• by address
• by phone number
• by email address

Why would you want to know this if the only information you currently have is the person’s name?

First, are you sure? Can you eventually find more about someone than just his or her name? You can consult with people you assume should know more information about the person and ask them whether they know something more than the person’s name only.

Second, while you search, you can find even more ‘leads’ or additional information about that person like his old address or telephone number. This is where the real magic comes into place. This is where you can use the features I’ve outlined above so you can run a reverse address or reverse number check and can eventually find even more data!

So the more information you have, the bigger the chances are you can find even more information on someone!

3. Help boards

You have a tremendous number of boards where you can request help. Tell as much information as possible for the person you’re looking for.

This isn’t why I recommend posting on many boards, though. You will have some people trying to help you out and that’s totally fine. The real reason why posting on boards is great is because, that way, you increase the chances of the person contacting YOU instead.

How so? Well, let me ask you something. What was the last time you typed your name into a search engine like Google? Yes, we people perform so-called “ego searches” where we often search for our own name or nickname.

Now, get this: the person you’re trying to search for will probably do this type of search someday. When you post on a message board (open a new thread or post a new post, I recommend opening a new thread) the text you post is usually indexed into Google. So when that person types his or her name into Google, your result will appear! That way he can register on that board too and contact you (this happened many times for many people, believe me.)

If you post on multiple boards, you have better chances of your text appearing somewhere in the results when a person searches for himself. When you write, though, remember to vary the text. Do not copy/paste the same message in multiple boards. That is considered duplicate content and is not going to get you indexed multiple times by Google or other search engine. Vary the text (your “I need help” type of message) but leave the important details same (name, email, etc.)

4. Spell check

This is a short but very useful tip. Most sites do not provide spell checkers for names. So make sure you check whether the full name is correctly spelled (especially if it is a complex name.) One letter wrong and you can come up with 0 results, compared to 17, for example,  if you get the full name right.

Let me explain you something about the people search industry in general and how it works.

How the people search industry works

You’re looking for a friend you haven’t seen for ages. So you decide to either type his name into a search engine or start with typing different keywords into Google like ‘find people’, ‘people search’ and so on.

So you found a people search engine. Maybe it was a free engine or a paid one.

If you found a free engine, then you’ll usually see ‘limited results’ and in order to see the full results, you’ll need to either pay for them or pay for a specific subscription where you can access a database for a limited period of time.

Same thing for the paid engines. The only difference is that you usually don’t have ‘limited results’ here.

The point is, you’re paying for a limited access to a database. That’s the primary business model.

What is exactly a people search software

If you think that a people search software is an offline product where you are given a database of millions of information of people, you’re wrong as you can see from the information above. No company will give out their database in a software so you can access in whenever you want.

If you ever find a software claiming to do a people search, that software will always connect to a remote online database and retrieve the information for free or require you to pay for access.

So far, I’ve been researching and haven’t found any offline people search software and I think there’s no need for such thing at the moment when you have some excellent online resources.

How do I search for people then?

First, familiarize yourself with the different types of people search sites.

Then take a look at some free people search engines. Here’s a list.

There are 2 very powerful concepts you must know about if you want to search for and find old classmates. I’ve outlined them below.

1. Find your classmates directly (via online or offline methods)

More and more people come online. Your old classmate might be a member of some social network like Facebook or a member of another type of community.

So what can you do in order to locate him? Simple. Use Google or Yahoo and type his or her:

• Full name (in case the name is very common try entering the name AND the age together, or the name and the location)
• Username or nickname (if your classmate had a nickname unique to him then this is your best bet

You can also do more accurate search if you have some more confidential information of him like a social security number.

There are also some other types of people search sites you can use except Google and Yahoo.

2. Find your classmates indirectly

This is a harder method, but the long term benefits are huge. It involves contacting other people who might know something about your old school friend.

Let’s say you’re looking for a friend from high school. You can go and find the high school’s alumni website. Then find his generation and contact all the people there asking whether they know something about the person you’re trying to find and if they don’t, ask them whether they can tell you about someone that might know something.

This might take more time than using the first tip but, as I’ve mentioned, has bigger benefits in the long run.

So the tip is, basically, find anyone who you think knows something about your classmate and start asking.

Related posts:

1. Search for People by Name – 4 Tips

Are criminals really living in your neighborhood? There are some AMAZING sites that can help you find this out. I’ve done quite a research and made a list with a description. Almost 100% of the sites are free, by the way. Let’s get started.

1. Criminal Searches

Description: Most of these ‘neighborhood watchdog’ services search for only sexual offender. This is a different service. They search for thieves, violent offenders, murderers and con artists. Very, very powerful service. I would say they are maybe #1 in this field.

Example of search results:

2. Family Watchdog

Description: This is the official national sex offender registry. The most reliable service for checking for this type of offense. You can also subscribe to free alerts there, which I consider to be a very good option if you want to keep a close eye at what’s happening in your neighborhood.

Example of search results:

3. Crime Reports

Description: Great site to see what’s going on in your neighborhood in terms of criminal activity. You can then take this data and do further research by entering the incident into a search engine like Google News and so on. Overall, this is an excellent starting point for seeing criminal activity. They also offer an option to separate sexual offenders from all other types of criminals.

Example of search results:

4. Felon Spy

Description: You’ve probably noticed that all of the services above work for United States only. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any decent European criminal search engine (there are attempts to make progress in this area). Felon Spy is one of these websites that is currently searching only on US territory and also have efforts to expand in Europe too. Overall, it isn’t much different from the previous services except for this feature and that’s why I thought they are worth mentioning.

Example of search results:

5. Neighborhood Scout

Description: You have some really interesting statistics here about every neighborhood. What’s interesting is, you can compare two neighborhoods nationwide. They get their statistics from various government agencies and use some complex algorithms to give you really interesting data.

Example of search results:

If you find this article useful, feel free to give it a thumbs up. Also take a look at some other useful articles below.