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How to Find People Anywhere in USA
Locating People in the United States
People Search USA
There are several (if not hundreds) of
informational sources for finding people (Skips, Locates, etc)
There are primarily five categories of
information providers for finding people:
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Directories (White/Yellow Pages like
www.AnySearch.org and similar websites)
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Public Records (not the paid ones, but
the Governmental, State, County, and City websites)
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Social Sites (LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, Classmates, gene, etc.)
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Google, Yahoo, and other generic search
engines
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Paid Public Records Sites (like
www.peopleplacesmore.com
and
www.newait.com and similar websites)
1. Directories (White Pages/Yellow Pages) – These are compiled
and maintained by the phone companies and give you access to Names, Phone
Numbers and Addresses. Most of the searches (such as whitepages.com and
411.com) allow you to search by first name, last name, and city, state or
zip-code. This is probably your best place to start if all you have is a
name and you have an idea on where they may be living now.
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Pros: Free White Pages-type lookups |
Cons: Free White Pages-type lookups |
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Quick, easy and FREE! Available at your fingertips at
whitepages.com, 411.com and hundreds of other free white pages-type
sites |
White pages provide you with a phone number and an address for an
individual. They do not provide a Date of Birth, or other
identifying information, so you can never be sure who you have
looked up. |
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If you have a first name, last name and a city/state or zip, you
have a pretty good chance of finding phone numbers for an
individual. |
You can’t get unlisted phone numbers from a free white pages
lookup. You will have to use a paid service for this information. |
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Phones are typically updated quite frequently (usually at least once
a month), so you have a good chance of getting a current phone
number for an individual. |
Depending on the individual, data may be recent or very old. There
is usually no way to tell. |
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As an added bonus, you get a street address for the individual as
well. This can help validate that you have found the right person.
Often, you will get maps of the location as well. |
The longer a person has used the same phone number and address, the
better chances are that valid data will be returned. Do not expect
to find data on someone who moved recently (last week or even a few
months ago). |
As
rare as it is, providers such as
http://www.anysearch.org provide Dates of Birth so you have a much
better idea if the person you are searching for is the individual returned.
2. Public Records (Governmental, State, County, City, Court) websites
– Public Records are just that – Records kept by public entities (such as
those listed above) and hold various information on people. Data held by
these entities includes:
- Property data
- Business filings (corporations, LLC, Partnerships, Sole
Proprietorships, etc.),
- Criminal data, Marriages and Divorces,
- Professional Licenses (such as Doctors, Lawyers, contractors
(building, repair, etc.), FAA Pilots licenses, DEA licenses and the like.
There
are so many of these governmental websites it is impossible to list them all
here. Each governmental entity, each state, county, city and/or
municipality has their own website and each has different ways of searching
their data. In certain states, certain types of information are considered
public records, but in other states, they are not. For Example, Email
Addresses and SMS text messages are considered public records in Florida,
whereas, California has some of the toughest public records and privacy laws
in the country.
Data
returned from searches at any of these governmental websites is hit or
miss. You may get certain information (such as whether a person is licensed
to practice dentistry in a particular county, but you will not get that
dentist’s home address or phone number. Be prepared to be “Less than
Impressed” when searching these sites. But sometimes, these are the only
places to find relevant information on an individual.
3. Social Sites –Social Sites are the
“in-thing” nowadays. Sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others
have risen in membership exponentially over the past few years. These
social sites are a great way for business professionals and individuals to
find people and network with each other. With the advent of SmartPhones,
SMS, Email, and other newer technology, it is easier than ever to stay in
touch with friends, relatives and business associates. The advantages of
searching for people on social sites are that they inherently have a secure
private messaging system built-in. This allows a person to send a contact
request message to another member without spamming them. The recipient of a
message can either respond to it or ignore it. They can add you their
“Friend” list or they can block any future messages from you. This makes it
simple to build and retain a network of people. The good news is that most
business professionals have a profile setup on several social sites, so if
you are looking for someone, it is a good bet that they have a searchable
profile with a phone number in it. Try looking for someone on Twitter,
Facebook or LinkedIn. You may just find who you are looking for.
4. Google, Yahoo, etc. – These sources are just
“OK” for searching for information on a person. With Google and Yahoo you
can simply search for a person’s name in the search box. Although “OK” for
searching for a business, or a doctor or lawyer by name, they are not very
good at searching for everyday people. The problem is that they are so
generic that the data returned is many times unusable. This goes with the
paradigm of “Too Much Data is No Data.” Any person name search on Google or
Yahoo gives you thousands if not hundreds of thousands of results. Do you
have the time and patience to sift through all of these results?
5. Paid Public Records Websites - There are
literally hundreds of these websites.
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