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Thursday, November 20, 2008

People Background Search - 10 Ways on How You Can be Your Own Private Investigator

Want to get your own investigation rolling but don't know where to start? You'll be surprised at the huge number of resources out there that will help you tremendously. Whether you're searching for a long lost friend or to do a background check on a suspicious individual, there are quite a number of things which you can get done on your own, and avoid those expensive to hire private investigators.

However, certain tools, methods or services which you may encounter could provide you with information in which some might say "an invasion of privacy". To certain extent it is, but it is definitely not if you abide by the proper set of ethical rules behind it. Everybody and anybody who is going into this must agree that the obtained information can only be used only for appropriate, legal purposes, and in compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations. Additionally and ideally, you should utilize any databases and information and NOT use them to bother, stalk, harass, threaten or embarrass any individual.

Readily available sercives with searchable databases usually disallow you to look up celebrities or other public persons, or to locate individuals under the age of 18. Being a responsible person, you should also not use any information obtained from any public record databases for telemarketing or direct mail purposes.

Having comprehend all of the above, you should start preparing yourself for the initial stages of your own personal investigation.

1) PREPARE YOURSELF
  • Examine and evaluate your motives.
  • Consider the feelings and the consequences of your actions.
  • Whether it's you, a private investigator or a genealogist, you need to ensure that the information that you disclosing will not be used to cause harm or distress to the person you're looking for.
  • Maintain a stable / strong emotional condition when choosing a time to start searching.
  • Discuss and mix your ideas / actions with your close friends or your love ones.
  • Prepare yourself in accepting the fact that your effort in searching might not be fruitful or in certain conditions might take a very long period of time and lots of patience and determination.
2) PREPARE THE INFORMATION
It's always a good habit to prepare yourself thoroughly before doing any searching. Depending on your preference you may use your computer to compile all the information you have or you could just simply write everything you need to be prepared on a piece of paper. Compile them, and organise them systematically, you'll be surprised how they would help you greatly throughout the process.

Do your homework or a "warmup" investigation yourself. Depending on the type of search that you're about to be involved in, interview or ask your family or friends or perhaps any particular group of people who you think could help you in certain way in providing initial information. Be prepared to receive negative feedbacks as some might view this as a total invasion of privacy and can be easily abused if not done correctly. Your approach in getting opinions and information should be as "unemotionally" as possible and should not be too intrusive into their personal space.

In any case that you've managed to obtain any piece of valuable information, make sure you verify it properly to ensure that you're going after or refering to an accurate group of data.
For example when getting names, make sure they are spelt correctly to avoid going on a wild goose chase. You don't want to waste your time chasing after a ghost or someone who is totally irrelevant to your search.
Some of the common information that you can write down are:-
  1. Full name? (Including middle name if there's one)
  2. Date of birth or approximate age?
  3. When was the last contact? Who made the last contact?
  4. Where were they living at the time? or last known address?
  5. Where did they or their family come from originally?
  6. Names, if known, of any family members?
  7. Where the person went to school or college.
  8. Any other information, such as their occupation and hobbies.
  9. And many more...
3) TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES
Grab hold of your good old phonebook and check it out. It might provide some if not a lot of information or in some cases, certain leading points which you may pursue further. Don't forget the availability of the numerous online phone directories out there as well.
Additional information
You may also find country / state specific telephone directories by searching it at Google or Yahoo!, e.g. "Florida telephone directories".

4) FREE PEOPLE SEARCH
Always take advantage of the various free people search services out there, especially on the web. Some portals or sites have an all rounded service for you where you can look on various pieces of information in one area. You need to be a bit careful of any site that offers free people search services. There are a lot of scams out there.
Free for some basic search functions, but you will need to pay if you need to use their advanced search feature.
Top Ten Free Public Records Search Picks
http://websearch.about.com/od/governmentpubliclegal/tp/publicrecords.htm

More sites
5) PAID SERVICES ONLINE
By paying a bit of money you can access some really useful information. Some services require a one time payment for a lifetime membership and unlimited searches. Some may charge based on the number of searches you make, and some may even charge you annually. Most of the "packages" come with discounts and attractive offers, so keep an eye on those, but don't get too excited and make an intelligent decision before taking out your credit card.
6) SEARCH ENGINES
A lot of us are under the impression that search engines are meant only for information based searches, but you'll be surprised that almost a third of searches done are people based. Popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com are some of the best engines that you want to explore further. Different search engines may have different parameters or ways on how you can maximize your results. A common one such as putting quotes (") before and after your search phrase or name usually gets the search engine to search the phrase as a while instead of searching each of the individual words separately. Quotes are most commonly used when searching by names, e.g. "James Bark" (with quotes) is much better than the normal James Bark. Other information that you may want to put in include the date of birth, postcode, church, school, golf club, address, etc.
To ease up your searching work, you might want to advantage of the various built in search engines available to most of the browsers to day. For example, the latest Firefox browser allows you to switch between the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Answers.com, etc.
7) SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
As a blooming Web 2.0 trend, social networking sites are growing and spreading at an unbelievably pace. Tens or even hundreds of millions of people might be registered in these places, which makes them a hot place for you to get your searches done.
For a full list of social networking sites:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

8) PHOTO SHARING SITES
This might sounds stupid for a few but as the net evolves things such as photo sharing sites jump on the bandwagon as well. Latest photo sharing sites such as Flickr.com, Photobucket.com, etc. allow organisation of albums and various images one might gather. Although searching for a specific person's picture directly would be almost impossible with little results, somehow you might find the person within somebody else's picture by accident. Based on some clues, you may find pictures or photos based on location or event, and by some luck and chance, you might get what you want.

Some popular photo sharing sites:-
Other sites:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_sharing#Online_photo_sharing_websites

9) BLOG SEARCHES
Blogging is the latest trend today. Who doesn't blog? Through blog search engines / directories, you may find postings from certain individuals that might lead to more information that you're searching for. Another great platform to start your searches.
Other blog search engines:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Blog_search_engines

10) FORUMS
It is worthwhile thinking about using these reunion sites and posting your details and those of the people you seek. It is more powerful than just hoping that they may by chance read the posts. The search engines will pick up the names and should anyone put them into Google or whatever up will come the posts.
Posted by John at 4:52 AM
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