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How to Track Down Anyone Online
Posted by Gina Trapani at 4:00 AM on December 4, 2007
When you're trying to find someone online, Google's not the only game in town. In the last two years, a handful of new people search engines have come onto the scene that offer better ways to pinpoint people info by name, handle, location, or place of employment. While there's still no killer, one-stop people search, there are more ways than ever to track down a long-lost friend, stalk an ex, or screen a potential date or employee. The next time you wonder, "What ever happened to so-and-so?" you've got a few power people search tools to turn to.
Note: Stalking is serious business. When we say 'stalk,' we're exaggerating, not recommending.
Find Phone Numbers and Addresses with ZabaSearch
Look up anyone's home address(es) and phone numbers at ZabaSearch, a creepily-comprehensive people search engine that will freak you out when you search on your own name but save your arse when you desperately need a former coworker's phone number. ZabaSearch's index includes listed and unlisted numbers and addresses (though the founders say all the info is public record.)
Search the "Deep Web" with Pipl
My favourite new search engine of the bunch, Pipl digs up information about a person Google often misses, supposedly by searching the "deep web" (or "invisible web.") Pipl returns an impressive number of results for most people who use their "real" names online, including personal web pages, press mentions, MySpace pages, and Amazon wishlists. You can also narrow your search for common names by entering city, state and country, too.
Search Several Social Sites at Once with Wink
So the person you're looking for likely has a Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, or Xanga account? Instead of searching each service individually, enter their full name or screen name, plus other identifying information like interests and location at Wink to do a one-hit comprehensive search of all those services at once.
Get Employment Results at ZoomInfo
Job-centric search engine ZoomInfo aggregates people and company information in one place to help candidates find the right job, but its people search tool also turns up information about corporate types especially well. ZoomInfo's information listings on people, culled from the web, include people's employment history and current job title, whether or not they're looking for a job. Search by a person's full name at ZoomInfo, and when you get too many results, filter them by geography (U.S. and Canada only.)
Find More than College Students at Facebook
Incessant notifications, Beacon, and zombies aside, one of Facebook's greatest utilities is finding people online, and it's not just for students anymore. Chances are your grandmother set up a Facebook account this year, so all those annoying emails might be worth tracking down your best friend when you were 9 years old who moved to Florida on Facebook.Practice Your Google-fu for Better People Results
Okay, fine, you can't talk finding people online without mentioning the big G. For internet superstars you'll get great results by just typing his/her name into Google's search box, but for civilians, common names or names with double meanings, a few advanced Google techniques can help narrow down the field of results.
- Enclose the first and last name of the person you're searching for in quotes when you enter it into the search box (like "John Smith").
- Include other relevant words, like the person's profession, employer, location, or screen name, too (like banker or Austin, Texas.)
- If the person you're searching for is likely to appear on a particular web site--like a school--search only that site using the site:URL operator (like site:ucla.edu "John Smith").
- To look up people by face, search for them on Google Images to get a quick visual--especially useful for people with common names, or to determine the gender of a name you never heard before.
Get Context-Menu Access to People Search Engines with the Who Is This Person? Firefox extension
Finally, if you run across folks online you want to know more about often, search a ton of engines for someone's name with the Who Is This Person? Firefox extension. Simply highlight the name on any web page and look 'em up on Wink, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google News, Technorati, Yahoo Person Search, Spock, WikiYou, ZoomInfo, IMDB, MySpace and other engines from the Who Is This Person? context menu item.
For more online sleuthing resources, check out Wendy's great tutorial on searching public records online. To make yourself more findable? Have a say in what Google says about you. Also, many of these services let you "claim" your name and add information to your results. Do a search for your own name and click the link that says, in effect, "Is this you?"
Does the current crop of people search engines make you want to change your name, fail you entirely, or help you get in touch? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes to find and be found. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Saturday on Lifehacker AU.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
niteworks
Posted May 19, 2008 12:49 AM
This is borderline scary how the internet has obliterated all forms of privacy for individuals. We can't remain anonymous even if we never elected for our profiles to be public.
skilled1
Posted 1:47 PM 3/12/07
just to let everyone know, they have your birth year listed from birthdatabase.com
skilled1
Dan
Posted 1:46 PM 3/12/07
No information on me from any of these search methods. I guess I'm being quiet enough to escape detection.
Dan
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor
Posted 1:37 PM 3/12/07
@phrakture: Worth repeating (see second graf of the post): "Stalking is serious business. When we say 'stalk,' we're exaggerating, not recommending."
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor
trumpetfalcon
Posted 1:25 PM 3/12/07
Aha - just goes to show how thoroughly I read every comment before me. I wasn't born in the US.
But aren't naturalization certificates public record? And I do have a US birth certificate, adoption and all that.
trumpetfalcon
phrakture
Posted 1:24 PM 3/12/07
Was anyone else frightened when this article came through their feed reader? It's like lifehacker giving you the "go-ahead" to stalk ex-girlfriends or something.
I, for one, am creepified.
phrakture
silenuswise
Posted 1:23 PM 3/12/07
@sethom: Yeah, same here, which makes me wonder if it's not phone company records Zaba has access to, since my current number is an unlisted cell number. I already have a driver's license in my new place, so I'm suspecting one of three things is preventing my recent info from showing up: 1) something has changed in public/private record-keeping over the past three years; 2) my number is unlisted; 3) Zaba doesn't have access to my current DMV info yet.
Sorry for the multiple posting, but this is like trying to figure out a half-interesting, half-disturbing puzzle.
silenuswise
mr_oshodi
Posted 1:18 PM 3/12/07
@sethom: it's a matter of time!!
mr_oshodi
jg6262
Posted 1:18 PM 3/12/07
Why do all these sites end up in the same place.................i.e. for $ 9.99 we can send you additional information that probably turns out to be useless anyways. Sorry if I am ranting.
jg6262
silenuswise
Posted 1:17 PM 3/12/07
@zouxou: Yes, I knew that you could find people's addresses and phone numbers through looking up their license plate information, though I never investigated to find out exactly how this is done. But I didn't know that you could also find year of birth (and perhaps more) through the DMV. So is Zaba's birth year info obtained from the DMV or from actual birth certificates? The latter possibility unsettles me more.
silenuswise
sethom
Posted 1:15 PM 3/12/07
All mine on Zabasearch are old. They don't have my recent number nor will they ever. muuuhahahahaha
sethom
silenuswise
Posted 1:13 PM 3/12/07
@NefariousNewt: Thanks for the info--I guess I never put it together that my birth certificate is a public record. So how could people obtain this information pre-Internet? Could anyone then (or now, for that matter) just walk into whatever public office contains my birth certificate (which, disconcertingly, I don't even know) and request to view it? That's a bit odd: my birthweight, time and date born, parents names, location, and even my footprint?
@trumpetfalcon: Wow, that's surprising, considering I've just spent the past hour looking up names of old friends I could never find on Google... and with a 100% success rate. Yikes.
silenuswise
mr_oshodi
Posted 1:08 PM 3/12/07
@trumpetfalcon - better to not exist than exist these days...lol information granularity is becoming a problem these days.
mr_oshodi
trumpetfalcon
Posted 1:05 PM 3/12/07
I'm not on Zabasearch - hidden blessing, or do I just not exist?
Hm....
trumpetfalcon
zouxou
Posted 1:03 PM 3/12/07
@silenuswise: You can thank the Department of Motor Vehicles. I'm surprised these sites don't list your height and weight.
zouxou
Woodwater
Posted 12:54 PM 3/12/07
@Al Iguana: I was just (half) kidding ;)
Woodwater
mr_oshodi
Posted 12:36 PM 3/12/07
@nefarious - she was so nervous that she e-mailed big brother G to remove the cached urls....maybe big billy too.. who knows...
@silenuswise - if you were born outside of U.S, that wont be a prob i think.
mr_oshodi
NefariousNewt
Posted 12:31 PM 3/12/07
@silenuswise: Your birth certificate lists your birth year and to the best of my recollection, those are public records. Assuming someone has corroborating information, it can't be too hard to track you back to your birth certificate.
NefariousNewt
Al Iguana
Posted 12:31 PM 3/12/07
@Woodwater: not at all. I know people I was in college with, and we've lost touch (this was before the internet). Not everyone (outside of the USA) is on Facebook.
Actually, another good source is Flickr. Type the person's name, or maybe their first name with their partners/friends first name. You'll have to wade through thousands of irrelevant pics, but I've found a few old friends via Flickr.
Al Iguana
NefariousNewt
Posted 12:30 PM 3/12/07
@mr_oshodi: That won't necessarily help her if there are archived versions of those profiles somewhere.
NefariousNewt
silenuswise
Posted 12:19 PM 3/12/07
Okay, here's a naive question: how the &%#*!$ does Zabasearch find my birth year? Public record, yes, I understand, but which one, and how? I had no idea my birth year was publicly accessible. Can anyone explain this? Disturbing.
silenuswise
mr_oshodi
Posted 12:14 PM 3/12/07
hehe ....my gf recently deleted all her social profiles cuz she was scared potential employers might find out about her before they even get to interview her. Oh well, lucky for me, I don't have social stuff...just normal search on me will yield projects, and papers I have written...thats about it.
These long list of people find will be useful for the employers ofcourse and to the active social community. Keep searching...
mr_oshodi
Woodwater
Posted 12:14 PM 3/12/07
Stalking (How to)
:D
Woodwater
tomanjeri
Posted 3:07 PM 3/12/07
I noticed all my info on Zabasearch was from bank loans and realtor information, just addresses and phone numbers though.
tomanjeri
NefariousNewt
Posted 3:06 PM 3/12/07
@silenuswise: When I think back on it, they don't even have to go to the expedient of going to some government office to find out. For a long time birth announcements were published regularly in local newspapers. If a newspaper has a web archive, then someone could just check birth announcements for the information.
NefariousNewt
ResearchZilla
Posted 2:44 PM 3/12/07
hmmm...just wrote a very long article for Competitive Intelligence Magazine about this very subject...it's online now on my blog if you'd like to read it...covers these resources along with about 20+ others...enjoy.
ResearchZilla
spookshow
Posted 2:19 PM 3/12/07
ha! nothing on me anywhere :D
spookshow
JessiesMind
Posted 3:47 PM 3/12/07
I found a lot of wrong information listed for me. They listed my former address with a phone number I've never seen. Another had my birthdate, my husband and his birthdate listed at an address a street over from the house I grew up in and moved out of years before my husband and I even met.
Good luck trying to get ahold of me, I guess. LOL
JessiesMind
rHughes
Posted 3:42 PM 3/12/07
Interesting... I found myself in Zabasearch. But, when I clicked on my name, it turns out that I currently live in 3 places in 2 different states, I've developed a criminal record, and, apparently, I'm dead. Wow.
rHughes
CWW
Posted 3:37 PM 3/12/07
OK, fess up: how many of you immediately went to try each of these methods with your own name?
(I'm totally guilty as charged.)
CWW
Koticat
Posted 3:37 PM 3/12/07
My unlisted phone number is there, too. So much for the privacy...
Koticat
codywalker
Posted 5:27 PM 3/12/07
www.polarrose.com is crazy. Find people based on their facial features. I can't wait for this to come out of beta
codywalker
Frapp
Posted 4:43 PM 3/12/07
I searched for myself and it turns out that I have a doppleganger with my mother's birthday living or lived in the same places that I do (have).
The 4 of 6 addresses listed for both me and my alternate are wrong.
There are apparently at least 5 other people on the planet with my name.
No wonder I can't get a job anywhere.
Frapp
Meg
Posted 4:36 PM 3/12/07
Innnteresting. I don't turn up very much - probably a benefit of not being a US citizen and being fairly careful about what I have used my real name for over the last ten years.
If you're a UK citizen, try 192.com, which searches the UK electoral roll - it's not fully accesible, they do charge for full details. I'm off to have words with them though as I specifically ticked the 'please remove me from the for sale version' box when I last updated my details on the ER and thus I should *not* be on the version they're using. Urgh.
Meg
Quine
Posted 4:26 PM 3/12/07
Didn't find myself on zaba, pipl, google, or facebook (except when i was logged in as myself, then i found myself pretty darn fast :P). Guess my internet anonymity has been a success!
Quine
Archnemesis_Goldenhair
Posted 6:07 PM 3/12/07
@sethom:
@mr_oshodi:
@silenuswise:
The only result for me was under my maiden name and 7 years old. That info is about 7 moves, not one a year even, a marriage, and yes, with utilities under my name.
So they aren't omnipotent. Even looking up some friends, who I am in touch with, they are only 50 % correct.
Archnemesis_Goldenhair
Joshua Timberman
Posted 6:48 PM 3/12/07
I actually found zabasearch very handy for searching on myself recently. I needed a residence address from a few years ago that I couldn't remember, and zaba had it.
Joshua Timberman
Chrisvol
Posted 7:23 PM 3/12/07
And Pipl is le'crashed!
"Sorry, we're very popular...
Due to an unusually large amount of traffic, our search service is currently unavailable.
Please be patient while we upgrade our capacity or bookmark our site and visit us later.
Thank you for visiting Pipl. "
Lifehacker fame strikes again.
Chrisvol
Scapegoat
Posted 8:43 PM 3/12/07
so. great guide on how to find someone. so the first thing anyone is going to try (maybe) is to search for themselves.
If there are way more results than they'd like to see; is there a how-to that can be created on removing an online presence?
Scapegoat
the_craigster
Posted 10:01 PM 3/12/07
@Scapegoat:
Now that would be some excellent knowledge to pass along, and I for one would be all over it.
However, I have to admit I found an old friend using these tools, who until today fell off the face of the earth.
the_craigster
ResearchZilla
Posted 9:57 PM 3/12/07
yes, all of these approaches have serious flaws - and the resources themselves are seriously flawed...not to mention that many carry fees and data expenses...again, if you want a review of these sites mentioned above along wiht a few dozen others, check out this article for CI Magazine - there were some interesting approaches, but in the end you are gonna have to work the phone if you really want some info...
ResearchZilla
RocktheDebit
Posted 12:19 AM 4/12/07
Ah, brings me back...
RocktheDebit
whiskey
Posted 12:53 AM 4/12/07
This is why my dog (which name is "whiskey") does all public stuff for me... It's like having a PR who barks and eats Purina.
whiskey
figpetus
Posted 1:46 AM 4/12/07
zaba search cannot find me, my wife ( different last name ), my mother ( different last name ), my grandmother ( different last name ), but it did find my mother-in-law. Either my family is off the grid or it sucks
figpetus
anairdA
Posted 6:26 AM 4/12/07
I wasn't on there. But, dang I don't think in this day and age having a helpful how to on stalking is a good thing.
anairdA
Major-General
Posted 7:09 AM 4/12/07
Some services. I still can't find the people I'm looking for. Hey, anyone know a PI around Franfurt, Germany?
Major-General
rlocone
Posted 12:18 AM 8/12/07
I recently did some searches. Peoplefinder has most of the info correct. However, it's only a 20 yr trace. Some of the info isn't correct. There are mismatches and other typos. You have to use multiple database from different sites and piece together the missing information. There are slightly different variations on each site.
rlocone