US federal government statistics that show people’s increasing dependence on cell phones for daily communication at the expense of traditional landline phones were released Wednesday.

* 30% of US households either use cell phones exclusively for their daily communication or rarely use their landline for calls.

* In the last half of 2007, 16% of US homes only used cell phones for calls and 13% had landlines in addition to cell phones but used their cells all of the time or nearly all of the time.

* The total number of cell-phone-only houses grew by 2% since the first half of 2007. Highlighting the rapid growth rate in cell phone useage, in early 2004 only 5% of US homes had only cell phones.

* Homes with cell phones who rarely if ever use their landlines grew by 1% during the second half of 2007.

* These households often either have their landline connected exclusively to a PC for internet access or rely so heavily on their cell phones that they ignore landline phone calls since they are more than likely unwanted sales calls.

* Low-income people are more likely than wealthier people to have only cell phones.

* People with only cell phones tend to be living with unrelated roommates, they tend to be renters, and blacks and Hispanics rather than whites.

* Approximately 33% of people under the age 30 have only cell phones.

* People with both cell and landline phone numbers who rarely or never get calls on their landline phones tend to be better educated and higher income individuals.

* Approximately 2% of US homes report having no telephones.

The Interview Survey, involved person-to-person interviews with people in 13,083 households and was conducted from July through December of 2007.

Source: Wired.com

Google isn’t the only tool in town when it comes to digging up background information on other people.

Niche and specialized search engines are making it easier to do background checks on people.

Using specialty web search sites, people are finding out previously unknown information about coworkers, friends and family as well as complete strangers that doesn’t typically turn up on a normal search engine query. These specialty search engines typically bring together existing public records and make them easier to search.

ZabaSearch.com collects public records like criminal records, directory assistance information and birthdates.

Spock.com and Wink.com are two free people search engines that specialize in finding people’s personal pages on social networking sites.

Spokeo.com is a search engine that allows people to find out what their friends are doing on other websites.

Zillow.com shows the estimated value of people’s houses.

The Huffington Post Fundrace tool tracks people’s campaign contributions.

Jigsaw.com allows people to share business cards they’ve collected – a virtual social network for Rolodex information.

People have found dirt on their loved ones without even explicitly searching for it.

Doug Orlyk, from Bensenville, Ill., recently did a search on ZabaSearch.com to find the listing for his boyfriend’s address so that he could mail a card to him. What he found out instead was that the boyfriend had lied about his real age. It turned out that he was 43 years old, not 35 as he had claimed. “I thought, ‘You’re a liar! You’re older than I am!,’” Orlyk said. The relationship ended soon after.

Art Feagles, a tech professional at the Cate High School, a private school in Carpinteria, California, operates the computer system for the school’s alumni office. But his colleagues, who do fundraising for the school, keep asking him for another skill: researching potential donors on the internet.

In 2007 Mr. Feagles wanted to find out more about a potential donor by using the person’s address. So he used Google Earth’s aerial mapping tool to search for it and saw that the address was for a golf-course condominium. This information led him to believe that this was probably a second home, and therefore the person must be wealthy enough to make a good potential donor for the school.

Ray Chen, a cofounder of Spokeo.com, says he and his company don’t want to make it easier to stalk people. He says, “we’re just trying to make something that’s fun to use.”

Most people search sleuths start out by registering for a free account on one of the major social networks like Facebook.com or MySpace.com.

For people who find themselves targeted by nosey people, the bad news is: There is no guaranteed way to protect yourself from embarrassing personal information leaks.

However. you can avoid some trouble by going to the source of the leak. By keeping pieces of personal data from being made public in the first place. If you don’t want people to find your address online, make sure to keep your phone number and address unlisted.

If you don’t want people to find your Amazon wish list, Facebook or MySpace profiles or the pictures you have on Flickr, make sure to adjust your privacy settings on those sites accordingly.

Source: MarketWatch.com

According to a news report from the Times Online there is a new Facebook application that uses positioning technology to pinpoint a person’s location using information retrieved from cell phone communications.

The Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (SNIFF for short) is a software tool that can be used through Facebook or a cell phone to find the location of a friend or family member.

A US company called Useful Networks developed the Sniff application has said that only people who give their permission can be electronically traced by the service. The Sniff software can operate across all cell phone service providers. Sniff users can specify which people can and can not track them, or whether they are willing to be sniffed by any person on the network.

Sniff is the first Facebook tool that charges a premium to peoples’ cell phone bills. The biggest users are currently in Sweden, where wireless-connected members on Facbook have integrated the software into their profile pages.

“Sniffing” works with the same technology used by the law enforcement to track down criminals or missing persons by their cell phones. The phone sends a signal to nearby cell towers. Positioning technology then calculates the persons physical location by using a triangulation measurement.

People who are lost could also use the tool to find their own location by “sniffing” themselves through their cell phone number.

The service could also be used by employers to track workers who use a company’s cell phones as part of their jobs.

The technology could also be used by a spouse or family member to keep tabs on a husband, wife or kid.

The Sniff people finder tool is able to locate a person within a radius of about 650 feet, or 200 meters.

Source: Times Online

The Associated Press is reporting on a very unique missing persons story that had a happy ending thanks to an anonymous tip sent on MySpace.com.

Tiffany Rubin found her abducted son Kobe Lee after she received an anonymous tip through her MySpace page. Someone spotted her 7-year-old son along with her ex-boyfriend in South Korea and contacted her throught the popular social networking website.

Tiffany caught a flight to South Korea on Sunday. She then sneaked into her son’s school, found him in class, disguised him with a wig and sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy before she brought him home Wednesday.

She had been looking for her son since Aug. 21, after her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Salko took off with him after a visit.

At the time of the abduction, her boyfriend had joint custody of Kobe Lee, but was facing six months in jail for not paying child support.

After he ex disappeared with her son, Rubin feared that Salko, born in South Korea, had taken the boy out of the country.

Her fears were realized when she hacked into Salko’s e-mail account, where she found an e-mail he had sent to a friend saying he was flying to South Korea.

The FBI issued a warrant for Salko’s arrest, but Rubin didn’t get her lucky break until January.

She received a message on her MySpace page from a person who had seen her son and knew where he went to school.

Shortly after, she flew to South Korea with Miller and Bazzel Baz, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Association for the Recovery of Children, to find Kobe.

Rubin explained who she was to her son’s teacher and said she needed to speak with him. Then she walked out of the building with Kobe and took a cab to the American embassy.

The next day, Tiffany and Kobe returned home.

The FBI is currently working with South Korean authorities to have Salko arrested and extradited.

Source: Yahoo.com

UBFound.com is a free people search that allows users to post information about the person they are looking for to the website.

Your people search post on UBFound.com will then get submitted to the major search engines in the hope that the person you are looking for or someone they know will find your post and respond.

This is a very passive people search, and I wouldn’t rely on it as the only way to find a person, but it could be one more tool to consider when trying to find someone.

UBFound’s people search service is like a modern day message in a bottle. They broadcast your people search online through the major search engines like Google and Yahoo, hoping that the person you are looking for or someone who knows them finds you through a web search.

Using UBFound’s people search service along with other people finder tools, both online and offline, would definitely be the way to go when looking for someone.

You can visit UBFound’s site at UBFound.com.