Reverse Lookup Tips –

One of the best ways for doing reverse lookups on unpublished phone numbers; addresses;  cell phone numbers and email addresses is to look for them on the major search engines.  People will often post up-to-date, private, non published information like  phone numbers; cell numbers; physical addresses and email addresses in online resumes; web logs; message boards and other such places, along with other identifying information about themselves.  Often the information that people are willing to post online is not published in other public directories, like online white pages and email searches. 

Try reversing your own phone number(s); cell number(s); email address(es) or physical address(es) on Yahoo or Google to see if any of them are posted online anywhere.  Now try this for other people that you know: friends, family, coworkers etc. 

For a great list of many of the online reverse lookups available, visit 411 x 411 – Reverse Lookups  .

The Smoking Gun web site manages to obtain some notorious and some confidential public records through Freedom of Information requests and publishes the documents online.  Published documents  typically include public records, criminal records and court records of celebrities and other high-profile people. The Smoking Gun guarantees that all of their published records are 100% authentic and can’t be found anywhere else on the web.

The main page allows users easy access to featured documents; public record archives of past documents and a mug shot section.  You can access the site at The Smoking Gun .

411 x 411 dot com has added the ZabaSearch free people search engine to its popular directory of the internet’s best free people search engines.  The ZabaSearch engine pulls its free people search records from numerous public records sources, making it one of the largest and up to date free people searches online.  The ZabaSearch addition is a great new people search resource for our visitors, including investigators and skip tracers.

You can access the ZabaSearch listing along with more of the internet’s top free people search engines at 411 x 411 – The Best Free People Search Engines .

Skip tracers and investigators, if you have a tricky internet research question or are looking for a particular research source online, why not ask the FreePint Bar?  FreePint is an online community of internet searchers and they also publish a free online research newsletter.  You do not need to register to post to the Bar, but you do need a valid email address.

You can post your search questions at FreePint Bar or visit the main FreePint Site .

As always, good luck with your people searches and internet research!

411 x 411 – The Best Free People Search Engines
Skipease – People Searches and Public Records Directory

Identity Theft is the cover story for the September / October issue of Professional Investigator Magazine.  The story covers everything from street level identity theft criminals all the way to ID theft ring leaders.  The Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to combat identity theft crimes are also discussed.

Professional Investigator magazine is an excellent trade publication for private investigators, skip tracers, law enforcement officials, legal professionals and criminal justice majors.  For more information visit PI Magazine .

For more comsumer and citizen information on identity theft from the Federal Trade Commission visit ID Theft – FTC .

In addition, the Social Security Administration’s identity theft site can be found at ID Theft – SSA .

The Crime Library from Court TV is an online encyclopedia on criminal minds and methods.  A 2005 Webby Awards winner, The Crime Library contains a huge collection  of information on serial killers, murder cases, gangsters, outlaws, criminal psychology, investigation forensics, terrorists, spies and assassins. 

The Crime Library is a site not to be missed for law enforcement, criminal justice, investigation and crime buffs.  You can visit the site at Crime Library .

With the constant growth of the internet, the question isn’t whether or not the information you are searching for is out there, but, rather, how do you find your needle in the web’s haystack of data? 

For skip tracers and investigators who want to mine the web to find people and information, it is important to learn the tools available for getting what you want out of your web searches.  Gone are the days when you could type in a few keywords and hit a search button to get what you wanted, especially with the growing number of keyword spammers who will do anything to get their web sites positioned at the top of search engine results.

Skip tracers and investigators who learn to use the special features of Google searching will be ahead of their colleagues, when it comes to finding people, public records and other job-related data.  You can read about some of these tools and tricks at Searching The Internet For Information The Google Way  by Sandra Stammberger @ webpronews.com .

In addition, we will be discussing additional Google search features and web search techniques in upcoming blog posts. 

411 x 411 – The Web’s Best Free People Searches
Skipease.com – Free People Searches & Public Records 

Directory Assistance Plus ( DA Plus ) is one of the best free people search engines available.  In addition to the whitepages listings found on other 411 sites, DA Plus also contains millions of people listings that are obtained through various public records sources, making it one of the largest free people search engines on the web.

You can access the Directory Assistance Plus people search; reverse phone and address people searches and business search features at DA Plus Searches .   

Peter Fifka, a cyber sleuth with Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team, hunts down virus writers and other shady internet criminals.  He uses a variety of internet skip tracing skills as well as street-level investigation tactics to bring these web bandits to justice.   Even in the age of high tech computers, sometimes the only way to catch a high tech criminal is by talking to the neighbors.

You can read the full article at Gumshoe Chases Internet Villains in Eastern Europe by Cassell Bryan-Low, The Wall Street Journal.

A great example of how publicly available information online can have national and international security implications.   This article details how the Google Earth satellite images reveal secret South Korean military installations.  The full article is available here: Google Earth images compromise secret installations in S. Korea @ worldtribune.com.