Practically everyone wants to find a long lost friend, a former neighbor, some old classmates, and maybe a deadbeat dad. Not only that, but professional investigators and law enforcement agencies often need to track someone down for a variety of reasons.
If you had knowledge of and access to the wide variety of public records that professional investigators know about, you could likely find someone you are looking for. But, there are a number of obstacles in your way.
First, you probably don’t know about the wide variety of information sources. While everyone knows about local phone directories, fewer people know that voter records are public ally available. Each state also has other databases that can be accessed in appropriate ways. For example, most states have public databases listing sex offenders residing in the state.
Second, even if you knew about some public records, you may not have easy access to them. Many public records are available for local access on computers connected to a local area network, not to the Internet. Often only more recent records are stored electronically. And, the vast majority of public records have not been digitized and still exist only in paper (or microform) format. To access these records you need to either visit the facility where the documents are stored or request a paper copy be mailed to you.
You, personally, would have difficulty accessing many of these public records. You would need to do your research to determine what public records were available to you. Then you would need to spend the time and money to travel and access these records. This is often more costly and involves more hassle than the information is worth to you.
Happily there are a number of free services on the Internet that can provide some information about people. But, most of these services will try to “hook” you into purchasing the information through a paid service. They will indicate that they have found the person you are looking for and even give you some information like their city and age. But, to get more specific information like address and phone number you’ll need to pay.
But, often for a few dollars you can get the information you need from a paid service. After all, the paid service has already done all the “leg work” for you and gathered important public records into their own database. Developing this database has cost time and money. So, it’s often worth it to you to pay for the information.
After all, you really did want to find long lost friends, former neighbors, an old classmate, or even a deadbeat dad, didn’t you? Happy people hunting.