Missing Persons Cases: Searching Online to Find a Missing Person
Friday, March 26th, 2010
It happens every day in the US, in big cities and small towns, people who go missing. In some cases they’ve become the victims of a crime but in most of these cases they’ve disappeared deliberately. Frequently they’re running away from some type of trouble or attempting to escape an obligation.
Some of the biggest reasons they drop out of sight include:
- Hiding from child support or alimony payments
- Facing a huge debt and unwilling or unable to pay
- They’re wanted by law enforcement agencies or the courts system
- Owe taxes or liens to the government
- Don’t want to pay for damages or face legal action for an accident they caused
If you’re searching for someone who is missing you should be aware that you can access data right from your home computer that could very well help you find this missing person. In the past this information could usually only be learned by going to the costly expense of hiring a private investigator.
In recent years public records and huge business database information is now accessible online. All it takes to retrieve this information is a computer and some determination. The ordinary citizen can now do this investigative work on their own. When compared to the cost of paying a PI firm by the hour, the cost to search online is very minimal. Many online search databases will charge a one time small fee that gives unlimited search access for a year.
These online services will get you fast, accurate unlimited results of information that was once difficult, if not impossible, to get online. It’s important to realize that these search database services aren’t the same thing as typing a person’s name into Google and getting pages full of results. General search engines can bring up pages upon pages of results, where do you even begin to decide which John Doe on that list is the one you want to find?
Proprietary people search services are the best way to seek this information because they’re optimized to locate people. Instead of having to scroll through thousands of non-related listings that a general search engine would bring up, these services take you directly to the information that you desire.
Basic Strategies to Use for Finding a Missing Person:
If the missing person is a family member your first step is to collect a much information as you can about them. Pull out old files or records. List any organizations or clubs they were members of. If possible find bank and investment account records. Especially useful will be driver’s license numbers, employee ID numbers and of course a Social Security number is a key piece of information to have on hand.
If the missing person is not somebody that you knew on a personal level then you’ll need to get information from people who knew them if you are able to. If you can’t do this there are methods to get it from an online search service but having it to begin with can make the process go more smoothly.
After collecting this physical information it’s important to organize it and analyze it for any clues as to where the missing person may have gone. Often you’ll find a hint in this first collection of information. It simply wasn’t evident at first as nobody had bothered to look over this information closely.
What happens more frequently is that information linking the missing person to others or to places is discovered and this can help in the search to find them. A professional investigator’s secret trick of the trade to find missing persons is to find other people who know them and who can lead them to the missing person.
Sometimes it’s as easy as calling up a former associate of the missing person who will know their current location.
If these steps don’t net the desired results then it’s time to move the search online. The following strategies are common ones used by professionals to obtain information online that helps them locate a missing person. You can use these very same strategies by doing a search through an online investigative search service.
Professional Strategies You Can Use:
- Conduct a Profile Search by looking up people with the same first initial and last name, city and state. If the results aren’t satisfactory at first then expand the search if the name isn’t a very common one to other cities and states. Pay close attention to search areas where the missing person had family, friends, business connections or other dealings. When you have a list then start contacting each person. Your missing person may be among the names on that list.
- Search by Social Security number by doing an SSN trace thought the credit bureaus. The credit bureaus are most likely to have anybody’s most current phone number and address information. Private Investigators will tell you that this is typically the best way to find a missing person who is attempting to hide. Most people fail to realize the many different types of activities that trigger address updates on the credit record. From filling out a job application to renting a place to live to turning on utilities and phone service will trigger these updates.
- Search Voter Registration databases as this is often overlooked but frequently effective. Missing persons tend to build new lives based upon the old lives they lived. If they were voters in the past then typically they’ll register to vote in their new location. Voter records are kept by state agencies and are available though specialized people search services.
- Search Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filings. These filings are lien notices which will be filed locally and maintained by each state. The specialized search services compile this datat so that it can be obtained easily. UCCs document when a lien is placed on any property that a loan was made on. It’s a great tool to track missing persons as it can lead you to a business that had a history with that person. It’s quite possible you may get contact information from them.
Specialized people search services also offer a variety of other databases where you can readily access additional information. These could include drivers license records, change of address records, vehicle registration and even traffic ticket information. The databases can provide you with current address or link you to somebody else who can lead you to find the missing person.
The specialized people search services have collected data and compiled it into an easy to use database. They provide easy to utilize search tools with automatic links to public databases that you need to search. This will make looking for a missing person a faster and easier process and most likely result in a successful locate.
