PEOPLE FINDER

Tracing agents are devotees to the art of tracing people and a skilled tracing agent is able to locate even the most elusive of individuals and “gone aways”.

There has been a lot of media interest in methods that tracing agents use to locate people; especially in the case of negative tracing (where a tracing agent is trying to locate an absconded debtor).

TYPES OF TRACING

There are many reasons why someone might want to trace someone down.  I have compiled a small list;

• locating missing person
• Old friends
• first loves
• long lost relatives
• witnesses
• probate beneficiaries
• business associates
• disappearing debtors
• Absent parents

Most clients that come to you have a lot of information about the person that they are trying to find.

1. Your client is the 1^st source of information about the subject of enquiry (SoE).  They often have details that although won’t help you locate them will certainly help you rules others out in the investigation.  It is important that you ask your client to lots of questions in order to elicit the information from them.  A professional people finder will usually have a set form for his client to complete.

Once I have that form competed, I like to start with every free source of information that I can find.  For that to work you need access to the internet.  There are literary tons of methods that you can put into use when searching for someone online.

1. My most recommended method is using social networking sites – here you can find almost any one as long as they use the internet. Most people, in the 21^st century have an account with Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Friends Reunited to name just a few.

Just search through the most popular sites and chances are you will pick up your person from there. If that does not work, then you can carry out your search through any of the available search engines. Search engines are built with a capability to find people e.g. Yahoo people search and Google people finder. You just simply type in the person’s names and search through the results.  A new people search engine is YASNI http://www.yasni.co.uk/.  It searches through the social media networking sites and produces a list of links for you to explore in greater detail.

1. Another resource is the electoral roll register.  The register is a list of all people in the UK who are registered to vote.  There are a few search engines specialised to search through those records in particular such as 192.com and tracesmart.co.uk.

Most of the information relating to people is filed inside government records or databases. This includes details like car registration numbers, licenses for driving, medical records, criminal records to name just a few. Some of them are inaccessible to PI’s but some are not.

1. DVLA have a database of all car registration numbers and to whom they are registered to.  This info is available under special circumstances to the PI.
2. The Bankruptcy and IVA register is available free of charge.  This is a government database of everyone who has been made bankrupt or who has an IVA.
3. Birth, Deaths & Marriages are one of the main government databases that are available to the PI.
4. Credit references agencies have databases used to locate debtors amongst others.  These are available to PI’s who have the required licences.

A lot of these databases and methods are known to most professional PI’s.  There are other methods used that do not rely on the internet and are tricks of the trade.  As such I will not be revealing them here.  I will state though that as a professional people finder, you have to be very careful to only conduct traces within ethical and legal guidelines.