Thanks to the Internet, there are innumerable ways to look up people online. Many times, all you need is a first and last name, a phone number, an email address, or a social security number. With just the most miniscule piece of information, you can find anyone anywhere in the world.

With so many different websites promising to find someone online, what are the most effective ways to get the information you are looking for? Well, it depends on what exactly you are hoping to find out. From running a background check to finding out someone’s ancestry to simply putting a face and name to an anonymous phone number, there are countless services online to help you do just that.

I’ve created a website that compiles the top people-searching websites into one, easy to use, free service. Click on the links for any site in this article and you’ll be taken directly to the services you’ll need to find anyone online. The links provided by my site and in this article are free to use and 100 percent effective.

The websites I’ll be talking about in this article are amazingly simple yet completely under-utilized because people simply don’t know that they are out there. While they scramble through the pages of the Internet, hoping that the Jane Doe on their screen is the Jane Doe they are looking for, they could have found this person in seconds using the services I provide on my website. Why waste your valuable time and energy searching dead end sites that leave you with more questions than answers? I promise, none of the sites or services that I discuss in this book will leave you spinning in circles. You’ll have all the information you need plus much, much more after utilizing these websites. So, if you’re ready to stop wasting time and start getting answers, let’s take a closer look at the ways in which you can find someone online!

Social Media Sites

Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. MySpace. Google+ and more. These are some of the most well-known, heavily trafficked sites in the world. More than 800 million people actively use Facebook. Twitter is the ninth most actively trafficked site globally. Beyond having millions of users, many who engage in social media have multiple social media accounts. They not only have a Facebook Profile, they also have a Google+ account and regularly Tweet on their Twitter. While anyone who has signed-up for these social media sites can search for specific individuals within these sites, this is not always the best option. With Facebook, for example, when you search for a specific name, you will be given every single person with that name on Facebook. Many times, these people don’t have a photo that you can use to definitely identify them. More often than not, individuals that are not your Facebook friends will have private and locked profiles that only offer an extremely limited amount of information about an individual. The same goes for Twitter, Google+, and MySpace. You just won’t get the 100 percent, bone fide information you are looking for about an individual by going through these social media sites’ search engines.

So, how do you find someone using social media? There are two sites that meet this exact need and will exceed your expectations on what you can find.

One of the most effective people-finding search tools is called ussearch. This trusted site provides a Social Network Search (an option located along the top bar of the site’s homepage) that allows visitors to look up people using just their last name. However, to get a more accurate search, ussearch.com also recommends that a first name is entered and/or the name of any city that that individual has ever lived in.

This service allows users to quickly and easily find anyone’s social networking profiles and photos with just one click.

The other highly effective social media search tool is spokeo. With just a username, which many individuals use on sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Flickr, you can find the real first and last name of the person you are looking for. This site touts itself as “not your grandma’s white pages” and scans every site from Amazon.com to YouTube.com to find the individual’s information as well as what other social sites they belong too. You’ll be given information on their membership to blogging sites, dating sites, photography sites, music sites, video sites, and even online shopping sites. Spokeo.com is thorough, modern, and efficient. With just a single tidbit of information, you can find out more than you ever thought you could about an individual.

Everything you can find out thanks to Spokeo’s username search capabilities.

Reverse Phone Lookup

How many times have you received a call from a number that you didn’t recognize and that didn’t leave a voice message, leaving you to wonder who could this person, company, or organization calling you be? We’ve all been in this situation and are often left feeling as though we’ll never find out the truth about who is calling us. How did this entity get our phone number? And why are they calling us?

Hope is not lost as to finding the answers to these questions. There are two sites that I highly recommend to look up a phone number after they have called you.

Reversephonedetective is a top-notch site that provides you with the location of the phone number you are looking for so that you can know exactly where a call was made to you. The site will also provide you with a full data report including the phone owner’s first and last name, address, household members, and more people search results. While you do have to pay a small fee for this information, it is thorough and accurate, providing you the information you may desperately need to get the answers you deserve.

After you’ve done some detective work, check out phoneregistry. This site investigates any mobile, landline, or unlisted phone number. Whenever you need to perform a reverse phone number search, this Number 1 rated site is the place to turn. Phoneregistry.com searches over 500 million phone numbers to pinpoint the exact location of the phone holder, the type of phone the number belongs to (cellular, business line, etc.), and the phone service provider. When you register for the site, which includes paying a nominal fee of $14.95, you’ll be given even more in-depth information on the individual who owns the phone number, which may even include a record of their criminal history as phoneregistry.com has access to over 300 million criminal records. I know I would want that information on the individual that is calling my phone number.

Simply type in any number into phoneregistry’s database and let the search begin!

Although both of these sites require that you pay for a more advanced search, the amount and type of information that the paid data provides is priceless. You can enter any phone number into Google or another search engine for free and find out the general area where the phone is registered, but that doesn’t even begin to tell you the important information of what type of number is calling you—whether a business such as a debt collector or an individual whom you don’t know—and what kind of history that entity has, including a criminal record. This information is vital to staying safe in the 21^st century. If your security is worth $14.95 to you, then you can afford these fees. You’ll be glad you paid for the service when you find out the vital information you otherwise would have never known.

Background Checks

One of the most important services that the Internet has been able to provide in the last ten years or so is the ability to perform background searches on individuals. Employers conduct background checks on potential employees regularly because they want to insure that the individual they are thinking about hiring doesn’t have a criminal history, poor credit, or any other undesirable characteristics that may compromise they’re company. Individuals looking to hire a babysitter, a landscaper, a pool cleaner, or other individual for their services also regularly conduct background searches to make sure they can trust the person that they are inviting into their homes and into their lives. Background checks are a way to insure personal as well as property safety in this day and age.

More often than not, background checks are conducted to search for criminal history, driving records, and to check for discrepancies in what an individual says and what their record says.

One of the premier background checking sites is backgroundreport360. Armed with a first and last name and the city and state you are searching for, you get a full background report on an individual in 60 seconds. That’s one minute of your life to find out someone’s personal records, such as their address history, date of birth, email addresses, and alias/maiden name check, get a full criminal history report, court records, and property records.

All the information backgroundreport360 can provide you about an individual in 60 seconds or less.

As with many of these services, you’ll be amazed what you can find out about an individual by using this background checking service.

Another site that provides you with everything you need to know and more about a specific individual is inteligator. This site lists every crime, conviction, arrest, marriage, birth, death, warrant, relatives, property, and even unclaimed money that any individual, anywhere in the United States, has.  This site allows you to inquire into an individual’s past discreetly yet effectively. If you sign up for inteligator’s services, you’ll be granted access to unlimited criminal searches, unlimited inmate searches, unlimited background searches, unlimited people searches, unlimited sex offender searches, and unlimited phone investigations. This site is your one-stop-shop for everything you need to verify someone’s background.

To conduct a nationwide criminal search, exposing unknown arrest records, police files, felonies, misdemeanors, sex offenses, convictions, incarcerations, criminal driving violations, and much more, visit criminal-records. As with all of these background check sites, all you need is a first and last name and a state and the search engine does the investigating for you by pulling information from a variety of public records.

Social Security Number

Searching for someone using a social security number (SSN) used to be next to impossible. The reason for this is that SSNs are not listed in public databases. You would have had to hire a professional to gather information on someone based on their SSN, but now there is an excellent free website called ssnrecords that does the digging for you. You will need a SSN and a last name, but after that the service does all the work for you. By sifting through thousands of sources, both public and private, ssnrecords.org quickly pulls up all the information you need right on your computer screen.

The search results may give you the person’s current address, phone number, address history, relatives and associates, criminal records, death index, property ownership, or a list of relatives with addresses.

Email

Searching for someone has jumped into the 21^st century thanks to the capability of several sites to look up an individual using their email address. Many of us have received emails seemingly out of nowhere from email addresses that aren’t in our contact lists and that we don’t recognize. What options are you left with as to finding out what the name behind an unknown email is? Thankfully, there is a great service that you can turn to that will give you the information you desire.

Emailfinder is easy to use and extremely effective. Simply enter an email address into the “Search By Email” bar and the website will sort through the largest directory of emails in the world.  After sorting through the database, emailfinder.com will reveal the location of the email holder, their name, as well as a full report including their address, phone number, social network information, and places where they have an online presence.

Ancestry Search

Searching for family history online has become extremely popular in the last few years and thousands of sites offering ancestry searches have popped up as well. However, one of the very best ancestry sites in the world is ancestry dot com. This site helps you discover your roots, the roots of others, and track the relatives of others. Enter a first and last name, and an age, and a family tree will instantly grow before you.

To gain an in-depth look into your family tree, one of the most thorough sites out there is archives dot com. With over 1.5 billion records, archives.com allows you to find birth, death, marriage, and historic vital records all in once place. Again, armed with a first and last name and a state, and by knowing what kind of record you’re looking for you’ll be able to pull up information on any individual, whether yourself or someone else. You may be amazed at the connections between yourself and others.

Vital Records

Vital records include marriage, divorce, death, and birth records. Many of these are available to the public, but there are some great online resources to find these documents for free.

Marriagerecords provides a wide range of results based on marriage certificates. Using a first and last name and a state, you are granted the ability to find an ancestor, an old classmate, or information on people in your life right now. Marriage certificates are often used when birth and death certificates aren’t available, but oddly enough, many people don’t think to turn to marriage certificates when they’re looking for answers. This site will provide you with information on the bride’s and groom’s names and ages, the marriage date, the county and state of filing, the filing number, criminal records, bankruptcies, liens, judgments, address history, and property records. Who knew you could find out so much with just a marriage certificate!

The flip side of marriage is, unfortunately, divorce, and divorcerecords provides information including the respondent’s name, the petitioner’s name, the date and state of filing, filing number, criminal records, bankruptcies, liens, judgments, address history, and property records. This site pulls information from thousands of public and private sources to quickly and conveniently pull up the exact personal information you are looking for.

Deathrecords provides an instant death record search while maintaining a reputation for being a trusted information provider. A first and last name, as well as a state, will pull up information on a deceased individual’s full name, date of birth, date of death, and city and state of death. The results may even pull up a deceased individual’s social security number as well.

If all you had to go by to find someone was their birthday, could you look them up? As you’ve read this article, I hope you’d answer, “Yes!” with all the confidence in the world. Birth-records grants you instant access to an individual’s full name, the city they were born in—as well as the state—their full date of birth, criminal records, bankruptcies, liens, judgments, address history, and property records. In fact, for this site, you don’t even an individual’s birth date. A first and last name and a state entered into birth-records.com will bring all this information, and more, to the surface.