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Looking for lost friends? Today, it's easier than ever before to find people on the internet with these 13 people search engines.
In an era of booming social networks, it's easier to find lost friends and colleagues than it ever was before. The private world of yesterday is now an online world. Everyone with a search engine has open access to social networks, government databases, and public records.
If you're looking for a long-lost friend, or maybe want to do a background check on someone, consider the following free resources to find people on the internet.
How to Search People for Free on the Internet
The internet is essentially a giant database, overflowing with data points about individuals. Today, it's hard to find anyone who hasn't commented on a blog entry, made a post in an online forum, or registered at Facebook or Flickr.
Different sites use this information in different ways. While the following 13 sites can be used to find people online, they may draw the data from different sources. As a result, there may be some differences between the results.
Before starting, learn a few details about the person. Start with their birthday or the state they live in. Once you have those details, the volume of information you can find online about a person is amazing. In fact, it can sometimes prove overwhelming.
When searching for people online, be sure to use multiple people search engines for the best results.
1. Pipl Search
There are many websites that search standard social networks like Facebook or Twitter. But Pipl Search is one resource that conducts a deep web search for the name on “non-typical sites”. The search results from Pipl Search are impressive.
Pipl Search makes a big effort to uncover street addresses, phone numbers, and even family members, scraped from miscellaneous websites.
The app used to be free to use, but you now need to sign up for a subscription. Indeed, the app is now aimed at businesses who want to do identify verification and investigations rather than individual users.
2. Google Groups
Probably the most powerful tool to find someone who used the internet a long time ago is Google Groups. Google Groups has incorporated over 800 million Usenet messages into its database, an impressive archive of internet conversations dating back to 1981.
For example, if the person you're looking for attended university during this time, you might find a trace of them. Usenet's channels were a popular way for people to access the internet before its explosion in the late 1990s. Universities, research centers, tech businesses, and other bodies relied on Usenet for collaboration and more.
Not only you might find who you're looking for, but you'll also get an idea about their thoughts, ideas, and motivations of the time. Remember, if you're worried about people find old information about you, there are ways to tell who is tracking you online.
3. TruePeopleSearch
A “100% free people search” service, TruePeopleSearch delivers some good results. But it depends on where you're based.
For US readers, this is a great tool, and by simply searching for a name and state of residence, you'll find surprisingly in-depth results. You should also get some good results for Canadian residents, too.
Look out too for the “Possible Associates” section. Useful to law enforcement and private eyes, this displays names of past college roommates, colleagues, and more. No doubt scraped from public Facebook information, this is reliable information.
TruePeopleSearch will typically return a list of previous addresses, along with phone numbers. This list is free to view with some basic information, but more detailed reports are available for a fee. Perhaps the site's branding of “100% free” isn't quite true.
