People Search OSINT

In today’s digital age, most people have some kind of online presence, either directly or indirectly. Other entities—such as government and local authorities—also store some type of information about their citizens in publicly accessible databases. Searching for someone is not always as easy as typing their name into Google or Facebook; people with a small online presence will not appear easily when searching for them online



 

In this post, I will discuss how to find people online using specialized websites known as people search engines in addition to looking up people in government records (also known as public records). Most services discussed are often focused on targets in the United States, but many services are starting to reach past North America


People Search Engines

Just as Google and Bing specialize in searching content on the internet, people search engines index online content but focus on people’s personal details and store the results in huge databases to return information upon request. Different parameters are used to search for people on these sites such as target e-mail address, phone number, social username, and full name. Some websites offer additional search parameters such as relative names, mailing addresses, dates of birth, known aliases, ages, and even photographs using a reverse image search technique. The databases used by people search engines to locate information are diverse. For instance, many people search engines search within the deep web to extract information from source databases that typical search engines cannot reach; these include birth and death databases, public records (such as criminal and tax records), and other overlooked sources (such as information stored in proprietary databases). Please bear in mind that the people search engines will also index results from social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, making them a convenient solution to return comprehensive result sets


Online investigators (such as law enforcement and intelligence services) need People search engines to acquire accurate information about their targets.  Searching a target's real name often leads to the discovery of home addresses, telephone numbers, email accounts, and usernames.  The sites discussed in this post each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Standard searches are free on all of them; however, each site generates revenue in some form.  I do not recommend purchasing any of the premium paid services until all free options have been exhausted.


Please note that many of these sites are now blocking access from IP addresses associated with VPNs. This is due to malicious "scraping" behavior by competing sites. If you receive an "access denied" error, it is likely your VPN is being blocked by the service.


True People Search

This service has provided the most comprehensive and consistent free report based on a real name. The results usually include current addresses, previous addresses, telephone numbers (including cellular), email addresses, relatives, and associates.  You can search by target name, reverse phone, and reverse address. You can also search by direct URL as follows:


https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/results?name=joseph%20moronwi 


Fast People Search

This is a free reverse name, address, or phone lookup service that appears to rely on the exact same database as True People Search. True People Search gained a lot of media attention as a "stalking" assistant, which resulted in numerous articles instructing individuals to remove their profiles with an opt-out link. Many people have removed their information, but practically none of them replicated the procedure on Fast People Search. If your target removed his or her profile from the previous option, it might still be present here. The direct search URL is as follows:


https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/name/joseph-moronwi


Xlek

This public information search includes people search, marketing data, property records, vehicle records, court records, patents, business registration, domain name registration, and white house visitation records. The default page does not present a direct URL, but the browser inspector presents following:


https://xlek.com/search_results.php?fname=joseph&lname=moronwi&locations:all 


Cyber Background Checks

This service gives access to billions of public records about millions of adults in the U.S. The website provides multiple services such as name search, reverse phone lookup, address search, search for property records, and so on. The direct search URL is as follows:


https://www.cyberbackgroundchecks.com/people/joseph-moronwi 


Intelius

Intelius, Inc. is a public records service headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded by six former Infospace executives: Naveen Jain, Kevin Marcus, Niraj Shah, Ed Petersen, Chandan Chauhan and John Arnold.  It is a premium service that provides reports about people for a fee.


Most of the information is from public sources, but some of it appears to come from private databases. Searching for any information on the main website will always link you to a menu of pricing options. The information will never be displayed for free. However, the page that lists the report options does possess some interesting information. This free preview identifies an exact age, possible aliases, cities lived in, previous employers, universities attended, and relatives. If the subject is married, this will usually identify the spouse. In most situations, it will identify the maiden name of the person's wife. For anything that you do not see on this main screen, you must pay a fee. The direct search URL is as follows:


https://www.intelius.com/people-search/Joseph-Moronwi 


Radaris

This is a public record deep search engine; it returns comprehensive information about a target. It also lists the online mentions about the target such as résumé, business records, publications, videos and images, social networking profiles, and web references.


You can use the service for the limited free content available in the preview. After searching for a name, select the most appropriate target and choose "Full Profile" in the lower right of the result. This will open the full view of any free information. This will often include the target's middle name, age, current address, previous address, landline telephone number, and links to social networks. The Background Check options will forward you to a third-party premium access website which I do not recommend. You can also search via direct URL as follows:


https://radaris.com/p/Joseph/Moronwi/ 


Family Tree Now

This site is targeted toward those who want to conduct family history research, and its specialty is connecting a person to his or her relatives. The results do not display home addresses, but simply the age of the target and a large list of family members. After gaining a lot of online popularity, many people started complaining about the availability of this sensitive information. While this type of service is nothing new, people were outraged at this violation of their privacy. Since Family Tree Now sources all of its data from public databases, it defended its product, which is still available today. This attention may have been the inspiration for this company to take things to another level with True People Search. The direct search URL is as follows.


http://www.familytreenow.com/search/genealogy/results?first=Joseph&last=Moronwi 


Spytox

Spytox uses a combination of native databases, publicly available information, social media profiles, LinkedIn data, and other public and private information to provide a thorough and up-to-date people search engine. Simply go ahead and enter the name, phone number, or e-mail address of the person you are trying to look up and click on “Search”. Spytox will use its proprietary people search technology to provide you with up-to-date and accurate information. 


Spytox provides limited data during a free search, but the records are often updated from premium resources. The free option will only provide the current city, state, and telephone number. The direct search URL is as follows. 


https://www.spytox.com/joseph-moronwi 


Search People Free

This is a service for looking up publicly available information for US citizens. Results include a variety of identifiable information, including but not limited to the following:

  • Full name
  • Age
  • Current and former addresses
  • Recent and previous phone numbers
  • Likely relatives and associates
  • Associated corporations or businesses
You can look up a suspect using names, addresses, phone numbers, or even email addresses. The search term you enter does not need to be current either. Previous numbers, addresses, or email addresses associated with the suspect work as well.


One benefit here is that the email addresses identified within the results are hyperlinks. They connect to additional names on occasion. The direct search URL is as follows.


https://www.searchpeoplefree.com/find/joseph-moronwi 


That's Them

That's Them searches billions of records to find contact information on a person by name, street address, phone number, or email address.


In addition to the lookups mentioned above, That's Them has an advanced people search that lets you find someone by date of birth, business name, IP address, vehicle VIN number, or social network ID. Personal contact information on people is collected by That's Them from numerous public and commercial records sources. Some of the personal data sources found in the ThatsThem database include:

  • Public Records
  • Court records
  • Maps location
  • Social network profiles
  • Vehicle records
  • Business records
  • Registration data
  • Subscription data
  • Whitepage listings
  • Consumer data
Since ThatsThem searches through such a large number of personal data records, an individual people search can take several seconds to complete, but the amount of free information that can be found on a ThatsThem search is amazing. Note that the options to purchase additional information are advertisements from third-party companies, and should be avoided. The direct search URL is as follows.


https://thatsthem.com/name/Joseph-Moronwi 


Spokeo

Spokeo was founded in 2006 by four graduates from Stanford University—Mike Daly, Harrison Tang, Ray Chen, and Eric Liang. The site has evolved to become an information-gathering website that offers various options for finding information about people. It purports to know, among other things, one's income, religion, spouse's name, credit status, the number of people in the household, a satellite shot of the house, and its estimated value.


There are two very distinct versions of this service, free and premium. The premium service will provide a large amount of accurate data, but at a cost. The free version provides an interface that is easy to navigate. The results from a target name search will be presented after choosing a state and city. Only the states and cities where the target name has a presence will be shown. Choosing this target will display a profile with various information. Within this data will be several attempts to encourage you to purchase a premium account. Basically, anything that you do not see within this profile will cost you money. Any links from the profile will present a membership plan with pricing. The profile will often display the full name, gender, age, and previous cities and states of residency. However, it no longer presents the actual current address. Spokeo is one of many sites which present an animated gif file while you wait on the results. This is unnecessary and is in place to make you believe data is being queried in real-time. The following static search URL bypasses this annoyance.


https://www.spokeo.com/Joseph-Moronwi?loaded=l 


Advanced Background Check

You can search for basic details about the target such as mailing address, phone, and e-mail; to unlock the full details, you need to pay.  Clicking the "See full info" button reveals previous addresses, additional telephone numbers, and aliases. Overall, this service is extremely useful for U.S. targets. The direct search URL is as follows


https://www.advancedbackgroundchecks.com/names/joseph-moronwi 


Yasni

Yasni is a German people search engine, operated by yasni GmbH. It was founded in 2007 by Steffen Rühl. It aggregates search results from external sources and is therefore a meta-search engine.


The home page will give three search options. For most OSINT purposes, the last option is the desired search. It will accept a real name or username and forward you to a results page. A real name search will present a large number of links associated with your target's name. As with other engines, many of these results will be about a person other than your target. The first box on the results page will include a "lives/works in" option that will display the cities of the users identified with the search. Clicking on a location that looks appropriate for your target will load a new results page that will provide all search results about your specific target. Yasni will identify news articles, websites, and social networks related to your target. By default, the search is conducted internationally. Searching outside of the United States is one of the strengths of the service. The search bar includes an option to filter the results by specific countries, but the United States is not listed as an option. If you have a target that lives in another country, Yasni is a great tool. The direct search URL is as follows


http://www.yasni.com/joseph+moronwi/check+people?sh 


Social Searcher

This is a free social search engine allowing users to search across all major social media platforms. The search engine effectively allows users to search social networks in real-time, providing an analytical report. It focuses on social media presence, including mentions within posts. The direct search URL is as follows


https://www.social-searcher.com/search-users/?q6=Joseph+Moronwi 


Truth Finder

Truth Finder is a public search record that gives instant access to a wide set of personal information about anyone living in the United States. TruthFinder has a huge database of social media profiles, address history, contact information, public records (federal, country, and state data sources), and other commercial sources. You can search using the target’s first and/or last name in addition to the city/state where the target lives or lived before. TruthFinder scans the deep web of Internet resources to fetch results from places that conventional search engines cannot operate; it also searches the dark web for exposed personal information, providing a great service for anyone who may suspect that their personal details have been sold on the dark web (it offers a free dark web monitoring service for its registered members). A valid search in TruthFinder will produce a report with detailed information about the target such as birth and death records, property records, criminal records, education history, work history, location history, social media and dating profiles, relatives’ names, family members, contact information, and more. Direct URL submission is given as follows:


https:/ /www.truthfinder.com/results/?firstName=Joseph&lastName=Moronwi&state=ALL 


White Pages

This is the official White Pages website that will conduct a reverse name or address search. This data is pulled from public information and is rarely complete.  The free subscription account gives the following information about the person of interest: landline numbers, current and previous residences, relatives, and associates. The direct search URL is as follows


https://www.whitepages.com/name/Joseph-Moronwi 


Find People Search

This service possesses a database identical to many of the better options previously presented. It also appears that records are not being updated and the details are becoming quite stale. This can be a good thing. If your target has moved and established a new address publicly, Find People Search might be the only option that displays a previous address. There is no direct URL submission option, so a manual search is your only option


Pipl

Pipl is a popular people search engine that covers the entire world.  It is the world's largest people search engine. It allows you to search for people using their e-mail addresses, phone number, or social username. Pipl collaborates with other people search engine services to return comprehensive results. These services can be accessed by clicking the sponsored links that appear on your search result page. The current associates are Peoplelooker.com, Archives.com, and Spokeo.com. These services charge fees for giving deeper details about the person of interest.


Been Verified

You can search for people within the United States using their name, phone, e-mail, or mailing address. The basic report gives general information about the subject, while the commercial subscription gives a detailed report about anyone, including criminal records (where available) and property tax records. This service is popular in the United States and used by millions each year.


Peek You

This aggregates information from social media profiles, news sources, blogs, and other public databases. To unlock the full details, you need to pay.


Address Search

You can search for someone’s e-mail or mailing address using a name and location. The service is limited to the United States.


How Many of Me

This site provides a simple interface to find out how many people exist that have a specific name. This is obtained from census data and can help determine how effective a targeted search will be. For example, if your target has a very unique name, you may still get numerous results to links to social network sites. In order to determine the likelihood that all of these profiles apply to the target, How Many Of Me can tell you whether your target is the only person that has that name. This site provides no intelligence about someone with a common name. I have used this in the past to determine appropriate covert names to use online


Info Space

This is a metasearch engine that returns comprehensive results from different public data sources and other people search engine sites.


Sorted By Name

This is a list of links to genealogy details—based on the first letter of the person’s surname— mentioned on other websites.


Speedy Hunt

You can search for people in the United States and return a detailed report—where available— about them, which includes arrest and sex offender records. You need to pay to use this service.


Cubib

You can search millions of online data records for free. Aggregated data is derived from people searches, marketing data, property records, vehicle records, court records, patents, business registration, domain name registration, and White House visitation records.


Resumes

A person’s expertise, education, and job history can be found easily by looking at their résumé; an individual’s résumés can also reveal important technical information about the companies where they previously worked. 


Resumes are an ideal target since they usually contain sensitive information that is not posted anywhere else. Many people will include a cellular number and personal email address on a resume, but would never consider placing these details on a social network. If the resume is publicly available, regardless of whether the target realizes this, we can gather good intelligence. The following techniques aim to assist in locating this valuable data. Detailed searches within Google or Bing will identify many resumes hosted publicly on websites and cloud-based document storage services. If your target's name is Joseph Moronwi, the following exact searches on Google, Bing, and Yandex are valuable


"Joseph Moronwi" "Resume"
"Joseph Moronwi" "Curriculum Vitae"
"Joseph Moronwi" "CV"
"Joseph Moronwi" "Resume" filetype:doc
"Joseph Moronwi" "Curriculum Vitae" filetype:doc
"Joseph Moronwi" "CV" filetype:doc
"Joseph Moronwi" "Resume" filetype:pdf
"Joseph Moronwi" "Curriculum Vitae" filetype:pdf
"Joseph Moronwi" "CV" filetype:pdf
"Joseph Moronwi" "Resume" site:docs.google.com
"Joseph Moronwi" "CV" site:docs.google.com
"Joseph Moronwi" "Curriculum Vitae" site:docs.google.com


While these queries will likely locate any resumes with text, they will fail on many resume images. Numerous resume hosting websites have realized that various data scraping engines scour their resume collection and "steal" their content. This has encouraged some services to store images of resumes that do not contain text that can be easily searched. While this is a decent layer of protection, it is not enough to keep out of Google results. Since Google scans images for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), it knows what words are within an image. After conducting the previous queries within traditional search engines, also attempt them through Google Images. A search of "Stephen Smith" "Curriculum Vitae" on Google Images revealed hundreds of images of resumes. A manual inspection of each identified many pieces of sensitive information


CV Maker

CV Maker is an online platform that enables users to create, manage and publish their resumes in various formats. Currently, over 5 million have been created and are stored within the service. The home page does not offer a search option, as this service is not intended to be used as a people finder. However, we can rely on a Google search to get us the content we want. The following identifies the resume of our target:


site:cvmkr.com "Lee Barnett"


The search result opens a PDF. Within that file is the un-redacted content, which identifies his full email address, telephone number, and home address. On rare occasions, you might find this PDF option to be missing from your target profile. When this happens, you can create a direct link to the full details. In this example, my target's page is at https://cvmkr.com/U88R. The following URL presents the entire PDF with the visible details. Basically, adding "?pdf=1" at the end of the URL should always present the full resume view. Since Google indexes all of the PDF files that are located, you can also perform searches for telephone numbers and email addresses using the site operator previously mentioned.


Ripoff Report

If your target conducts any type of business with the public, he or she will likely upset someone at some point. If your target regularly provides bad service or intentionally commits fraud within the business, there are likely many upset victims. Ripoff Report is a user-submitted collection of complaints about businesses and individuals. I have had numerous investigations into shady people and businesses where these reviews by previously unknown victims were beneficial


Job sites can also reveal a great amount of information about individuals and companies’ private details as well as your individual target. The following are the most popular job websites:

  • LinkedIn
  • Recruit in - This is a third-party website that uses Google to search the profiles on LinkedIn. This returns deeper results compared to LinkedIn.
  • Byte - This is a popular Middle East job website.
  • Market Visual - Search professionals by name, company, or title. The site maps business relationships visually between the person of interest and other entities. It displays further data about the target such as the previous and current affiliations and education. The resulted search data can be downloaded in various forms for later analysis.
  • Xing -  This is a business networking site
  • Indeed - Indeed has a powerful collection of resume data. Because the term "resume" is not present in any of the content pages, you will likely not obtain this data during your standard searches. Entering your target name on Indeed under the "Find Candidates" option may present new results. Contact information is usually redacted. However, detailed work experience, education, and location are commonly present.
  • Eluta - This is the official job search engine of Canada’s top 100 employers.
  • CareerBuilder - This is a job search website.
  • Euro Jobs -  This is a European job site
  • Glassdoor - This is an international job site.
  • Monster - This is an international job website.
  • Head Hunter - This is a management and executive job platform.
  • Jobs - This is a Polish job website.
  • Job Site - This is a U.K. job website.
  • Seek - This is an Australian job website.
  • Simply Hired - Job search within the US.
  • Zip Recruiter -  Search over 8 million jobs in the US. 


Dating Website Search

Useful information about people and their relationships can be found on dating websites. This information cannot be omitted when conducting OSINT investigations about a person of interest.

  • Ashley Madison -  This is an international dating site.
  • First Met - This is an online dating site with 30 million users.
  • Badoo - With more than 380 million users, this network is—currently—considered the largest social discovery network on Earth.
  • Plentyoffish -  This is a dating website for non-English speakers.
  • EHarmony - This is an international dating site with a diverse group of individuals of all ages and countries.
  • Zoosk - This is an international dating website with more than 40 million users.
  • Black People Meet - This site specializes in locating black singles only.
  • True Dater - Find reviews of people on dating websites; search using the dater’s username.
  • Our Time - This is a dating site for people older than 50.
  • Hater Dater - This website helps people who hate the same stuff to gather and communicate online
  • UK Match -  This is a U.K. dating website
  • Pheramor - This is a dating app for those currently working in Houston, Texas.
  • Tinder - This is a social search mobile app that allows people to interact online. It is similar to dating websites
  • Beautiful People - International online dating service. You can register via your Facebook account - if you have one.
  • Meet Up -  A website that facilitate meeting with people with the same interest/hippies
  • Okcupid - Free international online dating website that use math algorithms to find the best correct match according to each user profile.


You can find a comparison of online dating websites here.


Online Registries

An online registry is a kind of wish list published online. The most obvious example of such registries is when a couple formulates a list of things they need to purchase for their marriage. They compile a list and publish it online publicly. When one of their friends or relatives buys them an item from the list, the registry provider will remove this item from the list and ship the purchased item to the couple.


For the purpose of OSINT investigation, online registries are useful to uncover personal details/wishes of the people of interest in addition to close friends (as many registries allow friends to post their wishes to the wall of the registry owner), especially after knowing that many people leave their registries available online after the ceremony’s end.


There are different types of online registries. The most well-known types are wedding, baby, graduation, birthday, holiday, and gift registries. Before identifying the best resources, let's take a look at the types of details we can acquire from some random targets. 


  • Partner Name - A crime suspect usually knows they are under a microscope. He or she tends to stop posting to social media and starts scrubbing any online details. However, their partner tends to ignore the threat of investigation and continues to upload sensitive information applicable to the target. Therefore, online wedding and baby registries can help identify the most lucrative target aside from the original suspect.
  • Maiden Name - This can be beneficial in order to better locate a Facebook page or other family members that may be off your radar. You can also use this to then search old yearbooks, criminal details, and previous addresses. 
  • Ceremony Details - The Knot and other wedding registry sites offer the couple a free website to announce details about the upcoming (or past) event. This usually includes an embellished story about how they met, fell in love, and he proposed. While this could be good knowledge for social engineering, the investigator might be more interested in the wedding party. This will usually include the closest friends of your target, which will be next on your investigation list. 
  • Items - While it may be fun to look at the items desired by a couple, there is much we can learn about their lives based on these details. These includes the types of phones used, vehicles driven, and subjects of interest. While The Knot requires both a first name and last name to conduct a search, providing two asterisks ("'*) as the first name will present every entry online including the provided last name
  • Children - The items within a baby registry will usually provide little to no value. Knowing the brand of diapers preferred or favorite crib style may not have evidentiary value. However, knowing a due date and location of the target can be beneficial for future searching. Unfortunately, The Bump only allows searching of upcoming births, and not any past profiles. Fortunately, Google has our backs. The following Google search revealed multiple baby registries from the past few years associated with John Smith.
    site:registry.thebump.com "John Smith"
     

The following are the most common wedding, baby, and gift registries, with direct links to the most appropriate search pages. I highly encourage you to conduct a detailed Google "Site" search after attempting the proper method.


The Knot - https://www.theknot.com/registry/couplesearch
The Bump - https://registry.thebump.com/babyregistrysearch
Amazon Baby - https://www.amazon.com/baby-reg/homepage/
Amazon Wedding - https://www.amazon.com/wedding
Walmart Wedding - https://www.walmart.com/lists/find-wedding-registry
Walmart Baby - https://www.walmart.com/registry/baby/search
Target Wedding - https://www.target.com/gift-registry
Target Baby - https://www.target.com/gift-registry/baby-registry
Kohl's Wedding - https://www.myregistry.com/kohls-wedding-registry.aspx
Ikea Wedding - https://www.info.ikea-usa.com/giftregistry
Bed Bath & Beyond Wedding - https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/page/Registry
Macy's Wedding - https://www.macys.com/registry/wedding/registrysearch
Registry Finder - https://registryfinder.com
My Registry - https://www.myregistry.com


Vital Records

Vital records are government records usually created by local authorities. They include birth and death records, marriage licenses, and divorce decrees. When searching for vital records, the returned result will usually come with the target’s personal details. For instance, a birth record will usually come with the parent’s full name, the child’s name, and the place where the event took place. The death record will come with the location where the person was buried, a death certificate, and the name of the person who reported the event to the authorities. Marriage records will hold the couple’s parents’ names and the place where the marriage was registered. Finally, the divorce record will hold information about the couple’s children’s names. Other related records such as ancestry records (offered by some databases) and the mailing address of the person of interest can also appear when searching in vital records. The following are the most popular vital record databases:

  • Sorted By Birth Date - This site uses the Death Master File as of March 2014. The Death Master File is a database made publicly available by the US Social Security Administration since 1980, it contains personal information about people who had Social Security numbers and whose deaths were reported to Social Security Administration from 1962 to present.
  • Death Indexes - This site holds a directory of links to websites with online death indexes categorized by state and country.
  • Family Search -  This is a U.S. Social Security death index
  • Find a Grave - You can find information about people, including their birth, death, and burial information, and it may include pictures, biographies, family information, and more. The site holds more than 170 million memorials in its database.
  • Deaths of U.S. citizens in foreign countries -  This is a record of deaths overseas.
  • Obits Archive - You can search more than  53 million U.S. obituaries here.
  • U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850–2010 - This database contains birth and death records for more than  14 million veterans and VA beneficiaries who died between the years 1850 and 2010.
  • Melissa -  This displays a list of people who have died in the last 24 months in the United States.
  • Deceased Online - This is the central database for U.K. burials and cremations.
  • National Records of Scotland - This includes links to births, deaths, and marriage government records in Scotland and selected countries like the United States and Canada.
  • Find My Past - You can search for vital records in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and Ireland.
  • Forebears -  International genealogical records are kept here. Select your country and record type to display related results.

Note: A major portal for locating vital records within the United States is Vitalrec. This site tells you how to obtain vital records (birth certificates, death records, and marriage license information) from each state and territory in the United States. all you need to do is to select the person of interest’s state and then browse the available vital records links for that area. this should be your first place to search for vital records in the United States. please note that Vitalrec does not store any information in its database; it just offers links directly to each state’s page, and it mentions where and how to get the state’s vital records. The international section gives details on where to find such information in other countries. 


Voter Registration

Many people will have their address and telephone number unlisted in public telephone books. This prevents their information from appearing on some websites. If any of these people are registered voters, their address may still be public. You can find voter registration records in the united States at following site:


https://voterrecords.com/ 
https://www.blackbookonline.info/USA-Voter-Records.aspx 


Social Security Number (SSN) Search

You can perform a reverse Social Security number lookup (for the United States only) by going to SSN Check. The database contains Social Security numbers that were issued between 1936 and 2011. Another site that offers free Social Security number search and lookup tools is SSN- Verify.


Criminal and Court Search

Criminal and court records include different categories of information such as people with search warrants (arrest warrants and wanted people), jail records, and sex crimes (this category has a dedicated website in the United States that contains full details about each offender). Any person who has been convicted of criminal acts can be found in such public databases. The following are the most important criminal records sites (mostly belonging to U.S. databases):


  • National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) - This gives the public access to sex offender data in the United States; returned results include an offender’s photograph.
  • Criminal Searches - This stores entries for hundreds of millions of adults with a criminal record across the United States.
  • Black Book Online - This is a directory of free public record lookup services covering the entire United States. Just select the state to see the available county court records within an area.
  • Ancestor Hunt -  These are the most wanted criminals and fugitives in America. Select the state to see the list.
  • The Inmate Locator - This lists inmate locator services in the United Sates.
  • Federal Bureau of Prisons - Here you can locate the whereabouts of any federal inmate incarcerated from 1982 to the present.
  • The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) - This is an open source database that holds information about terrorist events around the world (bot international and domestic) beginning from 1970.


Note: FBI crime statistics can be useful in some instances when you need to research crime statistics in a specific area and within a specific year. You can find it here.

To see a list of badges—mainly security forces badges—from all countries around the world, go to this site. 


Addresses

The target of your investigation may be an address of your suspect. You may want to know who else lives at a residence. There are dozens of websites that possess databases of address information. The following websites all allow reverse search of a residential address.  


https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/ 
https://www.whitepages.com/reverse-address 
https://www.peoplefinder.com/
https://www.peoplesearchnow.com/
https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/
https://radaris.com
https://www.intelius.com/
https://www.advancedbackgroundchecks.com/address.aspx
https://www.spokeo.com/reverse-address-search
https://thatsthem.com/reverse-address-lookup
https://homemetry.com
https://cyberbackgroundchecks.com 
http://www.addresses.com
http://www.addresssearch.com 
https://www.anywho.com/yellow-pages 
http://www.australialookup.com
https://www.beenverified.com 
http://www.canada411.ca 
https://www.data24-7.com 
http://www.findpeoplesearch.com 
http://www.infobel.com/en/world 
https://johndoe.com 
https://www.peoplesmart.com 
https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com 
http://www.searchbug.com 
https://www.spytox.com 
https://www.ussearch.com 
https://www.verispy.com/people-search
http://www.whowhere.com 


Ancestry Research

These resources are useful for conducting research into family connections. A basic knowledge of genealogy is of huge benefit when tracing living or dead people.


http://ancestorhunt.com 
http://www.ancestry.com 
https://familysearch.org 
http://www.familytreenow.com 
https://search.findmypast.com/search-world-records
http://forebears.io 
https://www.freebmd.org.uk 
https://www.genealogy.com 
http://www.genealogybank.com 
http://www.genealogyintime.com 
http://www.genealogylinks.net 
https://www.locatefamily.com 
https://www.findmypast.com/mocavo-info 
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
http://home.rootsweb.ancestry.com 
http://www.searchforancestors.com 
http://sortedbyname.com


Unclaimed Property

Every state in the U.S. possesses an unclaimed property website. Common forms of unclaimed property include savings or checking accounts, stocks, uncashed dividends, online payments, refunds, and leftover utility balances. Most of these pages only require a last name to conduct a search. The results almost always include full name, home address, property type, and amount owed. This can provide a great search resource, and a possible pretext for a phone call. A complete collection of these sites with easy access to each state is at Unclaimed.


If all else fails, or you believe you are missing something, check Google. Searching the address should identify any leftover information about your target address. When searching, place the street address in quotes excluding the city. 


This will mandate that any results include the exact address and the exact city name, but they do not necessarily need to be right next to each other on the page. If you place the entire address including the city inside a single set of quotes, you would miss any hits that did not have this exact data. This search should reveal numerous home sale websites that may have unique interior photos


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