If you are pursuing the location of someone and you have exhausted the typical people finder searches your next step will be in the public domain. This means accessing the data that is free to the public for everything from Arrest Records to Marriage Licenses to Building Permits.
The beauty of this source for tracing data is two-fold – it’s free and online. Most States have laws giving the public access to State and County filings. This includes Arrest Records, Financial Judgments, Tax Liens, etc.
While not specifically intended to provide the data you seek – all these public records have identifying information – the name, address, SSN, and sometimes even a phone number. It is the name and address of the named person that is valuable.
That means that a Financial Judgment that contains identifying data may also include contact data, enabling you to do an address search. If not it may still provide a Driver’s License Number or SSN – both of which you can use to launch additional searches in that area.
Other areas of public information available online include Death Certificates, Probate Sales, Business License Postings, Property Tax Delinquencies, etc. These are all great because, again, they all contain contact data.
Let’s take a specific example. Let’s say you find a Real Property Tax Delinquency Posting in County Records online – in the State where you think the target person may be hiding. You sift the data and find that the address of the person named in the judgment/filing is different than the address of the subject property. Then you do a search on that property in a number of related areas – including Real Estate Sales records, Building Permits, Foreclosure Posting, etc.
You then find, in a Foreclosure Filing from the County Records, a full description of the names of all Owners and Co-owners – and another name pops up – the name of a co-owner or spouse. This new person and any other address or related data are now subject data for additional searches. Hopefully, you are beginning to get the idea.
Ultimately you need something current that presents the opportunity to go and see (or send someone to see) if indeed the target is present at this new address. That then is your first concrete finding. From there the person can typically be traced to a place of business or employment, etc.
All this has been produced from Public Domain data that is both free and available online. This will place your effort to find a person in high gear.