More on "People Finding" - The Most Popular Search Engines

Back in June, I wrote a little bit about about "people finding" websites in How Do I Find My Classmates?

There are several to choose from if you Google "people search" as a subject. the differences between the are subtle, but each offers value to your search.

1. http://www.whitepages.com/ is a good basic "name," "address," "state," "phone number" tool which offers basic and advanced searching, but there is not a great deal of difference between the two search modes, and it very quickly wants to hand you off to a helpful, but paid service called www.USSearch.com. (Note USSearch promises to give you a free search for your first 24 hours. So if you can work long and hard, you may get a lot accomplished for free here).

2. www.zabasearch.com/advanced.php is the advanced mode of http://www.zabasearch.com/. The advanced mode allows you to search also by middle name, and approximate birth year, as well as the usual "name," "address" "state" and "phone number." The birth year feature is a boon because you can exclude a huge number of people that way.

3. http://www.people.yahoo.com/ reveals people's email addresses as well as basic contact info like phone and address. This is a plus that I haven't found on other sites without to first having to personally subscribe.

4. http://www.peoplesearch.com/ is interesting because it will tell you names of possible relatives of the person you are looking for. All good clues to tell you if this is the right John Smith you are looking for.

It's possible as you draw nearer to the reunion, you may start feeling a little desperate and may want to consider paying money to find people. I've heard about the paid resources available to lawyers to find people. Ask an attorney in your class if they have access to this kind of service.

If anyone has experience with paid people finding services, please let us know. We'd be glad to hear from you.


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