A lot has been said in newspapers about how easy it is to find people on the Internet. I have found that Net resources are available, but the job still isn't easy. There is no one place you can go for a single answer. Not everybody is on the Net, and many of those who work and play here are not highly visible. If you want to locate John Smith somewhere in the western 15 states, you're going to spend a lot of time and probably end up frustrated.

Still, there are good places to start. Several sites now provide "White Pages" or "Yellow Pages" for both the Net and US telephone systems. You can search for an email address using as little as a last name. To narrow the search, you'll need a first name, state and city. You can now locate several million people in such sources. If your favorite person has a listed telephone, then the number rises to over 90 million people in the US. If you're looking for a business, the numbers are also in the millions.

The most useful starting point which I have found for locating the most people is national telephone directories. Several sites provide national telephone directory search. One of the best collections of gateways to such sites is The Ultimate White Pages. This site provides submission gateways and links to other locations which do the search. Two of those other locations are Who - Where and The Switchboard.

There are multiple ways to find anything or anyone on the Internet. One site which has assembled a number of links (including reference to books on the subject) is: Islander. The site includes a section on finding missing relatives. It appears to be in the process of becoming a "one stop shopping experience" for resources pertaining to finding people.

Increasingly, the major search engines and Internet Directories have recognized that there is intense interest in the Internet about finding people.  As an example, go to Altavista and enter "finding people" in the search window.  Not only will you receive over 13,000 "hits" on the term, Altavista will immediately respond with its own "Altavista knows the answer to these questions" links, with search gateways for finding email addresses and phone numbers.

Email search sites use data compiled from a variety of sources. The most important is traffic in USENET newsgroups. Several Internet sites search recent news as well as the Web. One place I have found to be particularly helpful is focussed on only the USENET: Dejanews

At this site, you can find your target name in a large database of USENET postings. Select Power Search from the sidebar menu and enter variations on the full name, in quotes. Select either the current database (a couple of months) or the historical database (a few years). When you find an interesting posting, select the email link to the address. Dejanews gives you a list of every USENET posting recorded from that email account, across thousands of interest groups. Such a profile can show a lot about the interests of the poster. Looking at the postings themselves may confirm that you have found the individual you are looking for.

Because many people on the Internet seem to be trying to find somebody, a number of sites address specifically this need, in a relatively wide context. One such site is Be Your Own Private Investigator Homepage at Geocities. The site references a number of free or low cost on-line search services. However, I advise you to exercise caution in "being your own" PI. One reason to pay somebody to do such work is that it takes time and effort to learn all the tricks. Another is that finding someone who doesn't want to be found can sometimes be dangerous.

If you're looking for someone for a special reason, then special resources can help. For instance, several groups in the "alt.support" hierarchy of USENET offer mutual or self-help for people in special categories. These include abuse survivors, adoptees, and folks suffering from rare disease or chronic pain. You can use Dejanews to find an appropriate group.

To find a "place" on the Net which serves the special purpose of your search, you may want to correspond with other people who share your concern. A lot of discussion groups are not in the USENET. They are called "LISTSERVs" and they are reached by direct email. To locate a LISTSERV, you may start at: Liszt with a search by category or keyword. If you don't find a group at Liszt, you may need a subject guide to resources. Two good places to locate such guides or other introductory articles are The Argus Clearinghouse (Guide to Internet Guides) and Yahoo .

A lot of people these days are trying to find biological parents or children who were adopted. There are very difficult and emotional issues associated with such a search. However, I found some places to start, and you can find others via the Internet search engines:

Birth Quest
Searchable Adoptee Databases . This link also provides reviews for a number of books which adoptees or parents just beginning the journey to discovery may wish to read.

A lot of folks want to know how to search for somebody by Social Security number. While you cannot yet do that for free, one site will at least let you check to see in what state and approximately when an SS Number was probably issued. The site advertises fee services which may lead to the name and address of the holder, if you are willing to pay a (small) fee. Try Informus .

Many states or counties maintain vital records (births, deaths, marriages, drivers license records, many others) which are gradually being brought on line. To find out what records you may be able to access in a given state, you might wish to review the state "home page." Many of these pages have Site locators with the following form:

http://www.state.xx.us/
where xx is the two-letter lower-case abbreviation for the state's name.

Although it can be time consuming and imprecise, one way to locate someone whose circumstances you know about is to search vital records (births, deaths, marriages, name changes etc.). A site which provides addresses for writing to vital records offices (organized by state and county) is United States Vital Records Information. The site is not affiliated with the US government. It also contains a number of links to information on genealogy.

A PI referred me to one site which I don't know quite how to categorize. This place provides links to documents concerning social security search and related topics. The tone of the site materials is somewhat "off the wall." But the general idea seems to be "here are idiots who have made social security info available on the Net." The idea is to take such materials off the net, but the resources include places where small SSN databases have been made available in the past. Evaluate carefully what you find at The Stalkers' Home Page

Go to Free and Low Cost Resources Off Line

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