If you have a missed call from an unknown phone number, you may want to identify the phone number of the person who tried to reach you before you dial that number. Chances are you’re hooking up with a telemarketer. Eventually some random person simply dialed the wrong number. Or it’s your long lost best friend who finally found you. You never know.

There are several free online tools to reverse lookup and identify a North American phone number. However, with cell phone numbers it’s almost impossible to find out the identity of the person behind the phone number. Unless you are willing to pay.

Sadly, most seemingly free services will redirect you to a paid option, even if it’s possible to find the information for free elsewhere. To avoid these pitfalls, I have compiled a list with services for reverse phone number search and how to use them.

1. WhoCallsMe? (Worldwide)

If you suspect that a telemarketer called you, this is the service you should try. Enter the number in the search field and hit “Get Details“. If the number is not listed, no one has had complaints about it yet.

The database at WhoCallsMe? is supplied by its users. So if you have been receiving unsolicited calls from telemarketers, surveyors, charities or other organizations, help others avoid these people by entering their phone number and details into WhoCallsMe?’s database.

A similar page is Who Called Us.

2. Google PhoneBook (North America)

For North American landline numbers, Google is an excellent choice to identify a phone number. For listed US numbers, Google may return a phonebook result that looks like this:

It reveals the name and address of the person who owns the respective number. Using the convenient GoogleMaps link you can look up in what neighborhood they live.

For other numbers, Google may return links to local online phone books.

Now you could directly go to one of your local online phone books. Which one you choose of course depends on where you are. Unfortunately, I can’t list one for each country. Besides, reverse phone number search is restricted in and unavailable for several countries, including Australia and the UK.

The following four sites are for Canada and Germany. They basically all work the same – you find the reverse lookup option, enter the number, and hit search. So without further comments, here it goes…

3. 411 (Canada)

4. Canpages (Canada)

5. Das Telefonbuch (Germany)

6. Das Örtliche (Germany)

These were your options for landlines.

But what if you’re trying to identify a cell phone number? Honestly, I could not find a free tool for identifying the owner of a given number.

However, due to the nature of North American cell phone numbers, the prefix reveals the location of the caller. The most you can find out for free on top of that, is the name of the provider and when the number was registered.

7. Cell Phone Tracer (North America)

This website will find you the the phone carrier and the location of the given phone number. If you choose to continue to receive the entire available information, you will be asked to pay.

8. Cellphone Registry (North America)

The Cellphone Registry may be able to tell you when the phone number in question was registered. Unlike the previous website, it was not able to find the phone carrier. And all further information is available for cash only.

Did we miss an online phonebook for your country with reverse lookup option? Please feel free to request a link or provide us with the resource in the comments!

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Well if you are both technologically adept you could browse on over to Missed Connections and see if the other half of that missed connection has already left a post looking for you. If not you can post your own request.

The service is ridiculously simple. It has a place to search for missed connections and leaves you the ability to leave your own. It does things Craigslist style with private messages being routed to your personal email address without giving the seeker your actual address.

Let’s take a look at how it works. I will be leaving a Missed Connection message for this beautiful, sexy, uninhibited phone I saw on the corner of my office… Yes I said PHONE! Maybe you didn’t realize I am happily married? The only flings and affairs I have are with my gadgets

Once you hit the home page you will see this:

There is a link to add your missed connection now right there on the bottom right hand side. Let’s walk through it.

The first step asks you why you arrived at their site. Pretty much seeing if you are looking for a woman or a dude and if you are a woman or a dude. Select which situation matches yours or if you are disgusted by the question check the skip this step button and hit the go to step 2 button… Only 4 steps to go..

The next question seems to be very important and that is when you missed your missed connection. They are looking for a start and end time/date. Fill it out and continue on. 3 more steps to go!

Good old Google Maps to the rescue! Type in as close to an exact address you can – Google style. Hit the locate on map button and Google will zero in on your location. The more specific you are the better your chances are of finding that special someone (something )

It located my location fairly easily and once I confirmed it was correct I hit the go to step 4 button and now only 2 steps to go! Are you excited? I am!

That is it! All I need to do now is confirm the email confirmation link that they send me and my listing will be posted! It won’t be long now before that Touch Pro2 calls me! I am sure of it!

Now if you are on the other side looking for a missed connection – hoping the other party has already posted it. Find the search box on the home page and search for your zip code like so…

That will pull up all the missed connection from your zip code for your browsing pleasure. There are also links for email updates and a RSS feed! I love RSS feeds!

Clicking on any of the links will take you to that individual post with a link to email the poster like so…

That’s it! Now I wait! Do you have another method to find a missed connection? We would love to hear about it in the comments – for real! Put us on.

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There are several paid services online where you can find out details of somebody’s shady past. In most cases, so-called ‘”free” sites are simply marketing tricks to get you to pay for the information you really need. However, since everything at MakeUseOf is truly free, here is how you can perform a free criminal background check online without paying a dime. Note that this is valid only for US residents.

Criminal Searches

Criminal Searches allows you to:

• Search criminal records by first and last name, optionally filtered by US state
• Search criminals in a neighborhood
• Search sex offenders in a neighborhood
• Sign up to receive alerts on criminal records of up to 5 names
• Get criminal statistics based on types of crime, ethnicity, gender and age

Search by Name

Criminal search results are categorized into Behavioral, Business, Drug & Alcohol, Sex Related, Theft & Robbery, Violent, and Traffic/Other. Not surprisingly, you will notice that criminals like to change names and the site shows you all the different names associated with that person.

Clicking the View Details button will take you to a detailed page with the free criminal background info about a specific individual. Where available, you can see information that can help identify a person such as age, height, race, eye color, hair color, etc.

A list of all offenses is seen along with details of each offense such as date and place of conviction, the verdict and sentence.

Free Criminal Background Check by Neighborhood

When you search an address or a neighborhood area for criminals, you get a Google Map mashup with the locations and types of criminals in that area. You can use the usual Google Map controls to move, zoom in/out, etc. Click on any of the offenders to see brief details from where you can jump to the full details of that person. For example, here is a map of criminals in Trenton, NJ:

Sex Offender Search

The Sex Offender search works in similar fashion, showing you a Google Map with locations of registered sex offenders. A search in Los Angeles for example revealed 77 registered sex offenders. Detailed information on each offender is seen on the left, when you click any offender icon in the map.

Advanced Search

If you know more details of a specific person you suspect, you can use the Advanced Search that allows you to do a free criminal background check using middle name, address, age range, or even date of birth.

Criminal Statistics

The statistics section of the website with pretty pie charts is compelling for anyone with even a passing interest in crime studies. The crime category chart allows you to further dig into each type. For example, Theft and Robbery can be further segmented into Stolen Property, Burglary, Fraud, Larceny, and so on.

Suspect someone? Want to check how safe is your neighborhood? Go to Criminal Searches and find out.

Important: Please be careful to use this website as a starting point. Remember that free checks work only on publicly available information and may not always be comprehensive. If your safety is at stake, it is best to get paid professional services before placing your faith in someone.

Also note that harassing anyone on the offender registry database is a misdemeanor and can be punished both by a fine and jail time.

You can also check out previously profiled SpotCrime for crime reports in your neighborhood and Family Watchdog to get a map view of the National Sex Offender registry. Did you find Criminal Searches useful? Liked this post? Tell us in the comments!

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If you take stock of your own friends list you will surely find that at least half of them have come through the lost and found power of social networks. And if you take stock again, you will find that our online habitat is mostly a few of these social networking sites and of course, the omnipresent browser.

What I would do without the browser and those little byte sized Firefox add-ons which make it a whole lot richer. Using Firefox outfitted with the right “find friends” add-ons, I can home in any of the social networking sites and hobnob with fellow groupies.

So let’s head over to the Mozilla Add-ons gallery and see what’s in store for us who like to schmooze over bandwidths.

Firefox Super Search

It’s like a master list…a who’s who of search engines. The add-on installs as a toolbar. There are 160 of them with almost 70 that can be used from the toolbar itself. The layout is categorized into different types of searches. So after using it a few times one shouldn’t have a problem dropping down to the right search engine.

Though not specifically for ‘searching friends’, there are a lots of them which help you hunt for them over the net. There are basically two ways to search – blue icons mark the ones you can use directly from the toolbar; green icons are the directory lists for which the shortcut is given in the add-on.

The list of searches is long and varied – reverse lookups, social search, people search, public records search et al. apart from generic web searches.

BuddyFetch

Buddyfetch is an experimental “find friends” Firefox add-on that searches across many social networks IMs and dating sites. It gets added as an additional search engine in the search engine bar. You can search for buddies based on common interests, gender, age, language or location. Use the filters and single or combination keywords to find people after your own heart.

LinkedIn

This one is for the serious guy, not for the tween, the teen or the tweet. LinkedIn is the world’s most popular social network for the professional. If you are one among the 45 million members from a cross-section of 150 industries then you are sure to find a likeminded friend or contact here. The Firefox search add-on makes the job a tad easier by adding a search engine to the Firefox search bar. Not very impressive but its simple functionality lets you search from the bar.

You can also keep an eye open for the updated version of the LinkedIn Companion for Firefox which doesn’t seem to be working for Firefox 3.5x yet.

Facebook Toolbar

The Facebook toolbar brings the social networking site and your circle of friends to your browser. The toolbar lets you do your thing like search and connect with friends, receive notifications and share content. You can set your status via the toolbar and get the same of your friends. Upload photos and quick link to all areas of Facebook. If you spend most of your time poking and defacing your friends walls then this one is for you.

Friendbar

This add-on is less about finding a friend but more about keeping them. Though the add-on installs at a slightly hefty 1MB, it offers real time benefits for the Facebook and Twitter buffs. The interface almost resembles a media player with streaming real time updates (photo and text) of activities in the two social sites.

To complete the effect there’s a play-pause button too. You can post, tweet and reply from the toolbar. Instant TinyURLs makes sending interesting links easy as a tweet. The settings panel lets you configure the Twitter update frequency and other sundries like the look and the scrolling style.

FireStatus

This very unobtrusive experimental add-on lets you send status updates, notes and URL links synchronously to multiple social networks and services, like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Delicious and identi.ca. It also displays updates from them in notification pop-ups, for real-time communication with friends. It installs near the status bar and a right click on the icon opens up all its features.

PeekYou Status Bar

Yes, this one is almost the web equivalent from the peek-a-boo game we have all played as kids. This is a search engine enhancement as it shows the people behind the search results. That is the guy who is associated with the site.

According to the developers it works with most of the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, and Clutsy.com. The add-on installs as a status bar and updates the info with each site that’s loaded on that page.  Clicking on the small profile pics next to the search results or the bar takes it to another detailed info page.

It looks like a work in progress as numerous well known blogging names were not displayed. You can also check out profile listings from the homepage of PeekYou where you can search by name, location and tag.

Identify

This add-on also does a similar ‘unmasking’ job as the last one. Identify though goes one step ahead and collates together available profile info on the man behind a website or blog from many different sources and lists the other social sites where he can be found. All it takes are two keystrokes once a page loads – On Windows it’s Alt – i. Of course, expect hits and misses so do double check the info always.

Kutano

If friendships are forged around common interests then a browser add-on like Kutano is a big help. Kutano basically connects the webpage you are browsing to the comments it’s generating in Twitter-space. This add-on won’t get your old friends but will certainly help make a few new ones. Kutano opens up on a sidebar and lists all tweets and discussions on related to that site/page…whether it’s good or bad. Kutano lets you respond and start discussions yourself. You can share the discussions in Facebook and MySpace with a click.

Yoono

I won’t say too much about Yoono as Wez has shown in detail how to Stay Socially Connected Online With Yoono . Suffice to say that this add-on acts like a central command center for social connectedness. Connect with your buddies on social networks and on IMs like Google Talk Yahoo, MSN or AIM. After log-in you can start searching for friends who are on Yoono by using an address book of Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or AOL, or simply by their Yoono username.

These ten Firefox add-ons are not only about searching for friends old and new using the power of social networking. They are also add-ons which make social networking more seamless by bringing together the different services under a common umbrella. They also underscore the one universal fact – it’s easier to make friends than it is to keep them. Let’s hope these add-ons add to the heart that beats for a friend.

Has your social connectedness hinged around any of these add-ons?

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Controlling the Google search engine top rankings for what comes up on a search page may seem out of reach, but with a few easy steps, you can take charge of the results to improve upon your name and personal brand. Whether you’re disappointed with what appears or nothing comes up at all, remember that results will vary, literally, depending on a number of factors like how common or unique your name is and its current presence on the Web.

With employers and basically everyone who knows you potentially Googling your name to find out about you, it’s becoming increasingly important that you have at least some kind of grasp of your online identity and reputation and that you understand how to take better control of the search engine top ranked sites that mention your name (in a positive light). It’s relatively easy, and best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you a dime.

Privacy and Security

First things first. Dealing with and using your real name online can be risky business. It shouldn’t, however, be a problem as long as you do it wisely and correctly. It’s vital that you never publish personal information that you don’t want anyone to get a hold of. Stuff like your home address or phone number should be kept to yourself.

Some of the things Google simply doesn’t tolerate on its search pages include your social security or government ID number, your bank account or credit card number, or an image of your handwritten signature.

If such content is published on the Web somewhere, you can request its removal from Google search results. Learn more about how to remove false information about yourself on the Internet.

On social networking websites, be sure to check out your privacy settings so that you can specify who gets to view your profile.

Create Your Own Google Profile

Google created profiles to give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name. Profile results are displayed at the bottom of search pages.

First, you’ll need to make a profile with your name and a little information about yourself. You can also write a short bio and add links to some of your public pages if you have any, like online photo albums, social network profiles, and personal websites.

You then have the option of adding contact information, which is not made public and you get to decide who can view it.

From my experience, the more information you add to your profile, the higher it’s ranked, so keep that in mind.

2. Join Social Networks

Take advantage of the popularity of social networking websites and services. Profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Classmates, and LinkedIn are musts. These websites have significant PageRank, meaning your profile may be able to achive top search engine rankings - with placement on the first page of Google search results for your name.

Feel free to go the extra mile by making a profile and listening to music on Last.fm, putting up videos on YouTube, or sharing photos on Flickr. Just be sure to enter your real name as the profile’s username only if you’re comfortable with doing so.

3. Start Your Own Blog

Another thing you may want to try if you have the time is to start your own blog. Websites like Blogger and WordPress allow you to publish your very own blog for free.

I highly recomment you check out recent MakeUseOf article on How To Easily Create a Blog with Tumblr.

Ideally, the subdomain should include your real name (yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.wordpress.com) when you register.

4. Get a Domain Name

If all else fails or you want to try to go for the very top of Google’s search listings, buying your own domain name may be the answer. Check to see if your first and last name together is available for a .com domain name registration.

As far as the content for your websites goes, it doesn’t have to be the best. Just writing in a little bit about yourself or posting your resume should do.

Getting your own domain is probably the best way to grab that top spot in Google search results for your name. However, the downside is that it’ll cost you to purchase the domain name and have your website hosted.

For the obsessive, you can actually set up Google Alerts to track any mentions of your name on the Web.

We have done some similar articles on online reputation management and controlling your online name in the past. Here’s three of them :

- How to Maintain a Professional Reputation Online
- 15 Websites to Find People On The Internet
- Manage Your Various Online Identities With Chi.mp
- Cool ‘Identity Search’ Tools for Social Web

What pops up when you Google yourself? Let us know in the comments.

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The problem, though, is that Twitter does essentially nothing to help you find interesting people. There was the whole @replies debacle, where Twitter took away the ability to see who your friends are talking to – that was almost a disaster for discovering new people.

Even after that was fixed, Twitter made it easy to search for interesting tweets but not as much for doing a Twitter search to find interesting people. That’s what TwitterHIT is out there to remedy. TwitterHIT is all about finding new people and new friends on Twitter, by providing some unique search options.

The first thing to do is log in – you use your Twitter account credentials – which always makes me nervous – but in a few hours of using it, TwitterHIT didn’t ever tweet anything or take information I didn’t want it to. It appears, at least for now, trustworthy. It does send one tweet when you follow people (a super-cryptic one at that), but it’s harmless enough, and easy to delete.

Once you’re logged in, you’re brought to the “start” screen (above). On that screen, you get two different boxes – a space for keywords, and one for locations. The keywords are essentially like any other Twitter search, but the location-based search is what makes TwitterHIT great.

Let’s say, you want to find people in your city who like to play squash. Type “played squash” or “playing squash” into the keywords, and then your location in the bottom field. All the people on Twitter who are near you will be returned to you, and they are the ones who have tweeted about their squash-playing activities.

TwitterHIT conducts a Twitter search, finds the results and presents them in a list on the results page, with usernames, pictures, and latest tweets all on that one page. It returns 20 results, and with an upgraded account – 200. The free account always did me fine, though. Browse the list, and toggle the checkbox next to anyone you want to follow. At the end of the list, click the “Follow These People” button, and TwitterHIT automatically follows them for you.

If you want to, you can then repeat the whole process. There are some seriously annoying ads that come up after each “Follow These People” session, but they go away after a few seconds.

Also part of TwitterHIT’s upgraded account (which you get either by paying $147 or completing a trial offer through an affiliate like Blockbuster) are several other tools – following back your followers automatically, automatically retweeting things with certain keywords, and the like. These all sound like ingredients for a spammy Twitter account to me, or may come in handy for someone who uses Twitter for business purposes – the free version’s got the one feature I really want to use.

TwitterHIT is great for making Twitter a more localized version of itself, and helping to bring you into contact with people you might actually develop a relationship with outside of Twitter. There are more and more people on Twitter every day, and TwitterHIT offers one great way to find the people near you who might actually be relevant to you both on and off Twitter.

How do you find interesting people, not just interesting tweets, on Twitter? Don’t forget to share with us in the comments.

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Don’t be deceived by the perception that everything you do online appears to be rather unreal or “in game”. All your traces will lead back to you. In the worst case scenario, people you least wish to spot your faults and failures will discover your “other side”. Read on if you’re worried or want to avoid mistakes in the future.

Why you should worry!

Every person with access to the internet knows search engines (e.g. Google) and search engines know you. Search engines naturally collect all the data they can get a hold of. And everyone who knows you may be interested in finding out more about you.

For example your boss or the company you would like to work for or your girlfriend or that stalker who has a crush on you. What are the things they should rather not know about you? Signing up for a dating website for example is harmless, unless your significant other finds out about it. Worried, yet?

How bad is it?

Ever googled your name or your eMail address? Instead of Google you may also try Spock, the people search engine. At Spock you can claim your own results, edit or improve your profile and monitor new information coming in.

So what do these searches reveal? Anything your family or a potential employer may find disturbing? Hopefully not!

Guard yourself!

What can you do to protect your privacy?

Set up an alternative disposable eMail address and use fake name generator to browse incognito. That way you can more or less anonymously engage in private activities that should not be discovered by the wrong people.

Obviously, if you’re using a public computer, make sure you erase all your traces, like cookies, browsing history, passwords, cache etc.

Don’t post intimidating pictures on social networks or anywhere else for that matter, you don’t know who may find them.

Generally, the safest way to stay out of trouble is to avoid trouble. Simply act like the sympathetic and professional person you wish to be perceived as. At least when you’re using your vital data.

Be searchable!

Rather than be completely under the radar and remove all personal information about yourself from the web, you should remain searchable! Because what would be more suspicious than fishy information? No information at all!

Take advantage of the system and do use your real name and your main eMail address in the right places. Make sure people will easily find good things when searching for you and don’t make them dig deep.

For example register a domain or sign up with a career website like Xing or LinkedIn. On these sites you can create the profile you want others to see. Feed it with honest facts about yourself and make connections that matter. Don’t be afraid to mention your private online projects, like websites, forums or blogs, if they are safe and may be relevant for a future career.

What to do when it’s too late?

If information has leaked into the World Wide Web that you would have liked to conceal, it’s almost too late. But you may be able to partially revert the leak and hide it. Is your eMail address pointing to an ugly forum? Go there and change your eMail address. Simply go ahead and tackle the search results one after the other and see what data you can change or remove.

Finally, hope that none of the details were cached. If it’s really bad you may want to hire professionals to help remove information from servers and databases.

Just in case your searches have revealed that someone writes libelous things about you, Ryan recently published a great article about How to Remove False Information about Yourself on the Internet. Good luck!

Need tips for browsing anonymously and removing your traces? Search the MUO article base for safer browsing and privacy.

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It’s a process really. Here’s how I did it and how you can find someone’s email address.

(Please don’t be a stalker. That’s just rude, really – she’s just NOT that into you alright!)

Information Gathering

This is the most important step in finding a lost friend’s e-mail address. Recall what you can about them – Interests, last known location, hobbies – anything whether you think it is relative or not. Oh yeah! Relatives are a good one to write down too, if you know them.

Just-Being-Friendly Search Zone

Contact any mutual acquaintances you and the lost friend may still have. One of them might have the e-mail address you need. In that case, your search is over! If not, then they may be able to provide you with more up-to-date information. Maybe they bumped into the friend at the mall over Christmas and found out they have moved to another state.

You could try searching social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, but let’s assume you are lazy or efficient, or both. Then you would use search engines that search a bunch of social networking sites, like Spock, Pipl and 123people. Some more people search engines were mentioned in our recent article 15 Websites to Find People On The Internet.

Remember to search on name variants too. They could be going by Richard instead of Dick now. Or maybe they have got married and have a new last name. Lots of women seem to be listing maiden and married names on these sites. Not that I’ve noticed……

As an adjunct to these I’ve used both Bigfoot Directories and My Email Address Is with good results. These are both free sites – I prefer My Email Address Is since it checks 4 different directories at once. I even found some of my old e-mail addresses.

If you have their e-mail address now, send them a short, but sweet and polite, e-mail re-introducing yourself. Don’t go into your life story, because you may have the wrong person. Just write something like:

Hello, I’m looking for an old friend by the name of John Smith. I went to Riverdale High School with him in 1953. Are you him? If not, please excuse me. If you are, I would like to renew our acquaintance, if that’s okay with you.

Yours Truly,
Jim Dandy

If you haven’t found an e-mail address for your friend by now, stop and ask yourself if maybe they don’t want people e-mailing them out of the blue. To go beyond this point is borderline-creepy. I understand if it is something of an emergency, like an old mutual friend is ill, or there’s a big 20th reunion, but make sure the reason is right.

Borderline-Stalker Search Zone

Still hunting, huh?

It’s time to Google then. Start by searching out their name and variations of their name. No cigar? Then you can search websites that the person is likely to be a member of. Let’s say he used to be a big computer geek. You might start searching through sites like Slashdot or Digg. There’s a good chance they joined a forum and may have their e-mail address listed there.

Still no luck? Wow, you’re persistent. Do you have a rare blood type because going any further with your search takes you into the….

What?!-Do-You-Need-a-Kidney-Transplant?! Search Zone

Let’s assume you know roughly where your donor, I mean friend, is living and you think you know what line of work they are in. Maybe they live in Redmond and are a computer geek. You might start searching Microsoft’s site for the e-mail address. At this point you are pretty much a stalker. Just so there’s no confusion here – you have crossed the line.

The e-mail isn’t there, but there is a reference to him in some obscure knowledge base article. Now, Stalker McStalkyPants, you can look at other e-mail addresses on the website and see if there is a naming pattern. Maybe it’s first initial and last name, like jdoe@website.com. Put your friend’s name into the same format and send them an e-mail. Be polite and not too overbearing. You don’t want to ask for the kidney at this point. See if they want to talk to you first. You are dangerously close to living on weekend passes here.

If you haven’t found the e-mail address yet, just give up. Please. It’s so creepy now, I need to take a shower in Listerine.

Best of luck on your searches and I hope the surgery is a success.

Got any other creepy-but-legal methods to find long lost friends, or people of the same blood-type? Did you ever manage to find someone’s email address by searching online? Share them here!

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Crawl 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. The Internet is filled with opportunities to create a profile, and every single profile provides the Internet with additional data points about you that people can use to find you when they need to.

There are many websites that search standard social networks like MySpace or Facebook, but Pipl is one resource that conducts a “deep web” dig for the name you’re looking for on “non-typical sites.” The search results from Piple are pretty impressive.  You can read about how to use Piple at this article by Karl. Conducting a deep search for myself, I found that the results covered data pulled from profiles at MySpace, Facebook, and countless other sites like article directories and blogs. I was especially impressed by Piple’s efforts to dig for email addresses and content within miscellaneous web pages.

Another powerful search is Google’s Blog Search which will find anyone who has published to a blog on the Internet.  The results on this search turned up my published articles at MakeUseOf, those at my three blogs, and even articles that I wrote for clients and had completely forgotten about.

Probably the most powerful tool to find someone who may have only posted to the internet a long time ago is Google Groups.  Google Groups has incorporated over 800 million Usenet messages into its database, an impressive 20 year’s worth of Internet conversations dating back to 1981.

By far, one of the best search engine crawlers for finding people through searching all types of Internet content is 123people. I found that this website was able to find more accurate hits when I searched for myself than most other identity search engines.

Just a straight search without location found dozens of weblinks blogs, social network profiles and documents, most of which were an accurate hit. Needless to say, I’d recommend 123people to anyone looking to find if anyone they know has any content whatsoever published on the Internet about them.

Searching Social Networks

Social networks are very hard to avoid on the Internet. It’s impossible not to get sucked into a forum discussion, a Facebook group game, or connecting with industry leaders on LinkedIn. Because of this, the odds are very good that the person you’re looking for has registered and created a profile in at least one of those networks.

YoName is one free website that searches through a list of over thirty popular and obscure social networks including Imeem, LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, Yahoo 360, Flickr, and Zorpia. We’ve examined it before at MakeUseOf. The results are displayed in tabular format so you can select which social network search to focus on. I found that YoName could only find a few of my online profiles.

Wink searches social networks such as MySpace, Reunion, LinkedIn, Friendster, and others. Wink results were somewhat limited though, with only 28 results and only one of those was an accurate “hit.”

Spokeo is a powerful social network tool that searches through a huge list of social networks and websites. It discovers things that aren’t very easy to find, like hidden Facebook profiles, posts or comments to YouTube, blogs or comments on Blogger, accounts on Flickr, Twitter, WebShots and more. The results are comprehensive and include results from over 40 major websites.

The only drawback is that to sign up you have to provide Spokeo with your email address and password so that it can actually access your email account and extract your contacts.

Jobs and Companies

If you know where someone works, but you don’t have their contact information, then tracing them by company or industry is your best option. There are several tools available that can help.

Jobster is a large database of job listings where you can find people not only by name, but within a certain industry or specific company. You can sift through the huge database of folks who’ve added their profile to Jobster in hopes of landing employment.

Another great industry search site is ZoomInfo, which is focused on company details. If you have a profile on the internet that lists your affiliation with a company, the odds are good that you’re in the ZoomInfo database. I even found myself listed in the database as co-owner of RealityUncovered, which is true, but it was only part of a few online profiles – meaning ZoonInfo can crawl profiles for company affiliations. Very impressive.

Online Public Records Search

Of course, if you’re conducting a full background check on someone, then you’ll want to find the following information:

• Residences over the last few years
• Criminal record check
• Driving record
• Birthday and birth location (for citizenship verification)
• Child predator check

If a person has a criminal record or any court ruling, it’s amazing how much information you can find about it online.  If you know a name and birthdate of the person you’re looking for, that’s all you really need – although the location information would make the search go even more smoothly.

Zaba Search is one of the best sites for conducting free public records queries. Using Zaba Search, you can determine a person’s exact past and current addresses and phone numbers. If you want a detailed report of all past addresses, relatives, criminal history, bakrupcies, small claims judgments and more, it’ll cost about $50 through Intelius. You can also conduct a phone number search, which is nice if you receive a prank phonecall from someone you don’t know. It will give you the latitude and longitude of the location, but for specific details you need to purchase an Intelius reverse lookup.

Google Government search sets the bar high with the ability to search through government news reports and even government websites. By searching names, you’ll often discover someone involved in government research, grants, or non-profit activities.

If you suspect the person you’re looking for is in prison, then search the state or federal inmate locator directories.  Just pick a state, or search through the federal system.

USA.gov provides a huge database for all state and federal agencies. Most services where you need to pay for background details on a person come from these free state and federal agency databases. You can find the data for free by searching through this website to find those agencies and conducting the search yourself.  For example, digging through the state of Maine agencies I found where you can search through Maine criminal records.

Criminal Searches is one of the first truly free search websites that allow you to call up the criminal records of anyone based on name, location, birthday or age range.  To test it, I searched for the record of a person in California who I know, from previous research, has a criminal record there.  Sure enough, Criminal searches found it.

The results also offer the source of information (court office) where you can send for a copy of the entire case records (for a fee).  Is this easy online access freedom of information or invasion of privacy?  Should your criminal records be on public display on the Internet?  Or is it more important for the public to know who the former criminals are and where they live? Either way, Criminal Searches is leading the way in making this information both public and very convenient.

Make it Simple

When it comes right down to it, you want to be able to find someone quickly and free.  The sites above will help, but in most cases you’ll need to at least learn a few details about the person, like 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, and at times shocking.

Have you ever tried to search and find people on the internet? Do you feel easy access to personal records is an invasion of privacy or an important public right? What other free online people search tools do you know about for looking for people? Share your opinions and sites in the comment section below.

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We have seen a few FREE people search tools online but none of them compares to Pipl. Pipl makes it easy to find a lost love, friend or relative without much effort. After trying it out I was amazed at the amount of information that is freely available.

I should start by saying when I first came around to the Internet, I had no problem with putting personal information into my profiles but in the last 5 years or so I put that to an end.

So the first person I searched for was yours truly as you can see below:

Just simply fill in whatever information you have about your victim subject and hit search. It really could not be any simpler. After hitting search you will get the customary waiting/loading screen.

And then you are greeted by your results categorized in a no-nonsense kind of way. Separating different types of data so you can hone in on what you are looking for.

This search pulled in images of me from all over the web, (and some NOT of me like the one of PodCasting Jason above and some other random dude on the bottom.) It had my PHYSICAL address from about 7 years ago and an address of a company I worked for. I was impressed. All of this could definitely be used to track my ass down!

I scrolled down for some more Karl information:

This app found a hell of a lot of my online profiles and even a link to a comment on Lifehacker Australia praising me. I see an ICQ account I haven’t used in years and a Flickr album I forgot about. Nifty nifty.

Now you can also use the links at the top of the home page to search for phone numbers or online usernames. These both worked out a little better than I would like – and i WILL NOT be showing you these screenies No, it’s not that I don’t love all of our MakeUseOf readers, it’s just that I don’t want to talk to all of you on my cell phone!

Do you have a tool that you use to track people down? Have you had a great success story? Maybe someone managed to find a lost love using a similar tool? Care to share it with us? Then hit us up in the comments and happy tracking!

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This sidebar makes research a breeze. Juice is currently in open-beta and available for free from Linkool Labs.

Juice has proven to be very useful, and has saved me extra open tabs and a lot of time. The Juice algorithm gathers information from multiple sources and aggregates it in a very simple, easy to use interface. For instance, you can just drag and drop “Google” (or any other company’s name) from an article to read the company description on CrunchBase, the latest stock quotations, news articles from major media outlets as well as blogs, images and video.

Plus the amazing thing about this addon is its speed and accuracy. It takes a second at the most for all this information to display – and it is contextually sensitive – which means a search for something like “apple” won’t relay you news about fruits if you’re visiting a tech-related website.

The Juice website explains the ‘magic’ feature:

This engine, comprised of a natural language processing system and a dictionary management system, helps to evolve the semantic web by connecting keywords with the most relevant, rich content from third-party web services.

It’s engine fails gracefully when it can’t find information using its algorithm – to an improved Google search -  with tabs for Images, News, Videos and Blogs. There are no obtrusive ads – a big plus when it comes to these personalized searches.

Here’s Juice’s demo video from YouTube :

When it comes to beta applications, especially these days, with tight release schedules and even more demanding investors, you come to expect crashes and hangs.  Not with Juice which took 2,3MB extra memory and didn’t cause any problems at all. The download itself is small, the download bar stopping at about 500KB.

It’s my job to test different things and write about them, but I don’t often continue using the product regularly.  Like John C. Dvorak said: “99% of everything is crap”. Juice definitely deserves its space on my computer.

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Whoisi

Whoisi is an easy to use search engine, currently in public beta, that allows you to find out what your friends are doing. The Whoisi search engine is unique because it’s public and can be edited by anyone, just like a wiki. Best of all, there is no sign up required and your friends do not have to participate on the site in order for you to keep track of them.

Whoisi allows you to search with any name you want such as a real name, screen name, or even a nickname. As you can see in the screenshot below, Whoisi was able to find me and quite a few sites that I am active on. If there happens to be a site that a person is on but does not enable RSS feeds (like MySpace), then Whoisi will not be able to find it.

You are given the option to add another person to Whoisi with the same name as the person you just searched for. For any person that is found on Whoisi, you can follow them, add another site (URL or RSS) that they are a member of, and even edit their current information.

You might be wondering how you can follow people if there is no sign up required. Well, it’s all done with a simple cookie that Whoisi sets for you and if you want to save that login so you can connect later or log in from another machine? Check out the “Login Later” link on the right hand side and bookmark the magic URL.

So what if you search for a person and no one comes up at all? If you know the person, you’re able to enter a name and URL (with an available RSS) for them and you’re done. That site will now show for the person when they are searched for.

YoName

yoName is a cool identity search tool that allows you to search for people across social networks, blogs, and more. With yoName you can search by email, username, first and last name or phone number. Their advanced search options even allows you to pick which sites you’d like to search through; currently you can search 27 different sites.

Sometimes searching for the same name on yoName may be inconsistent because their searches are in real time. So, “if a social network site does not respond to their search request within the allotted time period yoName will not display any results.” Also, you don’t have to worry about someone finding out that you were searching for them (by name) on yoName because all searches are anonymous.

Searching by email is a little different though. “If this is the first time that the e-mail address has ever been searched on yoName, then an email will be sent to the person inviting them to try yoName. Your information is NOT sent to the owner of that email address.”

yoName can even help you find lost friends. All you have to do is enter information such as first and last name, nicknames, and info about the last time you saw the person. yoName will create a web page with the information that you enter about them so that sites like Google and Yahoo will be able to search the page. If your lost friend happens to search for their name in a search engine, they’ll be able to see that you’re looking for them.

Ex.plode.us

Ex.plode.us, which can also be used as a social aggregator, is a “great way to find friends and those with common interests, no matter what social network or service they use. You can use the Ex.plode.us widget to stay linked to friends regardless of which network they are on.”

Ex.plode.us allows you to search by name or interests. Their advanced search also allows you to select which sites to search, just like yoName; currently you can search 15 different sites. Ex.plode.us also offers other features like collections, nudges, profile/mini aggregator and widgets.

In my personal experience, Ex.plode.us is not very accurate or helpful when it comes to the people search. When I searched for my name & aliases, nothing came up for me at all. Apparently, “their crawlers are constantly updating their search index so, if you are not in their index yet you can make sure you’re in the queue by using a short form provided on the site.”

When searching for interests I had much better luck. I searched for “social media” as an interest and as expected, there were pages and pages of results. So, it seems that Ex.plode.us is more useful for finding people with the same interests as you.

So what do you think of these three search engines? Do you use any of them or is there another you prefer better? Please let us know in the comments.

(By) Charnita is a social media addict & internet junkie. She blogs about web apps, internet tools, social networking, web 2.0 & internet marketing on her Social Web Tools blog.

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Information / News Web Apps :

CBS News: www.cbsnews.com/iphone
Fox News: iphone.foxnews.com
Google: Google.com
Reuters Mobile: mobile.reuters.com
BrainyQuote: www.brainyquote.com/iphone.html

Social Apps :

Digg: www.digg.com/iphone
Facebook: iphone.Facebook.com
Twitter: m.twitter.com/login

Reference:

Wikipedia: www.keishi.net/ipodia/
People Finder: www.2robots.com/iphone/#_ByNumber
Urban Dictionary: www.idotg.com/apps/iwurd.php
Realtor: iphone.realtor.com

Weather Web Apps :

AccuWeather: apple.accuweather.com/widget/iphone1/iphone.html
Weather Underground: i.wund.com
Weather.com: www.weather.com/iphone

Shopping :

eBay: iphone.ebay.com
Amazon.com: www.amazon.com
iCoupie (coupons and deals): www.icoupie.com

iPhone optimized games :

Tetris: iphone-tetris.com
Bejeweled: static.popcap.com/iphone
iBowl: mynumo.com/iphone/ibowl/ibowl.php
Jacks or Better: elenor.net/iphone/poker
Mahjong: 38i.biz/mahjong/

Productivity / ToDo lists :

Tada List: tadalist.com
iNozbe: www.inozbe.com
Remember the Milk: i.rememberthemilk.com

Chat Messengers (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, GTalk etc.) :

Meebo: www.meebo.com
Beejive: iphone.beejive.com

Just Neat:

Guitar Tuner for iPhone: iphoneguitartuner.com

Are you an iPhone user? Have any more great iPhone websites for us? Leave them in the comments and we’ll be sure to update our directory.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, visual communicator, web developer and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com

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