Let’s face it, like my neighbor, many ex-high school football players are dying to share their stories and relive the “glory days.” Sadly, if you didn’t play football in high school, you probably find most of these stories quite difficult to listen to. However, to those who played football in high school, these stories produce a great sense of pride and accomplishment. To these athletes, the idea of letting these stories become forgotten is truly a shame. Thus, a common dilemma presents itself, how can ex-football players still be able to relive their sporting pasts without annoying wives, girlfriends, neighbors and non-athletes everywhere? The answer is online people searches.

As previously stated, the reliving of high school football memories does serve a purpose. However, as with the case of any bonding ritual, the sharing of high school football tales needs to take place in an appropriate context. For example, the sharing of photos of grandchildren will be a lot more interesting and relatable to others at bridge club than at a tail gate party. Thus, there is a time and a place for these activities and this is where online people searches come in.

At this point in the article you may be wondering how the subjects of high school football, online people searches and gift giving relate. (Personally, I am impressed that you made it this far in the article.) The connection between the three actually is quite simple and can be broke down thusly:

1. This holiday season, most of us will have a former high school football player on our gift list.

2. Instead of going with a traditional gift like a new putter or power tool, some of us are seeking a unique gift to give to the important men in our lives.

3. Online people searches can help anyone give the perfect gift to those who still miss the smell of the grass on their high school football field: Reuniting with former teammates.

Using an online people search web site like peoplefinders.com, it is actually pretty easy to locate former high school football teammates. In fact, most teammates can be found simply by entering their first and last names into a search box on a people search web site. Once one enters a name, he or she can then narrow down the results to locate the teammate by using old information such as where the teammate used to live, where he grew up or even by using his old phone number.

Once a teammate or teammates have been located, it really is up to the gift giver to decide what to do next. You can have a teammate give another teammate a phone call to catch up, schedule a trip to visit a former teammate, or even fly a former teammate out for the holidays. Whatever the choice is, reconnecting an athlete with those who shared such special times will be an unforgettable gift for the football player on your list.

Depending on the type and quality of information you’re looking after, several different approaches can be used to perform your search.

A Doctor Search

How can I find a Doctor?

* Go to google.com and type in the full name of a doctor (i.e. Dr. Jerome Garden), the city or state, and a specialty field. These keywords gives you a general idea if the doctor has been involved in communities, written publications, media, and so on.

* Visit your State Medical Board and find out if your medical board is one of the few who offer free doctor reports. Medical boards let you know if your (the) doctor has ever been disciplined in that particular state and give you doctor licensure status.

* Next, check out the abms.org and the ama-assn.org for proper board certification and organizational status.

# Finally, visit the fsmb.org. This organization is the governing board of all (MD) State Medical Boards. I highly recommend you visit “FSMB” if you are looking for doctor disciplinary action information, A report will cost you $9.95 each. Depending on what your doctor’s specialty, its always good if they belong to a medical society, for example, a pediatrician might belong to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Keep in mind, a doctor could belong to many society organizations.

A People Search

How can I find a Person?

Like a doctor search, if you want detailed information, it will cost you. However, here are others ways to conduct a free people search:

* Go to google.com and type in the first and last name (i.e. Hugo Gallegos), city, state, profession, business, and so on.

* Visit reversephonedirectory.com, superpages.com, dexonline.com, anywho.com, switchboard.com, infospace.com, att.com/directory.

* Many other sites exist where you can find information. However, most information comes from the same databases with different companies conducting the actual search.

A Background Check

Can I do Free Background Checks? Yes, you can. The question is will you be successful in finding the information you want?

Bottom line

Most consumers prefer quality information and will pay for it. Therefore, before you pay for information, it’s essential to find out what type of searches the company specializes in. Also, browse the site map on their web site to find the FAQs, testimonials, and contact information. If the company discloses very little information about themselves, start looking elsewhere.

A great internet browser

With great features like tabbed browsing (eliminates the need to open multiple browser windows), custom skins, integrated search and thousands of extensions, Firefox is the browser of choice for the PSN staff.

Some of our favorite Firefox extensions and compatible programs are:

Notefish (A great way to save, organize and share snippets of internet web pages that you find.)

Google Notebook (Similar to Notefish, but you can access your information from anywhere)

Google Spreadsheets (Organize all of your information on a spreadsheet that you can access from anywhere)

A few people here also use the browser Flock. This browser is great for anyone that does a lot of blogging and social networking via the web. With Flock, you can do research and talk to your friends.

Access to an excellent public records database.

The PSN staff firmly believes that you do indeed get what you pay for, which is why we use PeopleFinders.com. Yes, we advertise PeopleFinders.com quite heavily on our site, but only because we use it ourselves. The PSN staff believes that PeopleFinders.com has the most accurate and up-to-date data of any internet people search site at a very fair price. We would not recommend anything to our readers that we would not use ourselves.

A comprehensive background report from PeopleFinders.com will provide you with the information you need to locate your subject. View a sample of the PeopleFinders.com comprehensive background report.

Turn your computer into a phone.

Skype is an ingenious little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. All calls from Skype to landlines and mobiles within the US and Canada are also free till the end of the year. It’s free and easy to download and use, and works with most computers. Skype also allows you to remain anonymous when calling potential search leads.

A Web-based photo sharing service

A picture is worth a thousands words and quite possibly a few search leads. Using a Web-based photo sharing service allows you to share and find photos relatively easy and free. Since these sites host the images, you can also save on the size of your e-mail attachments. There are many services like this available on the Web. Most are free and only require that you register. Some of out favorites are.

* Flickr

* Picasa

* Riya (Uses facial recognition software)

A great map with city listings

GoogleMaps offers driving directions and great satellite photos as well as listings of local businesses in case your search involves travel or you would like to research the area in which your subject may be currently living. When you travel to a new city or town, it is always a good idea to get acquainted with the make up of a city such as its neighborhoods, restaurants, main attractions.

For the purpose of this guide, let’s use an old roommate that owes you money, a.k.a. “jerk face”, as the person whom you are trying to locate. Let’s also assume that “jerk” would be happy to meet with you to give you the money. Here is how the ideal free people search goes down: The first step in cheaply finding this jerk is to go to a people search web site. Go to the site’s home page and type in your old roommate’s name. Depending on how common his last name is, you will probably get a page anywhere from one to about 100 results.

From these results, you are on your way to locating your jerk. However, not every search will work in the exact same way so you have to learn to take what the results give you. First, look for the city where you used to live with the jerk. If it is listed next to any of the names on the results page, then you know you have a handle on him. If you find it, your search may be over as all you then have to do is call 411 and ask for his number. You then can phone the jerk and arrange a pickup of your cash. Search completed, cost: long distance phone call, gas money to meet with jerk, five minutes of effort.

Your search may not have been so easy, however. Therefore, here is how the semi-ideal free people search goes down: If you couldn’t find your jerk from the city that you used to live with him at, take a look at the list of residences again. Do any relate to your jerk? Possibly, could they be his old hometown or where he may have moved to? If so, then you can narrow down the list of results and proceed from there. Search completed, cost: long distance phone call, gas money to meet with jerk, ten minutes of effort.

Perhaps none of the cities listed next to the names on the results page ring a bell for your jerk. Now it is time for a little tougher search: Another way to locate someone is through the names of possible relatives listed next to the results. Maybe you remembered his sister’s name, or perhaps you know his mom’s name. If you know the names of any of his relatives and you see those names listed next to a name on the results page, then you may have found your jerk. Search completed, cost: long distance phone calls to old friends or people who know your jerk, gas money to meet with jerk, fifteen minutes of effort.

If these three methods do not work, you may have to do a little detective work and play “search engine battle ship.” In this game, you take any information that you have on your subject and place it in a search field on a search engine home page. You then press “submit” and see if anything produces a “hit”. This information can be an old phone number, past address, maiden name, social security number or almost any piece of identifying information you have on your jerk. From there, keep entering the information until you spot your jerk in the results. Search completed, cost: digging through old papers on your desk, long distance phone calls, gas money to meet with jerk, thirty minutes of effort.

Finally, you may have to bite the bullet and pay for your people search. We recommend PeopleFinders.com if you have to pay because they are cheap and accurate. Also, you may want to sign up for a 24-hour membership so you can search for a bunch of people. Search completed, cost: $9.95 and up, long distance phone call, gas money to meet with jerk, one minute of effort.

Therefore, you decide to run a background check on your date. When executed properly, a background check can tell you tons of valuable information about your potential date including whether he or she is married, his or her real age and even if your date has a criminal past. However, you may be new to the world of people searching and may not know which information is necessary to perform an accurate background check. In addition, if you were missing some of this required information and needed to obtain it from your date, you would want to do it in a smooth and comfortable manner without your date finding out. Relax, both of these goals can easily be accomplished if you keep the following tips in mind:

First off, before you go and try to probe your date for specific information such as his social security number or date of birth, you should realize that this type of information may not even be needed to perform an effective online background check. Thus, you may not need to ask a strange or awkward question to your date like, “If I were you, what city would I have been born in?”, because this information may not even be required.

Due to the technical sophistication of sites like PeopleFinders.com, you only need basic information about your date to perform a background check. Simple information such as Mr. Right’s first name, last name, city of residence and age is really all the information that you will probably need. Therefore, before you try to do some detective work on your own, check with the people search web site that you will be using to perform your background check to determine exactly which type of information you need to obtain accurate people search results.

If you do need to obtain some additional or basic information from your date to perform your background check, there is no need to panic. Casually asking questions like, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” or “Where are you from again…were your born there too?” are not too difficult for most people to ask. Remember to relax and ask your questions in a calm and friendly manner. Additionally, most of the required information needed to perform a background check is very basic and really doesn’t delve too deep into one’s past. Therefore, it shouldn’t be too tough to obtain from your date. If your date is hesitant to give you this type of information, you probably should look elsewhere for Mr. Right.

Finally, you can rest assured that you made the right choice by looking into the past of your date. Not only are online background checks affordable, these checks are also completely anonymous. Therefore, your date will never know that you performed a background check on them.

What is known as a background check is usually a search relating to one’s criminal history and whether one exists and to what degree. To this extent, I will discuss why these are necessary and how they are carried out.

Much of our daily life depends on trusting people, be they your child with a babysitter or your accountant with your financial records. It is not paranoia to be concerned about the background of people, it is simply being on the safe side.

We need sufficient starting information to find background records and this usually starts with details provided such as social security number (SSN), date of birth and recent addresses. These data are not indicators of criminal activity in themselves, but if any discrepancies arise during subsequent investigations, these will give cause for concern.

Thanks to recent legislation in the last five years, criminal records searches can now be done much faster. This has greatly assisted the likes of gun sellers, employers and other interested parties.

Usually, an agency is used to perform the instant background check. With the minimum of a name and state of residence, you can determine if the individual has a criminal record and also any large amount of outstanding unpaid debt.

What degree of information can be infered from an instant background check? Some agencies will only give a yes or no answer concerning whether a person has a criminal record or bad finances. Most others will give more details but at a higher price.

Ultimately, one needs to find background records to get the bigger picture about a person in case they are lying or hiding something. It is a perfectly acceptable and government supported legitimate activity and is so cheap that even an individual can obtain an instant background check.

Luckily you can find criminal records, and also financial records to check solvency, via an online government records search. Modern indexed and cross references databases allow for retrieval within seconds of an individual’s pertinent history. With this knowledge, you can decide whether or not to employ a person. For instance, you may hire a potential accountant despite his violent criminal conviction because he has no financial irregularities or fraud convictions - this is an example of a detailed version of a government records search.

Criminal records searches are not simple binary machines offering an affirmative or negative answer. Usually depending on the cost involved, you can find as much or as little details as you need. For instance, you can restrict the search to your immediate locality, your state or even nationwide.

One application to find criminal records is to search for local sex offenders in an area that you will be moving to. By doing a government records search, you can ensure that your child will be safe playing in the neighborhood.

When hiring a prospective new employee, you should perform different checks. First of all, get written summaries of date of birth, full name and residences for the last five years. Also obtain the social security number. Then perform criminal searches for every county in which the person has resided (these are more reliable than national searches). Secondly, search the national sex offender registry as such offences often do not come up on the usual state searches.

As you can see, the ability to find criminal records via a government records search is not only a useful tool but more so an essential tool for employers and individuals alike to use.

Public death records are the last piece of information pertaining to an individual. They usually include the death certificate and obituaries. They can also include details of date or birth, marriages, cause of death and summaries of coroner reports.

In a missing people search, public death records should be considered. Whilst it may be considered a dead end and the learning of the most grave and least satisfying outcome, it can also mean an easy and sudden finality to your investigation with little or no reason to go on further.

Death records originally consisted only of old and worn documents stored in several locations around the country. With the advent of the internet and cross linked databases, such records are now available online - indeed the government even encourage electronic filing of public death records because this leads to great costs savings having not employed official data gatherers and others to assist in the process.

As you can see, public death records are very important in a missing people search. Due to the easy availability of such records, they may as well be searched early on in the process because the mechanism is so easy to use and cheap to access. Although the outcome may be considered unlikely, especially to within a few years of the initial “missing” report (official or otherwise), peace of mind can be obtained if no results are returned i.e. if there is no registered official death of the person concerned.