Learn How To People Search The Web. Find people online with free people search engines, people search locator tools, and check out my review of good people search sites.
They say a great baseball player has five tools: a great throwing arm, home run power, hits for average, runs well and plays great defense. Similar to a great ball player, a great investigator also needs five tools. Besides the obvious, computer and internet access, the People Search News staff believes the following products are “must have” tools if you want to be successful in your internet people search:
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.