DON'S FREEWARE CORNER - OCT 2015
FREE PEOPLE-FINDER WEBSITES FOR NAMES, ADDRESSES, AND PHONES

©2015 Donald R. Snow
This page was last updated 2015-11-11

These Freeware Corner notes are published in TAGGology, our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group (UVTAGG) monthly newsletter, and are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html where there may be corrections or updates.

There are many commercial websites to find full names, addresses, phones, and also email addresses, but most of us don't need them enough to pay for the service.  This Freeware Corner article discusses some free ways on the Internet to find names, addresses, and phones.  We'll look at finding email addresses some other time since finding email addresses is especially difficult.  The problem with email addresses is that any list of them is immediately "roboted" into lists for sale to spammers.  I get 25 to 30 spam emails every day and I suppose you do too, so it may be good that finding email addresses online is difficult. 
If you are LDS and are looking for someone in your ward or stake, start with the ward/stake directory on lds.org or the LDS Tools app on your smartphone.  If you know the address, you can sometimes find phones by typing the address into Google and examining the results.  There are websites that search through billions of free public records and gather the results to sell them when we do people searches.  Most of those charge for a complete report, but you can sometimes get enough information for what you need without having to pay.  As an example, I typed a neighbor's address into Google and found their daughter who lived elsewhere, but is associated with them on their street.  When I went to that website, it gave me my neighbor's exact name and address and land telephone number.  Also, look before you click, since some search sites show "Sponsored Sites" near the top and usually with a darker background.  These are commercial sites which the companies have paid to show up near the top.  Clicking on one of these almost invariably leads to a commercial site where you have to pay to see anything.  Social media, e.g. Facebook and Instagram, also provide ways to find addresses and phones.  And if you know an institution the person is associated with, e.g. a university or company, you may be able to find information through them.

Some annotated lists that include many sites, in addition to the ones I list below, are the following.
TOP 15 MOST POPULAR PEOPLE SEARCH WEBSITES -- http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/people-search
FREE PEOPLE SEARCH SITES: BEST ON THE WEB -- http://websearch.about.com/od/freepeoplesearchsites/p/Free-People-Search-Sites-The-Best-On-The-Web.htm
FIVE BEST PEOPLE-SEARCH ENGINES -- http://lifehacker.com/5138427/five-best-people-search-engines (This was written in 2009, but still have some helpful information.)
 
The websites I usually use for names, addresses, and phones are listed below with the ones I use first at the top.

ZABASEARCH -- http://www.zabasearch.com/
This website gives all the people in the state you search for with that name.  If it's a common name, that's a problem, but you can narrow it down by entering the city, etc.  Clicking on a name shows more details and who they are associated with, e.g. spouse, children, etc.  You can usually get enough information such as phone number and address without paying anything and I usually start with this one.

ADDRESSES.COM -- http://www.addresses.com/
This website frequently gives the full name, address, and phone and whether the phone is a land phone or mobile phone.  However, it only seems to find names that are in phone books, i.e land phones, so it might only find the person's name owning the phone and not other people in the household.  By the way, when you "bundle" your phone with your TV and/or Internet or drop your landline and use only a cell phone, you are not listed in local telephone directories and it makes it difficult for people to find you.  That's both good and bad.  On Addresses.com, sometimes it gives the full name with a link to Intelius (see below), a commercial website, but you may be able to get enough free information there for what you need.  I've never used a pay website for finding a person's information, so I don't know what you get there.  Some of the commercial sites have a fixed price per lookup and others have a year-long subscription, so you can get as many full reports as you want.  On this website there seems to be a limit of 99 results and they are listed alphabetically, so if you enter only a surname in a location and get more than 99 hits, try entering an initial in the given name field, so the list starts further along in the alphabet.
 
SWITCHBOARD --  http://www.switchboard.com/
This seems to give good and complete results.  It's results are in exactly the same format as other websites, so my guess is that they use the same search tools. br>SPOKEO --
For a person's name and state it shows a list of everyone by that name and a map with icons where they live.  You can zoom in to get a larger map with icons pointing to the person's house, if the map is large enough.  Clicking on an icon on the map highlights that person's name on the left side.  Clicking further shows the name and possible relatives, other locations associated with the person, the city and street, but not the house number, and part of the phone number, namely, the area code and exchange, but not the last 4 digits.  You can use this in Google (put the name in quotation marks to make it exact) and sometimes get the full phone number and complete address in the Google results without even going to those result websites.  Also, the map on SPOKEO with the house marked allows you to go to Zillow (see below) to that house and get the exact add

WHITEPAGES -- http://www.whitepages.com/
This is the most used website.  It usually gives full results or address and phone and then gives icons to get more information, e.g. birth records, etc.  It seems to work well, but I use other websites first.
 
411.COM -- http://www.411.com/
This seems to give good results, complete address and phone, and shows a Google map with an icon where the location is.  It also gives the type of phone, e.g. a Charter Fiberlink Landline, in one case I checked.  It even has an icon to click for Neighbors which shows a map surrounding the house for several blocks with the addresses and names of who lives there and links to click to see more information about them.

INTELIUS -- http://www.intelius.com/
This is a commercial website, but the free part gives you information associated with each person and might be enough to narrow down your searches on other sites.  For example, Intelius gives the age, other locations, and other people and family members associated with each person.  It, like most commercial site, has other parts for a fee, e.g. Background Checks, Criminal Checks, and Reverse Telephone Lookups (You enter the phone number and see whether it is a land or mobile phone and who owns it.).

DEXKNOWS -- http://dexknows.whitepages.com/
For people lookups you may get their address, but not the phone without paying for it.  Click around on things and see what else you can find and you may be able to get enough information without paying.  The Reverse Phone Search here is free and really gives good information; that is, you get the name, address, what kind of phone (land, mobile, etc.), and a map of where they live.

TRUECALLER -- https://www.truecaller.com/
This is primarily a free smartphone app that identifies the caller even if you aren't using the commercial "caller id" from your mobile phone service.  It also allows typing in a phone number and tells who owns it and their address.  They claim to have 1 billion "crowd-sourced" phone numbers, so you get phone numbers that are not available in directories.  The problem is that their "crowd-sourcing" comes from your contacts list when you add it to your smartphone or computer, but it makes many phone numbers available that are not in any other way.  I have it installed on my smartphone and it identifies callers that I don't have in my own address book there, and allows me to enter phone numbers to see who owns it.  It includes ways to block calls from particular phone numbers, but I have never used any of the fancy features.  I have not installed it on my computers, just on my cell phone.

STEVE MORSE'S WEBSITE -- http://www.stevemorse.org/ and http://www.stevemorse.org/phonebook/lookup.html
Steve Morse is a genealogist who has written many programs that help with various searches and he has one that searches for addresses and telephones.  It worked for several people I tried, but not all.  It looks like it only searches anywho.com and 411.com.

ZILLOW -- http://www.zillow.com/
This is a real estate website, but is very useful for finding information.  For interest type in your own address and see what they think your house is worth.  You get an aerial view of the address you type in and can click on any house in the neighborhood to see its correct address and their appraisal value of it.  They used to show who lived there, but they don't anymore.  But you can copy and paste the address into Google or other websites and find the person's name and information.

PEOPLEFINDERS -- http://www.peoplefinders.com/
DexKnows says all the phones are listed here, but you can't see them without paying.

PERSONLOOKUP.COM -- http://www.personlookup.com/
This has links to several other lookup sites.

This is just the start of a complete list.  The lists at the top give more websites and Googling things like "people finders" or "how to find addresses and telephone numbers" brings up many more.  If you have one you use and really like, please let me know.