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.