Locating People
BEFORE YOU SPEND MONEY TO LOCATE PEOPLE READ THIS . ANOTHER GOOD REASON FOR USING A PROFESSIONAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. We are New York Private Investigators licensed & Bonded by the State of NY.
Hunting for old friends via the Web carries risks!!
He was just trying to contact a long-lost friend, but the process separated Hector Mendez of San Antonio from a chunk of cash and his Internet naivete.
Mendez decided to look up his buddy using one of the dozens of for-fee people-finder services that litter the Web.
He had seen the e-mail ads: "Locate old classmates, missing family members and loves of your past! Find anyone."
After paying $30, Mendez realized that what he bought was a set of links to free public records open to all comers.
"The worst thing was that there wasn't even an address or telephone number to lodge a complaint," Mendez said. Consumer-complaint sites are loaded with similar stories.
"There is a ton of scams like that," said Ed Magedson, editor of RipOffReport.com. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."
Separating the good from bad is tricky for the inexperienced. Many pitches promise inside information but contain disclaimers buried deep within hard-to-navigate Web pages.
Every professional whose job requires people-hunting has a favorite, but some services pop up time and again as accurate and reasonably priced.
Many newspapers use Accurint.com (http://accurint.com). Accurint provides access to public information from hundreds of sources.
There is no activation fee or monthly minimum. In most cases, there is no charge for a search that does not produce a result.
A basic person search costs as little as 25 cents, and a comprehensive report including current address, historical addresses, phone numbers, property ownership information, vehicle registrations, driver's licenses and criminal convictions can be ordered for $4.50.
Attorneys and private investigators often use PublicData.com (http://publicdata.com), which requires a minimum yearly subscription of $25.
The basic plan allows up to 250 searches per year on its nationwide collection of court records and criminal convictions from about 40 states.
All these services require clients to sign documents attesting they have a legitimate reason for accessing the more revealing databases.
Net Detective (http://www.netdetective.com) and Web Detective (http://web-detective.
com) regularly appear at the top of search engine results. They also generate the most anger on Usenet consumer boards, Rip-off Report.com (http://www.ripoffreport.com).and other complaint sites.
Net Detective says it has sold 750,000 subscriptions to what is essentially a well-organized set of links to free government information.
To be fair, the site's fine print says that the $29 service will only "help you find Internet resources quickly."
The rest is fluff: generic advice on records searching, celebrity address lookups and collections of state unclaimed-asset lists. Also, the site refunds the $29 when consumers complain. But that doesn't stop Net Detective from flooding you with offers of questionable products.
Like Net Detective, Web Detective ($30 for a lifetime membership) advertises through spam and affiliate Web sites used to push traffic to the parent corporation.
Unlike its counterpart, Web Detective is a jumbled mess to navigate.
More than 20 screens are filled with a hodgepodge of links to free public info. Even its most basic people-locating interface is difficult. But it will issue refunds when subscribers complain to its transaction-processing company.
Neither service returned phone calls or answered e-mail inquiries about their offerings.
Free resources
Make sure you've exhausted free resources before turning to pay services. Free services include:
Docusearch.com (http://docusearch.com), which lists more than 300 government and public Web sites when you click on the "Free Resources" link, and Searchsystems (http://searchsystems.net). Many for-fee people locators merely give you links like this while promising much more.
Respected search engine companies that provide people-locating tools. Try the new Lycos People Search page (http://www.whowhere.lycos.com) or the Infospace White Pages (http://www.infospace. com/wp).
Genealogy sites, which are often information gold mines. Some people-finding services charge you to search Social Security death records, for example. At RootsWeb.com, more than 72 million Social Security death records are available for free queries at http://ssdi.rootsweb.com.
Unclaimed property Web sites listed by the National Association of Unclaimed Property (http://www.naupa.org). These include links to state government sites.
Guidance
Before you pay for a people-locator service:
Make sure there is a working telephone number for handling billing complaints.
Check the service's reputation at consumer Web sites such as the Rip-off Report.
Beware of sites that charge a membership fee, then seek hefty charges for "premium" searches.
Look for discussions of other people's experiences on http://groups.google.com. Irate consumers often relay negative experiences in groups such as alt.consumers.experiences on Google Groups.
Don't bite on unsolicited pitches arriving via e-mail. If it arrives in spam, it is most likely a scam.
BOTTOM LINE: BUYER BEWARE!
Hunting for old friends via the Web carries risks!!
He was just trying to contact a long-lost friend, but the process separated Hector Mendez of San Antonio from a chunk of cash and his Internet naivete.
Mendez decided to look up his buddy using one of the dozens of for-fee people-finder services that litter the Web.
He had seen the e-mail ads: "Locate old classmates, missing family members and loves of your past! Find anyone."
After paying $30, Mendez realized that what he bought was a set of links to free public records open to all comers.
"The worst thing was that there wasn't even an address or telephone number to lodge a complaint," Mendez said. Consumer-complaint sites are loaded with similar stories.
"There is a ton of scams like that," said Ed Magedson, editor of RipOffReport.com. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."
Separating the good from bad is tricky for the inexperienced. Many pitches promise inside information but contain disclaimers buried deep within hard-to-navigate Web pages.
Every professional whose job requires people-hunting has a favorite, but some services pop up time and again as accurate and reasonably priced.
Many newspapers use Accurint.com (http://accurint.com). Accurint provides access to public information from hundreds of sources.
There is no activation fee or monthly minimum. In most cases, there is no charge for a search that does not produce a result.
A basic person search costs as little as 25 cents, and a comprehensive report including current address, historical addresses, phone numbers, property ownership information, vehicle registrations, driver's licenses and criminal convictions can be ordered for $4.50.
Attorneys and private investigators often use PublicData.com (http://publicdata.com), which requires a minimum yearly subscription of $25.
The basic plan allows up to 250 searches per year on its nationwide collection of court records and criminal convictions from about 40 states.
All these services require clients to sign documents attesting they have a legitimate reason for accessing the more revealing databases.
Net Detective (http://www.netdetective.com) and Web Detective (http://web-detective.
com) regularly appear at the top of search engine results. They also generate the most anger on Usenet consumer boards, Rip-off Report.com (http://www.ripoffreport.com).and other complaint sites.
Net Detective says it has sold 750,000 subscriptions to what is essentially a well-organized set of links to free government information.
To be fair, the site's fine print says that the $29 service will only "help you find Internet resources quickly."
The rest is fluff: generic advice on records searching, celebrity address lookups and collections of state unclaimed-asset lists. Also, the site refunds the $29 when consumers complain. But that doesn't stop Net Detective from flooding you with offers of questionable products.
Like Net Detective, Web Detective ($30 for a lifetime membership) advertises through spam and affiliate Web sites used to push traffic to the parent corporation.
Unlike its counterpart, Web Detective is a jumbled mess to navigate.
More than 20 screens are filled with a hodgepodge of links to free public info. Even its most basic people-locating interface is difficult. But it will issue refunds when subscribers complain to its transaction-processing company.
Neither service returned phone calls or answered e-mail inquiries about their offerings.
Free resources
Make sure you've exhausted free resources before turning to pay services. Free services include:
Docusearch.com (http://docusearch.com), which lists more than 300 government and public Web sites when you click on the "Free Resources" link, and Searchsystems (http://searchsystems.net). Many for-fee people locators merely give you links like this while promising much more.
Respected search engine companies that provide people-locating tools. Try the new Lycos People Search page (http://www.whowhere.lycos.com) or the Infospace White Pages (http://www.infospace. com/wp).
Genealogy sites, which are often information gold mines. Some people-finding services charge you to search Social Security death records, for example. At RootsWeb.com, more than 72 million Social Security death records are available for free queries at http://ssdi.rootsweb.com.
Unclaimed property Web sites listed by the National Association of Unclaimed Property (http://www.naupa.org). These include links to state government sites.
Guidance
Before you pay for a people-locator service:
Make sure there is a working telephone number for handling billing complaints.
Check the service's reputation at consumer Web sites such as the Rip-off Report.
Beware of sites that charge a membership fee, then seek hefty charges for "premium" searches.
Look for discussions of other people's experiences on http://groups.google.com. Irate consumers often relay negative experiences in groups such as alt.consumers.experiences on Google Groups.
Don't bite on unsolicited pitches arriving via e-mail. If it arrives in spam, it is most likely a scam.
BOTTOM LINE: BUYER BEWARE!
posted by Trailblazer Investigations Inc Trailblazer Investigations Florida | Saturday, October 01, 2005
1 Comments:
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