Investigating one’s ancestry is an overwhelming and necessarily meticulous process. Your desk will be covered in papers with little scribbles on them, and you’ll find much of your free time disappeared.

Granted, the Internet has made searching for one’s ancestors easier than ever before, and there are dozens of reputable websites (many of them free) created solely to help connect souls.

But don’t think you can do it all online. To give you a full idea of what you’ll be getting into, here are six fundamental pieces of advice:

1) Create a system, and stick to it. It’s imperative that, from the outset, you manage your information in a cautious and precise way. Create a central sheet to which you can effectively add dates of birth, death and marriage; cite resources whenever possible, so you may return to them if you need; and consider purchasing a genealogy computer software if you’re worried about being able to sort it all out yourself.

2) Tell everyone in your family what you’re up to. The wider a net you cast, the more effective you’ll be in finding stories and names you might otherwise miss. Ask cousins to ask cousins, and borrow wedding albums and old photos. Many times, names and dates will be written on the backs of such photos, and no legal document can compare with a person’s memory. Remember, all the information you need already exists—it’s all about finding the right leads.

3) Find every piece of paper you can. Certificates of births, deaths and marriages are of the utmost importance, and will make your job easier up until you reach a point when such certificates were never recorded (which is around 100 years ago). When that happens, ask local newspapers for old obituaries from their archives; if you know the date, it shouldn’t be a problem.

4) Don’t be afraid to knock on government doors. There will come a time when you’ll have to leave your family’s homes and get into bigger buildings. Go to public libraries for history books or old newspapers on microfilm. Attain census records online or from the relevant government office. Check the courts for records of deeds, estates, votes and marriages. You’d be surprised at what details exist as far back as the mid-1700s; people had to pay taxes back then, too, right?

6) Use the Internet, but don’t rely on it. A quick Google search of “how to find ancestors” or “genealogy advice” will land you with well over a dozen reliable websites and forums with like-minded gene hunters. Post your family’s names to see if they match anyone else’s, and likewise scan pre-existing posts and records for any mention of someone with your surname. These forums are also useful for asking for advice if you find yourself in a rut.

7) Be sure you want to do this. Scouring websites and making repeat trips to public offices can be a chore. If you don’t think any of this sounds fun, maybe you shouldn’t do it; or if you do want to do but not all by yourself, ask if some family members want to help you on the project. Genealogy searching can last for months before you find worthwhile results and, in many cases, the only thing worthwhile is the knowledge that you’ve discovered a piece of personal history no one else cares about. There’s no gold medal. If you want to do this, do it for yourself.

There are a lot of background check companies and services on the Web. So how do you filter the best from the rest? I’ve used several criteria as whether the business is accredited by the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and its “grade” (A+ being the highest), the popularity of the company’s website and the year founded. Based on that criteria, here are the top 5 background check companies:

1. eVerify

BBB Accredited: Yes, Grade: A+

Founded: 2003

Review: This is one of the rare companies which has the highest BBB grade. They offer several options like getting an ordinary report (current name, phone, address) and a background check report (everything from the ordinary report, plus history of addresses, all kinds of records and so on).

2. US Search

BBB Accredited: Yes, Grade: A+

Founded: 1994

Review: US Search is maybe the oldest background check service online. They are considered to be a reputable company and received positive reviews from companies like the Wall Street Journal and some other mainstream media outlets. They take the third place in terms of popularity, but #1 for reputability.

3. Intelius (most popular)

BBB Accredited: No, Grade: B

Founded: 2003

Review: Intelius is the lowest-rated company among these 5 by the BBB. They are, however, the most popular one; they attract more visitors than the rest 4 companies combined. After taking a careful look at the complains Intelius received on its service, I saw that most of them are not because of the quality of the service itself, but the recurring charge by their partner (more on that later).

4. Info Cubic

BBB Accredited: Yes, Grade: A+

Founded: 2002

Review: Info Cubic also seems to be a good background search provider. Their BBB rating is high and they were founded 8 years ago.

5. Identity PI

BBB Accredited: Yes, Grade: A-

Founded: 2007

Review: It’s not an easy thing to find a background check provider with a good Better Business Bureau rating. I’ve included Identity PI because they seem to be a really nice service that allows you to search by multiple criteria (name, phone, address and so on).

Details:

This section is for those who are interested to learn more on the criteria I’ve used to evaluate the businesses above.

I’ve mentioned above that most of the complaints Intelius received is not because of the quality of the service itself, but because of the recurring charges:

You see that “With FREE Identity Protect Trial” text? If you sign up for the $10 offer, you’ll sign up for a monthly recurring service that will renew automatically. Some people forget to cancel the service before the end of the month, so when they are billed automatically, people often complain, say that the company is a scam and so on. So be careful if you take those “10-30% off” offers and don’t forget to cancel before the end of the month.

More on BBB

According to Wikipedia, “Better Business Bureaus gather and report information on business reliability, alert the public to frauds against consumers and businesses, provide information on ethical business practices, and act as mutually trusted intermediaries between consumers and businesses to resolve disputes.”

Here are the BBB ratings of US Search, People Finders, Intelius, Info Cubic and Identity PI.

As for popularity, I’ve used:

– Alexa.com – which gives you an idea of how popular a website is in the entire world.

– Compete.com – which gives you an idea of how popular a website is in the US.

The higher the number is, the better. I’ve decided not to include the current rankings for the 5 companies above because they constantly change. You can get an idea of how popular a company’s website  is, however, by reading my reviews on them above.

As for the date founded, I think it’s a good metric because it distinguishes good/reputable from newbie/risky businesses.

PeopleFinders is currently the second most popular people search/background check provider and one of the rare companies with the highest BBB grade.

Free People Search with PeopleFinders

If you came from this article then you’re probably interested in the free search options PeopleFinders has. As I’ve previously mentioned, they’re great if you want to find people living in the US. Let’s try to do a search on Mike Brown from New York (by the way, I use this name/state just as an example, I have no idea who Mike Brown is):

(you can get the same results by going to PeopleFinders and typing a name and a state in the search box)

You immediately notice the free information provided:

• The history of states where that person lived in
• Associated names
• The current age of the person
• Relatives and THEIR age

PeopleFinders is the only company I know of that also provides the AGE of the relatives of the person. Most companies provide only the names but not the age, if available.

Now, after you click on “View details” you are presented with several options to buy:

As you can see, these options to get more details are not free but very cheap. If you’re looking for someone then the second option would be best for you. They give you one month access to their database where you can search by name, address, phone, birth date or divorce/marriage/death/property records.

PeopleFinders Background Check Option

The third option is a comprehensive background check report which will be useful if you’re looking for more than a phone number or address. You may find this option to be useful if you want to see previous addresses where that person lived on. You can then go on those addresses and ask people if they know where the person moved and so on.

PeopleFinders is not the only company that offers this kind of report though. I recently made a list of background check services where you can compare various companies by their BBB rating (below on that post you’ll see why I think a BBB rating is important) and overall popularity.

Intelius has purchased its biggest rival, US Search. The interesting thing is that only 1 tech news company (TechFlash) officially reported this:

The author got the title right, Intelius indeed “quietly” bought their biggest rival.

If you do a whois search on US Search, you’ll see no significant change unlike with ZabaSearch which was also quietly bought by Intelius (but this time no official news site reported this).

Here is another proof, however, Intelius is the official owner of US Search:

If you’re a member of Commission Junction (the biggest affiliate network worldwide and the network where Intelius and US Search affiliates can promote their services)  and go to the both companies “description pages” you should see the name of the same affiliate manager:

and

What Are the Implications of This Acquisition

First, I understand Intelius for not boasting about this acquisition. They are not accredited by the BBB (and have a B rating, earlier they had the worst F rating), compared to US Search who not only is accredited but also has a pretty good grade. I wonder what will happen if BBB finds about this acquisition and whether they’ll start treating both companies like same.

Another thing is the bad reputation of the Intelius founder and the big number of RipOffReports (mostly because of the recurring additional service Intelius offers and not the quality of their core service).

On the other hand, maybe this is an opportunity for a fresh start and fixing some of the bad impressions Intelius left in the past. I wish them good luck in their future endeavors.

There are basically 2 ways to search for someone using their email address:

• Using ‘common sense’

• Using private data (which is not part of your ‘common sense’ )

If I could give you one advice on finding someone by email, it would be: Utilize EVERY possible SEARCH ENGINE available!

For a start, take a look at these people search engines (they’re all free) and you’ll see that a lot of them have a ‘reverse email’ option. Wink, Spock and Spokeo are just some of them to start with. If you have multiple email addresses then just open multiple copies of the webpage because none of them supports bulk search.

Here are some more tips:

* Start by entering the email address into every major search engine (Google, Bing and Yahoo)
* Use com.lullar.com (it’s the best free service of its kind) to search whether that email address has a social networking profile
* Take a look at the above link on people search engines and look for

Finding information on someone is a numbers game. You need to get started with as much data sources as possible and then go from there. I call it ‘creating opportunity’ or ‘generating opportunity’.

Warning: There are a lot of services that promise to offer ‘private listings’ of email addresses and help you find ‘any email address’…if you just pay them. So far, I don’t know of any ‘private’ database of emails. Those people are selling you the idea of unlimited information. They lie. So I don’t recommend paying for a service unless they tell you what you get upfront.

Feel free to look around this site for more information on finding people.

There are some valid reasons for doing a search on people by social security number or SSN. You may want to learn more about someone close to you (like a boyfriend/girlfriend), or check if an individual is still living. After performing extensive research, I will demonstrate how to perform an effective Social Security Number (SSN) search, and offer several alternatives to finding out more information on an individual.

The Structure of a Social Security Number

SSNs consist of nine digits. Let’s divide those nine digits into three distinct parts, and examine what the first part represents.

The first group of three numbers says a lot about the individual who owns the Social Security Number. This part is called an area number, and can potentially uncover the previous/current residence of the person.

I would recommend reading this Wikipedia page to familiarize yourself with the structure of a Social Security Number. The picture below is a brief illustration of its structure. As I mentioned before, the first part is called an “Area number”. The second one is called a “Group number” and the third one a “Serial number”.

SSNs are very sensitive pieces of data, and learning more about their format will give you a better understanding of just how difficult it can be, searching for someone by simply using their SSN. This is why it is useful to consider searching by other criteria, like first/last name and state, which is a lot easier to do.

Is the SSN you have valid? There are two ways to find out. You can use an online service like SSN Validator, or if you’re concerned about privacy, do it manually by checking out this particular Wikipedia section.

Social Security Death Index and Death Master File – Find Out if the Person is Deceased

Under U.S. law, deceased individuals have no legal rights to privacy. This means you can do a search with only a Social Security Number and find out more information on that individual.

This is useful if you want to find out whether a specific individual is still living. There are a few ways to go about this:

• Purchase a limited number of searches for the Social Security Death Master File (this is the official distributor for the Social Security Administration – proof here) – updated once a week

• Search for free with the Social Security Death Index through Ancestry.com. This website purchases the entire Death Index, and posts it directly on their site. It seems that Ancestry.com updates their index every 4-6 months.

There is One Way to Locate Living People by SSN

Social Security Numbers are highly sensitive pieces of information. There is no way to search for a living individual by using only their SSN.

There is, however, one way to contact that individual through their SSN. The Social Security Administration offers a Letter Forwarding Service, where they can forward a letter to the person owning that Social Security Number, in an attempt to contact them.

This service is extremely useful if you’re looking for a missing person or have an urgent reason to contact someone who you cannot seem to locate. Be sure to include every possible piece of information you have concerning the individual you’re looking for when sending your letter to the SSA. More details on this can be found here.

Consider Doing a Search by Other Criteria

You can also search for people by using their:

– Full name and state of residence (using a cheap service like Intelius for advanced search, or  any of these free people search engines for basic search)

– Address and phone number (using WhitePages, AnyWho, PeopleSmart)

– Email address (using Lullar or Facebook – you need to be logged-in to search by email on Facebook)

– Username – Using Pipl or just type ‘username search’ into Google and you’ll find tons of other search engines

If the person you’re looking for is still alive, then you have much better odds of finding them using these criteria than using a Social Security Number only (except for urgent circumstances where the Social Security Administration can help). So if you have additional information on the person you are seeking, why not try doing this?

*MyLife is useful only if you’re searching for someone from United States. If you’re looking for someone outside of US, then take a look at these free people search engines. Otherwise, continue reading.

Many people would describe MyLife as a paid website. I disagree. You can do LOTS of searches on MyLife for free if you know how. This article will teach you just that.

1. Register on MyLife (here’s the link)

Just search for the person you’re looking for and after that, register. After you register and validate your email you should get to the following screen (if you get some other screens, simply click on the ‘Skip’ buttons):

2. Start searching

Enter the person’s name in the box below “Name Search” and all the rest of the details. Let’s say we search for “Mike Brown” who is 40 years old.

3. Take a look at the results (and read the entire section below because this is the most important part of this whole article.)

Now, this is a broad search and we’ll come with lots of results. But for this purpose, it’s great.

Notice what you see above. Next to each result, there is either:

* View Profile/Send Email
* View Profile

I’ve done a bit of investigation why is this the case. After a while a realized that the profiles that have only “View Profile” next to it are actually results from MyLife partner site, Wink.com (which is 100% free to search, unlike MyLife.)

Now, MyLife doesn’t tell you this and prompts you to subscribe to their service in order to see the results (which costs money) and I can’t exactly tell whether this is moral or not…on one side they are helping their existing members by giving them more results. But on the other side they make you pay for results you can get for free on Wink.

Anyway, if the person you’re looking for has only the “View Profile” option, head over to Wink.com and do the same search with the same criteria. You should get the results for 100% free. In case the person has View Profile/Send Email next to him, you’ll have to subscribe to MyLife. Read that in the next step.

4. You’ll have to subscribe to MyLife if you want to see profiles on their site (has View Profile/Send Email next to the box)

Yes, that means paying $6 per month (or less if you subscribe annually.) Which isn’t much if you’re sure the person you’re searching for is there. Why not spend $18 for 3 months membership when you can get contact details and reunite with a person from your past?

Search by Email Using MyLife

1. Go to MyLife main site and click “Email Search”

Normally, enter the email address in the box there.

2. Take a look at the ’small boxes’ under the name

If a result shows up, then you’ll see small boxes representing the logos of different social networks (like Hi5, for example.) Now, all you need to do is go to that social network official website (Hi5, for example), look for their search box and enter the email there! You should come up with the same result as MyLife and view the profile for free.

Summary

Now you know everything you can do on MyLife for 100% free. In my opinion, MyLife is a great service if you’re looking for a person who is already there registered and also a great service to keep all your social networking contacts in one place. But for the other things, they have some great free features you can use and find the person you’re searching for almost effortlessly.

Here are the ‘people search options’ of some amazing social networking websites. You can use them to locate friends online and also trace people (hopefully, for good purposes):

7. Tagged

Quick facts:

• Tagged currently has over 30 million users worldwide
• Most of its users are outside of US

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search by name, user name and email address
• Think of what was your friend’s nickname and enter it there if you can’t find him via his real name or email
• Take a look at the advanced search options, you can also search by age there

6. Bebo

Quick facts:

• Most popular in Ireland, UK
• Over 40 million users
• They’ve been acquired by AOL in 2008

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search for a user’s videos except for first and last name
• Write as much information as possible in the search box, they don’t have advanced search options

5. Hi5

Quick facts:

• Over 60 million active members
• Most popular in Latin America

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• Narrow your search results (age, country)
• You can search by email, just enter the email address there

4. Twitter (registration is required)

Quick facts:

• You need to be registered to access their ‘find people’ option
• One of the fastest growing websites
• 25 million users

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• They still don’t have advanced system for searching for people
• Most people use user names, so enter your friend’s nickname here

3. MySpace

Quick facts:

• Still one of the most popular social networking sites around
• Over 100 million users
• Owned by NewsCorp

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• They have very user friendly search engine, you can search by name, user name, email
• Search by last or first name only if your friend’s first/last name is rare
• Use the email search option, enter your friend’s email address there

2. Linkedin

Quick facts:

• Business-oriented social networking site
• Over 50 million users worldwide
• People post a lot career information there

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• Linkedin is a business-oriented website, so you can search by company, industry and so on. You need to register to do that, though
• In case your friend worked in a particular company, you can search by company, find the people that currently work there and ask them whether they know something about your friend

1. Facebook

Quick facts:

• The most popular social networking site
• 350 million and growing active users online
• Most likely, you can find most of your friends there

Search Results Example:

Tips when searching:

• You can search by email address
• Import your contact list so Facebook will see whether your friends have an account there (it will search by email)

There’s been a lot of discussion on this subject. I’m here to share my extensive experience with you on doing a people search using someone’s SSN (or social security number.)

First and foremost, trying to find someone by their SSN is the most accurate ‘people search’ you can do. Why?

Let me ask you one thing…

How many people own a similar Social Security Number? Now, how many people own a similar FULL name? It’s a fact that a thing like SSN is unique for one person only.

This makes it easy for you to evaluate various ‘finder services’. Just enter the SSN, see if results appear and you’re done. No need to filter through duplicate names and so on like you would do if you were trying to find a person by a first/last name.

Generally, when doing this type of SSN search, there are 2 types of searches you can do:

* Finding deceased people (provided for free by Ancestry) where you can enter only the person’s SSN and see his name/address/date of birth and death and so on.
* Finding living people (which is probably what you’re trying to do), where you also need to enter the person’s LAST or sometimes his full name.

There are generally 2 ways to do the second type of search (for living people).

1. Use reputable background check services (for a small fee) like USSearch.com or PeopleFinders.com
2. If it’s something URGENT and you need to reach the person urgently, I highly recommend you read this webpage (from the Social Security Administration).

Warning: While searching, you might have found some pages recommending various paid services. There are lots of scams out there when it comes to this industry…trust me. So if you’re dealing with a particular public record or background check company, please read the above post on the reputable background check services and the criteria I’ve used to evaluate them.

Good luck!

If you’ve ever visited ZabaSearch, you’ll notice that almost EVERY link in their search results leads to Intelius:

Okay, the last link leads to US Search but as we know recently Intelius bought US Search for an undisclosed sum.

So what’s going on here? Is ZabaSearch secretly in love with Intelius? Or are they actually owned by them?

I’ve tried to find some news online for a possible purchase of ZabaSearch by Intelius but didn’t find any. I found something interesting, however. The whois records. Take a look at the whois record for ZabaSearch:

(source: DomainTools, full window is here)

Interesting, huh? The record was last updated on 01-Jul-10 which may suggest the purchase happened recently.

Now, take a look at the whois record for Intelius:

(source: DomainTools, full window is here)

Identical? Yes!

This seems like a solid evidence, but it is far from enough to conclude that ZabaSearch is now owned by Intelius. To get a better view, let’s take a look at the Whois history of Zabasearch.com (I’ve got a Gold Membership from DomainTools.com to obtain this information). According to the records, the domain transition happened somewhere between 1st and 2nd October in 2009. Here is the whois record for 1st October 2009:

This domain was previously owned by Robert Zakari who is one of the founders of ZabaSearch.

I think we can safely conclude that Intelius is now the owner of ZabaSearch. Not sure why they want to hide this though, they’re just a company providing a legitimate background check and people search services.