Vivek Narain Presents: Tips for finding a missing person
There are many reasons for a person to go missing. I’m trying to find a family member who walked away from me, but there are kidnappings, forbidden love affairs and a whole collection of other circumstances that could create a missing person scenario. Regardless of the reason for a disappearance, I have found some interesting information during my own missing person mission that I think could help track someone down. In our technology rich society there are many strings with which a person’s whereabouts can be tracked. It is no longer necessary to pay the expensive fee for a private investigator to hunt them down for you, the internet and other communication resources have rendered these services almost absolute. If you need to find someone, follow these tips, they have been very helpful during my missing person experience.
The Importance of Background Information
Try and get as much information as you possibly can about the person before you start searching for them. The more data you can acquire the easier your search will be. Don’t be afraid to spend a lot of time doing research before you actually start searching, it will pay off and make your search much more effective. Check any clubs or organizations the person has been in, try and figure out financial information as well, such as bank statements or car payments. A Social Security Number is the most important piece of information you can find.
Tracing a person’s SSN is the best way to find out where someone’s current address is. You can trace the number with the credit bureaus; this is what professional investigators use to find people because even if you are trying to hide from someone, your SSN will give away your address. Your credit history follows you with most things that you do, including renting an apartment, paying utilities, or getting a new job. There are many ways that an SSN can give away current locations. If you are having trouble finding an SSN, request a copy of original tax applications or financial paperwork, original copies will often feature an SSN for confirmation.
If you can’t find an SSN the next best bet is to find a recent home address, this way you can talk to neighbors and better focus your searches within local institutions or organizations where the person may have left their mark. There is always a footprint left when someone lives in an area, whether it be the grocery store they frequented or movies they rented to neighbors they were friends with and banks they enrolled in, you can find out many things by using their previous address. Using address information is also a good way to find family in the area that may know the person’s whereabouts.
Check voter registration records. If you try and create a new life, and you used to vote, you may just want to vote again. It is easy to find out if the person voted again by checking state voter records and this will give away their general living location.
Use Uniform Commercial Code fillings, these lien notices are controlled by each state and can be found in state records. These fillings store in records when you make a loan on a property, which helps you track a person because it can show you who they were doing business with. These filling databases can lead you to a financial institution or loan program that the missing person worked with and then you can find their current location. Other important sources to check include vehicle registration information; traffic tickets and drivers license numbers.
Check phone and utility companies, people leave a paper trail and it can be followed. Gas and cable companies create records of customers; these can be incredibly useful when searching for the missing. Check public records if you know the person’s full name because if they own a car or real estate it will be publicly listed.
Research the professional background of your mark, if they registered as a hair dresser or were in the military that means they are in a system and in a registered area that will have a file about the person that could be useful.
Check with the Social Security Administration to make sure the person isn’t dead. If the missing person is dead you may be able to find out exactly where their remains are, a morbid thought, but one that would bring closure to an agonizing search.
The most important things to know about a missing person are their SSN, DOB, and last known address, find as much information as you can but look specifically for these important tracking devices.
Web Services and People Finders
There are several internet search services that you can use to find people. These sites serve as digital Private Detectives and can be extremely helpful in a difficult search. These sites are different than regular search engines like Google, because search engines simply catalogue web data, while the people searches are specifically designed to find missing people and take a very different approach when seeking information. Some of these programs even have genealogy searches if you have extremely little information to go on.
There are a variety of web techniques you can use to find someone, depending on the amount of information you have at your disposable. There are a variety of personal profiles on the web that you can search, such as social bookmarking site likes MySpace and Facebook where you can simply search for the missing name by city and state. Even if you can’t find someone with their exact name, you may find people that could help you’re search. You are bound to get some possible matches and leads by searching by name and area. When profile searching fails, the people finder sites let you search for someone with a variety of information, including forwarding addresses, name and date of birth, and SSN of course. Input all the information you have into these sites and they will greatly improve your successful search chances.
Utilizing the Information You Have Gathered
Use the information you have gathered from initial searches and collections and think of some possible places where the missing person could be. There are often many clues left in financial records and background information that can help you figure out where the person may have gone, if you believe they left on their own free will. A clear give away are plane tickets purchased for a specific destination or a traffic violation. Also look for purchases that would help aid life in a certain geographic region or culture. Look for clues in everything you find, often very basic data can become extremely revealing.
Use the information you find to connect with other people who might know where the person is. One of the best ways to find someone is by using other people to help lead you in the right search direction. To do this, connect with coworkers or other associates who stayed in contact with this person in various aspects of their life.
If you know the state your missing person resided in, a great place to look for information is the “City Index” which can be found at the local library. The index serves as a directory of all the people that lived in the city or town in a given year, much like a high school yearbook. Each year’s city index provides information about where people live in the area. If your missing person is buying or renting in the area, this is an excellent way to find them. This directory can also provide you with information about their employer, marital status, and other useful things that help give you clues to locate someone.
If you have an old address of someone you can also try a low-tech way of finding their new address that can work extremely well. You can send mail to the address you have and then pay extra for an address correction from the post office. They will return the mail to you with a forwarding address if they have it on file, this can be very helpful to tracking more updated movements of your missing person.
When you find a phone number that might belong to the person you’re searching for you can also use tricks called “phone pretexts” to try and track the missing person down. Phone pretexts are just simple little stories you plan out before making a call that will allow you to get the most updated and accurate information about where your subject may be found. These pretexts can be as simple as claiming to be an old friend that wants to catch up, to pretending that you have something for the person that you would like to send through the mail, which would allow you to get their current address.
When you do searches for people’s names and lineage you are also usually able to find information about relatives, these are important to find because you can question them and figure out more about the person.
Police Report
One of the most important things you can do is file a report with the police. In many states there is no police are obliged to begin looking for a missing person immediately. Run missing person bulletins through schools and other organizations, use a local college or the police force itself to help you spread a network of pictures and questions further the search. Educating a community about a missing person is a great way to find someone. There are numerous databases for both missing children and adults that you can check for information as well. When you file a missing person report law enforcement agencies put the information into an automated database of missing people that will also help track them in the future.
Radionics
Radionics missing person techniques may seem a little far fetched but they have received a lot of buzz lately. Radionics practitioners claim their system utilizes new scientific advances to create a device that allows you to find people by harnessing energy forms.
Radionics stemmed from studies of quantum physics, but I doubt that anyone who worked on Radionics was actually a quantum physicist, it seems like they simply leached the ideas of quantum physics to try and make this new bogus system of channeling energy that they like to call science.
Supposedly there are Radionics instruments that can be used to locate people by placing a picture of the person and then running the device over a map. The idea is that the device channels their energy field and then finds it on the map. The device will alert you what part of the map the person is located through a sticky sensation, and that place on the map is where the person is.
Radionics seems like a total scam to me, but if you are really desperate it might be worth looking into. I am always open to new techniques, no matter how ludicrous they may appear.