37 Personal Information - Information by Field (Information Research)
Description
This article is from the Information Research FAQ, by David Novak david@spireproject.com with numerous contributions by others.
37 Personal Information - Information by Field (Information Research)
links and more at http://spireproject.com/people.htm
There are tools to assist you to either locate someone you know, or dig
up background information. The internet has email directories and phone
directories aplenty as well as tools to trace internet communication.
Beyond this, there are tools to find silent numbers, business and asset
ownership, newspaper articles and more. You will start with a name or
email address.
Finding an Email Address:
* The Yahoo People Search (people.yahoo.com) is an important and
flexible tool for finding email & address information.
* Switchboard (www.switchboard.com) also offers several people search
tools.
* You may need to search the people databases from several internet
websites to be successful. For further assistance, consider the FAQ:
How to find people's E-mail addresses
(http://www.cs.queensu.ca/FAQs/email/bigfinding.html) and the phone &
address references on Yahoo.
People who Publish Online
Has the person published anything on the internet? The simple way is to
search the internet for the full name of the individual in the hope
they included their email address or real name on the webpage. Use
Altavista and Debriefing for this task. For more depth, read the
article: Searching the Web. Altavista has a very large, fast search
engine. Type the name using quotes to keep the words together. Add in
further information if you know using url:edu or keywords (use the +
sign). Also, capitals matter with Altavista. Debriefing, is a
meta-search engine optimized for finding people & named websites.
Finger is a lesser known internet protocol which sometimes reveals
information about a person given an email address. It used to be more
common and may give name & perhaps if a person is currently logged in.
It is easy to make a finger request from a Unix command line (finger
email@host). Some web-browsers will allow you to enter a finger request
directly (as finger://username@host). Alternatively, use a finger
gateway like this one from MIT (http://www.mit.edu:8001/finger?).
Tracing Online Communication
Deja.com usenet archive (www.deja.com) maintains a very large database
of newsgroup discussion. The Deja.com's power search is a must-see and
will give you a brilliant author profile. Here is a quick search; the
power search has more flexible options.
Searching mailing list discussion is more difficult. If you know a
forum a person is active in, see our article: Discussion Groups.
Alternatively, search the web for the email address. Hopefully you will
catch list discussion picked up by zines or directly by search engines.
Use Altavista for this.
Phone Directories
There are several tools available to you here: Printed Directories:
White pages - if you know the name but not the address or phone number.
Yellow pages & other business listings - if you know the business, but
not address or number. Sometimes libraries and post offices will have
the white pages to different states. A better alternative may be to
search the white pages through the internet. For a very complete list,
visit Telephone Directories on the Web (http://www.teldir.com).
Directory Assistance - if you know an approximate name/address
combination, but not number. Directory Assistance is a service provided
by your phone company.
Phone directory databases - usually prepared as a CD-ROM, listing all
the phone numbers in Australia. this is particularly good for a reverse
search: seeking the name and address from the phone number.
Biographical Directories and Databases
If the person is famous, newsworthy or historically important, this may
be a worthwhile option. Directories like the series of Who's Who
directories will list some basic biographical details, most likely
prepared by the person involved. Who's Who directories exist for many
categories and countries like Longman Who's Who, Marquis Who's Who or
Who's Who in European Business.
Alternatively, consider the collection of biographical directories and
databases like Wilson Biography Index (see SilverPlatter or
FirstSearch), Wilson Current Biography (SilverPlatter), Bowker
Biographical Directory or Biography Master Index. The Wilson Biography
Index, for example, cites a large number of periodicals & books which
include biographies.
There is also a simple biographical database online: Biography Online
(www.biography.com), with 15000+ biographical abstracts - but most are
really really short. Of course, for well-known people, consider an
encyclopedia.
Newspaper Search
Local newspapers are a brilliant resource for information about
individuals, and most anyone running a business will try to be featured
in their local newspapers. The key here is local newspapers, and
historical databases (not current news).
There are no shortages of electronic access to good news too. DataTimes
presents a single access point to many of the North American
newspapers. Global Textline includes access to a wide range of
different countries. With both these news archive databases, you must
be careful to specify exactly what you are looking for. You would be
surprised how many David Novak's there are in my state alone. Use the
full text databases in particular.
Asset Searches
The asset search involves searching a selection of government databases
for home and business ownership. The presence of a mortgage on a house
is public knowledge (though the information is not particularly
current). National business ownership databases, like ASCOT in
Australia, will give you the ownership of businesses and association
management. For a small fee through the department of business
registration, or a collection of commercial retailers, you can search
the ASCOT database by name.
One elegant suggestion is to seek help from a professional information
broker from the area where a person lives. The mailing list InfoPro is
a particularly large collection of brokers who routinely distribute
this kind of information. Consider emailing a request for assistance to
the list manager James and ask your request be circulated to the
mailing list.
Reverse Telephone Directories.
Previously these were primarily police resources, but today they have
become tools for telephone marketing. CD's are pressed with all the
phone numbers in Australia, or all the numbers in the US. The search
function lets you run this as a reverse directory just by searching for
the phone number. Look in the yellow pages, or perhaps ask a librarian
for leads to these resources.
Commercial Personal Information Profiles
There are commercial products supporting the needs of human resource
departments, legal research and the police. Information is collected
and distributed as like Credit Reports, or personal profiles. As an
example, running a level three Missing Links search on CDB (for about
US$15.00) will usually return a US silent phone number.
* CDB Infotek (www.cdb.com/public/) maintain a selection of commercial
databases of personal information.
Further firms have been mentioned as active in this industry, including
American Information Network (http://www.ameri.com), Know-X and IRB
OnLine (http://www.irb-online.com).
Conclusion
There is a serious issue as to the morality of easy access to personal
information. There is an equally important moral value in empowerment:
what is publicly available to should be publicly known.
Beyond these resources we have to tools available to private
investigators: rummaging though garbage cans, following the suspect,
etc... There are also computer files and databases with better
controlled access: drivers databases, police arrest records, voters
registration, medical records, passport and immigration records,
banking records. Most of the latter resources will only be available to
you with the direct permission of the one involved. Further databases,
like a database of known pedophiles, while available, would only be
useful if you had previous suspicions.
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