Researching people online

[MacFanUK]

I have a friend who had an ebay sale go wrong a couple of years ago. We were chatting about it last night and he told me that when this deal went wrong, the buyer managed to find out (online) where he lived, which church he went to, where he worked, etc.

How do these people find this information?

 

[yg17]

Myspace, Facebook, etc. You can usually google their name (at least if they have an uncommon name, googling John Smith might not return much) and find some info.

 

[SilentPanda]

A basic google search can return a lot of information. There's also a fair amount of public records online. I know where I live you can look up all the housing information (mortgages, deeds) and also all the court cases. As you get more information it's easier and easier to find more information. At some point there is diminishing returns but you'd be surprised what is out there for free. I was even able to find a siblings signature scanned in online on his mortgage....

This is a pretty good launch site: http://publicrecords.onlinesearches.com/

See what you can find about yourself... it's weird. Although that's more US based.