Finding People

Possible Questions That Can Be Answered Using This FARQ

• I just know my best friend from elementary school is online, but I can’t find her email address. How can I find it?
• My cousin moved to San Francisco years ago and we haven’t heard from him since. Is there a city directory available online where we can search for him?

The Web offers some ways to find people, but because not everyone has a presence on the Web, and because Web users are concerned about being able to maintain their privacy, it is not a consistently good method for finding people. You will probably want to search off the Web as well. Here is a mixture of online and offline ways to find people.

A good starting point is this Finding People - Lost Family and Friends page from the About.com Guide to Genealogy. The collection of links on this page cover a wide variety of search strategies from city directories to government public records.

If you are trying to find someone you went to school with, there are several sites on the Internet where you can register yourself as an alum of a particular school or schools, and then check (sometimes for a fee) to see whether any of your old classmates have registered. A good place to check for these sites is Yahoo’s category for Alumnae/i Associations.

If you are trying to find someone’s address for bill collection purposes, try contacting their city of last known residence to see if there are any records of water bill or tax payments that list a forwarding address. Be aware that the city may charge for this information, and may also not release the information to you.

If you want professional assistance in locating someone, check your local yellow pages for private investigators or check the investigative services category in Yahoo. Be aware that private investigators will charge a significant amount of money to help locate someone for you. We at the IPL cannot recommend any particular investigator or company over any other.

If you have someone’s phone number and need their address, or vice versa, you have a couple of options. There are several sites, such as AnyWho and Infospace, that offer "reverse phone directory" searching for finding out the name & address associated with a particular phone number. Infospace also offers reverse address and email Lookups as well. Off the Web, ask your local public librarian for help using a "crisscross directory", a directory that enables similar "reverse searching."

Looking for someone in the UK? Try this excellent on-line pamphlet from the UK’s Family Records Office, Tracing Missing Persons. (The document may also be useful as a suggested research path for those not in the UK as well.)

You might also want to look at our document on Finding Phone Numbers.