Finding A Long Lost Person
Do you want to find someone from your past?
This could be a childhood friend or work colleague that you fancy seeing again.
Are you recently single and fancy seeing what an old partner or crush is up to?
Some people want to find lost relations or biological parents if they have been adopted.
What Are The Steps To Finding Someone?
1. Write Down What You Know About Them
This may seem like an odd thing but writing the list will keep a record of everything that you know about them plus the process is likely to jog more memories.
Each item of information, no matter how small, could be of use at some point. Even strange details like height or hair colour to who they used to be friends with or their middle initial.
What was their last known address and when did they live there?
Do you have their old phone number or email address?
Where did they work or what school did they go to?
Write down everything!
2. Utilise Search Engines
The next step is to use online search engines such as Google or Bing. This is where all the information you have written down will come in handy.
Run through searches using various combinations of the information that you have. You do not need to use all the data at once or even all combinations.
For instance use the name and their old address, then their name and their old phone number, then their name and old affiliations such as sports clubs.
Use The Search Engine Tools
Use quote marks around names when you want to search for the full phrase such as "John Smith" along with other keywords.
Use a "-" before any words that you want to take out. For instance if you search for "John Smith" you might want to filter out any results that include "beer".
Switching to image view will help trawl through multiple options when there is a common name, such as John Smith.
Search engines could find names or addresses in online directories. Even if you do not find the exact information that you want, you are still able to find directories that you can perform other searches in or find additional information which may prove useful at another point.
3. Trawl Social Media
Facebook will probably be the most useful for people's searches. You can search by name or even look at pages such as employers, sports or social clubs to see who is a member.
Try looking for known friends or family that could lead on to the person that you are trying to find.
Twitter or Instagram often have "handles" rather than real names plus there are no friends or associations which means that they are a lot less likely to have any use.
LinkedIn could be very useful if you know their old employer or education plus the profile pictures are often the clearest. Be aware that if you view someone's profile they will be made aware that you have done so.
Who Else Did They Know?
If you cannot find them with the information that you have, then try to get in contact with mutual friends. Other people may be easier to find or you may know more about them.
Reach out to them to see if they are either still in contact or may be able to point you in the right direction.
Is Privacy Important?
The disadvantage here is that the person that you are searching for will most likely be made aware that you are trying to find them.
It may also become public knowledge amongst your friends or family that you are searching for someone. There are numerous occasions where this can cause upset. Your adoptive parents may not understand if you are searching for your biological parents. One friend may not like that you are getting in touch with another long lost friend.
4. Professional People Tracing Service
Usually people tracing companies and Private investigators have access to several bespoke systems and databases with the ability to cross check information that other open source searches can not offer.
An investigator can search through UK and overseas public records, marriage records, military
records and/or criminal records with the target remaining completely unaware.
Essentially the systems and databases used allow us to access and individuals digital footprint - doing so legally and ethically. No laws are broken and our traces are legally binding documents.
There is a monetary cost to accessing these records so it is not something that could be done "on the cheap" even without hiring an experienced private investigator.
The information that you may have written down in step one can save time and money as all data can be used in cross-referencing which speeds up the process. If there are several hundred of people with the same name identifiers are needed as mentioned above - DOB, last known address, area from, family members...These help us massively in narrowing a search down.
Using a professional is always recommended as the process to search for people can be quite complex and usually involves submitting a lot of forms to various official bodies, that often takes time and works off historical information and data.
You could also accidentally breach UK privacy laws if you were inexperienced.
A professional can find people overseas or if they have changed their name for example if an individual has married, divorced or changed their name via deed poll.
What If I Am Not Ready To Speak To Them?
You do not have to make contact with the person if you do not choose to do so and you could even want to have the private investigator make contact on your behalf.
You may not be emotionally ready to see them after such a long time or you may fear their reaction. Finding them is the first step but what you do once you have found them is a very personal choice.
Background checks can be run to ascertain how the person is doing if you just want to make sure that they are OK. We can tell you where they live and where they are employed.
Re-uniting A Family
A client came to us after actually being let down by another company. She was a West Indian lady who was born here in the UK.
Her mother was in her mid teens at the time of her birth and unable to take care of her. Our Client, only 10 weeks old at the time, was then taken in by a loving family who were able to raise her properly, which she was very thankful and grateful for.
However, now in her late 20's and raising a family of her own she wanted to find out firstly if her mother was alive and well, and secondly where she was living.
She had a full name and an approximate age for her biological mum. Although she wasn't sure of an exact date of birth.
We were able to run the information through our systems and databases, and with relative ease were able to identify the woman in question. On doing so we could see she had in fact been anchored to her current address for many years, and only a 30 minute drive from where our Client lived.
We handed the address over to our Client who was over the moon that we'd been able to locate her biological mother, along with a contact phone number and some co-occupancy data suggesting she had siblings too.
Our Client then came back to us for a background check. She wanted to know more. We were then able to confirm that the co-occupants were indeed her siblings, her mother had also married and they had the usual social media accounts for our Client to see.
We were able to compile this information into a background check type report and pass onto her for her to see.
She had everything there in black and white to see - we actually pride ourselves on the quality and presentation of our reports.
Within 48 hours our client was sat in a local restaurant with biological mum, step dad and her two siblings.
A happy Client and a family reunited.
If you would like to know more about our People Tracing service then please visit our People Tracing page
