1. Looking to locate someone? Search using a name and state to find criminal history, marriage and divorce records, contact information, address history, get their real age, run a background check, and even find their phone number.
2. So far, we’ve discussed free or low-cost ways to get find background information on someone. You could also choose to go the professional route. There are full-service employment screening companies out there who will do a deep background check for $50-100 per report.

Suppose a new guy moves into your neighborhood. Let’s call him Bobby Smith. Before his moving van is even unpacked, Bobby introduces himself. He’s friendly and good-humored, and he says you should come over for a barbecue sometime. But there’s something off about him. So you decide to find out more about him—his career, his past, anything suspicious. But short of hiring a private investigator, what can you find out?

A lot, actually. You’d be amazed how much public information is tangled up in the web. No matter how hard we might try to disguise our past, much of our lives has been digitized and archived, just waiting to be discovered. This is a double-edged sword, of course. If you want to find information on other people, that process has never been more streamlined. But you might be just as easy to investigate. It’s a great idea to look yourself up and erase what you don’t want readily accessible.

Click here to learn how to remove your personal information from the most popular people search sites.

So what can you learn about someone? Here’s how you can get the dirt on Bobby, for free.

Professional People Search Site Reviews Service Highlights Offer Reviews More Info E-Mail Search Social Search Address Search Instant Results 5.0. Millions of people look for vital, historical, and other publicly registered documents every day online. Find a birth certificate, locate census records, track down land use documents, and much more with this list of the best websites for finding public information on the Web. How to run a free background check Dirty deeds are uncovered dirt cheap with these online background check resources By Alina Bradford and Kailla Coomes July 16, 2019 4:11PM PST. Many people make their social media profiles invisible to non-friends. To see details, you may have to send him a connection request. Remember, though, many people don’t use their real names online.

Start with Google

Google is the easiest place to begin your search. Just enter the person’s full name in quotations marks, in this case, “Bobby Smith.” There are plenty of Bobby Smiths out there, so you’ll want to narrow your search using other information, such as what city he lives in. If he just moved to your neighborhood from Cincinnati, you’ll want to include that city instead of your own.

If Bobby likes to make friends, a bunch of different social media sites may pop up: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and scores of others. Many people make their social media profiles invisible to non-friends. To see details, you may have to send him a connection request. Remember, though, many people don’t use their real names online. If you find Bobby’s online alias, (Smirk Bob, perhaps), you may find that Bobby uses the same screen name for his other social media accounts.

Finally, run a Google image search to locate pictures of Bobby. You might find out that Bobby is a champion swimmer. You might also find out that he was arrested for a DUI.

PeekYou

Afterward, try PeekYou.com. Instead of locking in on keywords, PeekYou looks for links that are likely associated with the people you’re looking for online.

When it finds information, PeekYou indexes all the links in one place for easy browsing. You can quickly see an overview of just about anyone. You can also search by categories, such as Interests, Work, School, City, Phone, and Email. You’ll be surprised by what you find.

Click here to scour more than 60 sites ranging from social media to news outlets.

Check out your neighbors

So what happens if Bobby doesn’t introduce himself, and you have no idea what his name is. All you have to do is enter your address in whitepages.com/neighbors, and this site will pull up a map of your block. You can click on houses to see publicly available information about the people living around you. Instead of rooting through his mailbox, which is illegal, the online phone book uses modern social-networking technology.

Find out where photos were taken

If you’ve never heard of The Beat, prepare to be amazed. As you may know, lots of digital photos are embedded with “meta-data,” including where the photo was taken. The Beat combines those “geotags” with Google Street View, so you can see what publicly posted photos were shot in your neighborhood. The Internet doesn’t get more vivid than this: an album of images taken on your block by people you may never have met. Adding to the anxiety are the privacy issues that The Beat raises. So be careful about the photos you post, especially if you’ve used geotags to indicate where those shots were snapped.

Click here to see photos taken in your neighborhood.

Check the sex offender registry

The bottom line is this: You want to make sure Bobby isn’t a threat, and one of the most frightening threats is a convicted sex offender. With the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, all you have to do is enter a ZIP code and run a search to see a list of convicted offenders in your area.

You see a picture of the person and their home and work addresses. In some cases, you’ll also see a risk level. If all goes well, you’ll find that Bobby is an upstanding citizen with a clean record and a lot of worthy friends. But it never hurts to double-check. One word of warning: always take the information with a grain of salt. People search sites can accidentally combine separate people in one profile. If there’s another Bobby Smith from Cincinnati, the system might confuse the two, making you believe your neighbor is actually someone else.

Want to hear more about online research techniques? Be sure to listen or download my podcasts, or click here to find it on your local radio station. You can listen to the Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet or computer. From buying advice to digital life issues, click here for my free podcasts. Copyright 2017, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today’s digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com

There are lots of free sites for finding public records online. When you run a public records search, you can find everything from marriage and divorce records to public birth and death information, criminal records, and more.

Some public records finders will locate all of that information at once, but others are built specifically for one type of record. For example, you might use one website for locating death records and another for birth records, but some public records include both.

Below are the top free ways to find public records depending on the type of information you're after.

These resources only cover publicly available records, meaning that they're only what's been made available online. Some public records aren't released online and must be accessed through your local records office. Sometimes, information you find through these public records resources aren't true or even remotely accurate, so you can't always rely on what you see.

Public Records Search for People

Free Reports On People Backgrounds For Facebook

If your public records search is aimed toward finding what's publicly available on a specific person, use a people search engine. You can type a name and location to see more information about the person, like their phone numbers, email addresses, usernames, physical addresses, relatives, education history, and more.

Install odbc drivers windows 7. TruePeopleSearch is an example of a free website for finding people online, but others that cost, like BeenVerified, are sometimes more exhaustive.

You can remove your own information from these websites if you wish to. Carp fishing game.

Free Public Criminal Records

You might have luck using a people search engine to find criminal records (BeenVerified does a good job at listed those records), but you can also search for criminals with a prison inmate locator such as the one available at Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Family Watchdog is a good public records finder if you're looking for sex offenders in your area. You can search by location or school to find nearby sex offenders, or find a specific criminal via name. You can also use the National Sex Offender Public Website for the most recent information available from all 50 states, The District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories.

Online newspapers are considered public records, too, and they're updated frequently to include recent criminal reports.

Search Obituaries for Public Death Records

Obituaries that are listed online is another way to search public records on the web. It's one of the best ways to learn if someone has passed away.

A similar public records search is for gravesite records. Websites like Find A Grave provide millions of memorials you can search through to confirm a death record, and many even have photos of the gravesite for extra proof.

Find Birth Records Online for Free

Most if not all birth certificates aren't public information, but there are ways to search for birth record information online for free through other public records.

For example, a genealogy website often includes birth details such as when and where people were born, who their parents are, whether they were adopted, etc.

Local newspaper sites are another solid way to search public birth records. Not everyone releases a birth announcement, but some people do.

To order your official birth certificate, you can use a service like VitalCheck.

Absolutely Free Background Report

Use a Family Tree as a Public Records Search Tool

Family trees are online listings of how people are related within a family, so they're a great public record of who's married to whom, whether someone has passed away, how many children someone has, and maybe even where people are currently living.

FamilyTreeNow.com is one example of a free family tree service where you can browse public family trees and search for people by name, birth and death date, and other criteria.

Where to Search Other Public Records

If you still can't find the public records you're searching for, consider using a regular web search engine like Google or Bing. They serve as excellent general search tools that can look across lots of websites at once instead of the specific ones listed above.

However, here are some other resources for finding public records:

• Census.gov lets you search publicly available information about the United States that's been gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau. Records include details on population, housing, economics, and geography.
• Realtor.com is one example of an easy way of finding public records regarding properties for sale and rent, and the results often include other details, too, like home value estimates, pictures, tax details, and square footage.
• USA.gov has all sorts of public records from the United States government, state governments, and local governments. Every agency that handles public information in the U.S. can be found somewhere in this huge database.
• Veterans History Project is an example of a website that helps you find military records online.