Whether you’re hoping to reconnect with your best pal from high school, or you want the real lowdown on that guy your sister met on the internet, a site that will search people in NY can be a very useful tool. Here are some tips that will help you optimize the information retrieval you do on sites such as Intelius.

What Does a People-Search Service Do?

Think of a people-search service as a credit-reporting agency for social credit. People-search services pull information from public records such as real estate deeds, civil lawsuit filings and liens, marriage and divorce records, professional certifications and criminal court judgments. These services may also include data from social media profiles and postings if search subjects haven’t taken advantage of privacy settings.

You could probably pull together this data on your own if you had sufficient time and motivation. Information retrieval businesses can compile a profile of the person you’re searching for within minutes, though, so it may be more convenient to outsource these types of investigations to a third party.

The Right Name Is Important

If you want to get the most out of using a people-search service, it’s vitally important to use your subject’s correct name. Nearly 330 million people live in the U.S. and their ancestors emigrated here from all parts of the globe, so the chances that the person you’re looking for will have a unique name are very small. It’s more likely that several people will share his or her first-and-last-name combination.

A middle name may be the key to identifying the individual you are searching for. If there’s more than one person with the same first name/middle name/last name combo, though, then you’ll have to rely upon other means of verifying your search subject’s identity. Do you know any of this person’s previous addresses? Are you familiar with this person’s close family members? These types of connections can help you make sure you’re investigating the right person.

You Can’t Use People-Search for Some Things

People-search agencies are not consumer reporting agencies. The Fair Credit Reporting Act established strict criteria for credit bureaus, and it’s actually a violation of federal law to use data obtained from these kinds of people searches to determine an individual’s credit-worthiness. It’s also against the law to use this data to determine an individual’s employment eligibility although you can use it to perform criminal background checks on prospective employees. Similarly, this information may not be used to determine whether an individual can apply for insurance or certain types of housing.