Vol. 77, No. 3, March
2004
Researching Individuals on the Internet
Conducting research on individuals can be as easy as a few keystrokes
when you use the Internet. Here are a few resources to get you
started.
Carol
Bannen is director of information resources at Reinhart,
Boerner, Van Deuren S.C., Milwaukee. She is a member of the board of
directors of the Law Librarians Association of Wisconsin, and heads its
project providing a series of articles on conducting efficient,
effective research. Bannen is a frequent speaker to groups of legal
practitioners and researchers.
by Carol Bannen
There are many ways to research individuals on the Internet,
depending on what you need. Attorneys often ask law librarians for
"everything you can find" on a person. Searching the Web with search
engines like Google may net you
information including resumés, personal postings, and more, but
this directive often has to be narrowed down in the reference interview.
A search may be done more efficiently by determining what the lawyer
actually needs. Is the lawyer trying to locate a missing heir? Does she
need background information before visiting a potential client? Is he
wondering about potential assets? These questions and many more can be
answered by using some of the following resources.
Locating People
There is an excellent list of sites for people research at the Virtual Chase,
located at . There are six parts: 1) public records, 2) reverse lookup,
3) white pages, 4) email directories, 5) international phone
directories, and 6) reputable fee-based public information records
searching resources. The Virtual Chase is an excellent resource created
by law librarian Genie Tyburski. Another mega-site is Merlin Information
Services, which offers an index of Web-based resources for investigative
research. You can find sex offender databases, property records,
professional licenses, vital records, campaign finance records,
corporate records, and more at Merlin
Information . Searchsystems.net, has links to
more than 16,500 free public record databases from all states. BRB Publications has
another great collection of public record sources.
If you are looking for a home address or phone number, there are
several sites to go to, including Switchboard and Anywho. An unlisted phone number
probably will not be available. If you have a phone number and want to
see who it belongs to, you can try a reverse look-up directory at reverse directory.
Several search engines are collected here and both businesses and
residences can be checked.
The person for whom you are looking may be deceased. You can check
the Social
Security Administration's Death Index. The records are updated
quarterly. Searches may be done by surname, first name, Social Security
number, state issued by, city/state/county/zip of last known residence,
or month/date/year of birth or death. Newspaper obituary searching also
may be helpful, especially for more recent deaths. News Voyager links to
newspapers from all 50 states. Vital
Check has Information on how to get vital records from all 50
states. Information on how to look for or order birth, death, marriage,
or divorce records is included. A similar site is the National Center
for Health Statistics.
Political Affiliations and Contributions
It may be helpful to know a person's political party affiliation.
Access Wisconsin state-level
campaign contributions and you may search for contributions to all
state candidates from an individual contributor or a specific employer
or all contributors from a specific city. You also can see all
contributions and expenditures by a particular candidate. Additional
campaigns can be searched, including the Political Action Committee
(PAC) contributions at the Center
for Responsible Politics found. A collection of links to all 50
states is found at Gary Price's Web
site.
Criminal Records
Checking an individual's criminal background can be difficult. The Wisconsin Department of Justice
site has detailed information from 1971 to the present, including
arrests, arrest charges, prosecutions, court fines and sentences, and
state correctional system admissions and releases. It is an accumulation
of information submitted by Wisconsin law enforcement agencies,
prosecutors, courts, and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC)
and may not be comprehensive. Requests are $13 each. You need the
individual's first and last name and date of birth or Social Security
number to do a search. The DOC has an Online Sex Offender
Registry at that lists the state's sex offenders by name and
location. The Wisconsin
Circuit Court Automation Program (CCAP) has Wisconsin circuit court
records for all counties except Walworth. Portage County shows only
probate cases and Milwaukee is in the process of adding its probate
cases. The dates when each county began adding records to CCAP are
different, so be wary. This used to be a great way to find date of birth
and driver's license information, but these have been removed for
privacy reasons.
The next step in a criminal background check is to search the federal
courts for criminal records. Dockets of federal district and bankruptcy
courts can be searched with PACER. Although a subscription is required,
searching PACER is very affordable at $.07 per page viewed. PACER's U.S.
Party/Case Index offers an index of cases filed in federal courts that
allows multiple courts to be searched by name. Unfortunately, you cannot
do a nationwide search here because the Index does not contain data from
all the courts. Check the list of courts covered. The Seventh Circuit
Court of Appeals has to be searched separately. Dockets can be searched
for the Wisconsin
Supreme Court and Wisconsin Court of Appeals. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation has a Prison Inmate
Locator that allows you to locate federal inmates currently
incarcerated as well as inmates released from 1982 to the present.
No one, except perhaps the Department of Homeland Security, can do a
complete criminal records search. Many of the companies on the Internet
say they can, but read the fine print. For a great summary of criminal
records available nationwide on the Internet, see "Navigating the Maze
of Criminal Records Retrieval". Although a little dated, it has
great advice on how to find criminal records. Another good resource is
The
Virtual Chase on Criminal Records.
Asset Searching
There are many places to check a person's assets. SearchSystems.net, mentioned
earlier, has one of the best public record collections with more than
16,500 links to state databases. This Web site will link you to real
estate records as well as records for aircraft, boats, cars, and other
registered assets. Netroline
has links to a variety of property databases. Some information costs a
small fee, but much of it is free. Carfax allows you to search the
history of a car for $14.99 and includes the owner's last known
residence. Portico-Personal
Property Online has an index to sources of property record data
nationwide and in Canada. It includes real estate, boats, aircraft, and
horses.
Wisconsin allows UCC
liens to be searched. You may access records by debtor name, debtor
organization, or filing number. For other states use the links mentioned
above.
Corporate Affiliations
The person you are investigating may be affiliated with a
corporation. You can search the Wisconsin Department of
Financial Institutions CRIS database. Although listings of officers
and directors are not provided, names of registered agents are listed.
Similar databases can be found for other states with some listing
officers and directors. LLRX links all of
these. Lexis and Westlaw offer global searching of these databases for a
fee; however, the Delaware information has to be searched separately in
both. Dun and Bradstreet credit reports for a company are a good way to
get background information on the principals of a company. Instead of
paying for the whole credit report, you can get just get the history and
operations sections that detail this information. If the company is
publicly held, the EDGAR database of the Securities and Exchange
Commission has annual report and proxy information detailing
compensation and other background information on officers and
directors.
Personal Credit Checks
Regardless of what many sites on the Internet say, personal credit
checks cannot be done legally without Fair Credit Reporting Act
compliance. You must have a legitimate business reason to access the
information. Some of these reasons include employment checks, extension
of credit, underwriting of insurance, or use in connection with a civil,
criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding that involves liability
for a commercial obligation deriving from a business transaction.
Fee-based Databases
Fee-based databases can offer quick and concise searching. One of my
favorites is Accurint. For less
than $10 you can check personal names, aliases, Social Security numbers,
current and historical addresses (going back to up to 30 years ago),
telephone numbers, month and year of birth, names of those living at the
current address, property ownership, names of relatives (up to three
degrees of separation), neighbors, death information, UCC search, and
corporate affiliations. It is currently adding criminal and bankruptcy
information. An account has to be set up and you have to verify the
reason you are searching for the information.
There are other databases in the business of researching individuals
for a fee, including Lexis and Westlaw. AutotrackXP is one of the least
expensive. KnowX at (formerly
Information America) caters to consumers and has a variety of locator
and research tools with an easy interface. For an excellent summary of
these go to The
Virtual Chase.
These are but a few of the wide variety of resources available for
searching for personal information. You never know "who's looking for
you, kid" and where.
Wisconsin
Lawyer