Private investigation agencies offer skip tracing services. Skip tracing is nothing but a process of locating a person’s whereabouts for many purposes. Private investigators and bounty hunters used to perform skip tracing by gathering information from neighbors through reverse-look-up directories. Public record searches were also done in person. All these are very difficult. With advancement in technology, these days social media helps a lot in skip tracing.
During mid-eighties, computerized records and databases were used. Missed persons’ information such as addresses, telephone numbers, social security numbers, court records, marriage records, and real estate records were known by these databases. However, in order to access these databases, investigators had to pay high premiums. These days many online databases are available which provide reasonable subscription costs. Free search engine technologies are also available and can be used for skip tracing.
With increase in advancement of Web 2.0 technologies, there is a rise in use of many social networking sites. Many people use these sites providing personal and professional information. Photos, relations, friends, interests, location, and workplace organization information are posted by many people in various social networking sites. These serve as public records databases. Social networking sites can thus be used as a primary source in skip tracing.
Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are some of the most popular social networking sites in use today. At least a bit of information can be obtained by these sites. Clues can be tracked from such information in order to find the missing person. Thus social media can also be helpful for skip tracing services.