Archive for June, 2007

Finding out who owns a tag number is as simple as getting online. There are quite a few websites on the Internet these days which can trace license plate numbers and provide you with the information of the owner. Akiba and Best People Search are two examples of some of the best search sites availble today. However, these sites are not free to use. There are reasonable fees associated with tracing a license plate number online. The only free search site that exists today is Search Plates.

Search Plates offers free searches, but they do not provide you with the information associated with the owner of the vehicle. They do offer you the ability to send an email message or text message to the owner of the vehicle, however. This is an ideal option if you need to get a message to the person but don’t want to pay for a search or do anything that might be considered an invasion of privacy.

A good reason to use Search Plates is if you wanted to ask a question about someone’s vehicle. Maybe you liked their car and wanted to know where they bought it. Or perhaps you wanted to ask the driver of the car out on a date. In either case, this free site can come in quite handy! However as previously mentioned, f you are looking for the name and contact information of the driver, this site won’t be of much help.

There is another option if the websites like Akiba, Best People Search and Search Plates don’t work for you. You can choose to hire a private investigator to do the job for you. Private investigators cost more than any other option but are often the most effective way to go. You can locate the investigators in your area by searching your local Yellow Pages. If there is more than one listed, call around to the different investigators in your area to see who offers the best services for the best price. A little comparison shopping can often save you a great deal on an expensive service.

There may come a time when you need to run a license plate trace. Suppose there is a car parked on your street for an extended period of time that you do not recognize and it is making you nervous? You could go to the authorities, but perhaps you don’t want to do anything quite so drastic. By running a license plate trace, you can get information about the owner of the vehicle. From there, you can use that information to perform criminal checks on that person to ensure they are not a danger to you or others. Of course, if you see someone in a vehicle doing something criminal, take the license plate number to the police.

Another reason you might need to find the owner of a vehicle is if you notice a “For Sale” sign but didn’t catch the number before the car drove away. Running a license plate trace is a great way to find out the name, address and phone number of the owner so you can contact him or her. There are quite a few online resources that can help you, but they’re going to cost money. Unfortunately there is no way for the public to trace license plate numbers for free.  Examples of these sites include Best People Search, Akiba and Squidoo. The average fee for a search of this type is around $39 to $75. Some searches will cost less or more depending on how in-depth they are.

There is, however one way to contact the owner of a license plate number for free. Search Plates is a site that claims to offer a free license plate search. However, you do not get any information about the vehicle owner. You do get the ability to send the person a text message or email. This is a good option if you want to contact someone you saw in a car but don’t want to invade their privacy. Personal privacy is a very sensitive issue these days, so before you perform any sort of license plate search, make sure you’re not in violation of anyone’s personal rights.

If you spend any time on the Internet, there may come a time when you will need to perform a reverse email search. This is commonly done when you’ve been contacted by someone online and all you have to go by is their email address. These searches work by using the email address to search various databases to discover personal information that may be related to the address. This may include name and sometimes even telephone number. There are some sites that let you perform these searches absolutely free.

Squidoo and InfoSpace are examples of websites where you can perform reverse email searches for free. This service can be quite valuable if you receive a lot of spam. By tracing the email address, you can find out more about the sender, such as their name and possibly how to get removed from their mailing list. There may be other email addresses associated with the address you’re searching where you can reach the person sending the spam. Often, these pestering emails are sent from an autoresponder, which means your replies to the address are never seen by human eyes.

Or perhaps you want to send a gift or promotional item such as a print catalog via snail mail. Rather than bother asking the email address owner for their mailing address (which they may view as an invasion of privacy,) do a reverse email search and see if you can get the information that way.  As you can see, there are various handy uses for a reverse email search.

If the email address owner has taken precautions, however, you may not be able to find anything about them listed with the free directories. In this case, you might want to pay for a search. You can either pay to use online databases, or you can hire a professional to perform the search for you. If you go the database route, you can expect to pay anywhere from around $25 to $75 per search depending on which one you use. Professional investigators, on the other hand, cost around $50 to $100 per hour depending on your geographic location.

If you’ve got someone’s Social Security Number, then you have a very important piece of information which can be used to tell you anything you need to know about that person. The key is to find the right search tools and resources, the majority of which can be located online. One great free resource which can be used to Social Security Number is the web site of the United States Social Security Administration. You can get instant information on up to ten numbers per day, absolutely free!

There are many reasons why you might want to verify someone’s Social Security Number or perform a search using a Social Security Number search (also known as SSN Search). Employment verification is one common reason why you may need to do this. Employers need to make sure their employees are who they say they are, and that their Social Security Numbers are correct for payroll and tax reporting purposes.

Social Security Numbers can also be used to perform credit and criminal background checks which are very valuable for both employers and landlords. Another reason you might want to run a check on a Social Security Number is if you are hiring a child care worker. After all, you want to make absolutely certain the person you hire to care for your child is trustworthy and does not have a criminal background.

Some web sites allow you to perform a reverse Social Security Number (reverse ssn) search absolutely free. Besides the US SSA site, you will find others like Anywho and Akiba which offer both free and paid services. If you are unable to find the information you need using a free search, a paid search might be in order. For example, if the number you have is incomplete or was written down incorrectly, you may not find any results when you search it. In this case, you can try a paid search or even hire a private investigator.

A private investigator is going to be the most expensive option, but also the most effective in many cases. Investigators have been trained to track down hard to find details and have access to databases, tools and other resources that most members of the general public don’t even know about.

There may come a time when you need to find out who owns a cell phone number.  For example, what if you were being harassed by an unknown caller whose number displayed on your caller ID box with no name?  In that case, you would definitely want to know who the owner of the number was so you could report them to the proper authorities.  cell phone numbers are the most difficult to trace as they are not listed in most telephone books. It is actually a violation of federal law to publish cell phone numbers in offline or online directories without the consent of the owner.

All is not lost, however. There are ways to locate the information you need, even if all you have is a cell phone.  Try putting the cell phone number into a search engine like Google to see what comes up. Sometimes you won’t get any results, although other times you might hit the jackpot. Try entering the number with and without dashes. Try entering the number with periods or spaces instead of dashes, which is how some people separate numbers.  Some people include their cell numbers when placing online ads on places like Craigslist, an extremely popular online classifieds site. 

One of the most simple and often most effective way to find out who is calling you is to call the number from a public phone and ask who you are speaking to.  If the owner of the phone doesn’t realize you are the caller on the other line, they might tell you.  The reason to use a public phone is so that your home number will not show up on their caller ID if they have it. 

There are certainly plenty of sites where you can pay a fee for a professional quality search. Intelius is one such site which offers investigative research for a reasonable price.  If you don’t want to bother with the searching yourself, you can hire a professional to perform the search for you.  It will probably cost between $50 and $100 to have an investigator do a reverse cell phone search.  If you’ve tried everything else and cannot find the data you need, it is money well spent.

Are you looking for a business address but all you have is a phone number? Sure, you could call and ask for the address. But what if the phone number has been changed recently? There are cases where a reverse business phone number search is the best way to go. This type of reverse search works much like any other type of reverse search. You enter the phone number, hit the Submit button, and if you’re lucky you’ll come up with results. You might be able to find the name and address of the business using this technique.

AnyWho and ReversePhoneDirectory are examples of reverse search engines that allow you to search by phone number.  Yahoo White Pages, Akiba and Intelius are more examples of sites where you can perform all kinds of searches. If you enter the phone number but cannot get any results from sites like these, a more in-depth search may be in order. Most of the free sites offer or at least link to paid services which provide a more detailed search.

Another way to perform a reverse business phone number search is by using Google. Just type in the number into the Google search box and press Submit. If the business placed advertisements anywhere on the web, it is likely you will find them by searching for their telephone number. This is perhaps the easiest way to find the information you are looking for and of course is free. If you don’t pull anything up at first, try taking out the dashes in the phone number or substituting periods for dashes and seeing what comes up.

If you’ve tried everything and cannot hunt down the information you need using a business phone number, you might need to hire a professional. Check your Yellow Page listings for private investigators and detectives near you. Many professionals have access to professional grade databases which allow them to find the information you could not. In addition to their sophisticated tools, they have special training which is also a great help. This will likely be expensive but if you’ve tried everything else, it might be worth the cost.