How to Find Someone, or Find Out About Someone

Early in 2002 MSNBC launched a study and found that one third of people involved in online dating are married! That’s right, 30% are married and cheating.

Wondering if your current flame is at least telling some preliminary truths? Is he or she cheating on you? Wondering how you can find your old high school boyfriend or girlfriend? How about whether he or she is married? There’s tons of information on the web, and if you you’ve got some sleuthing skills, you’ll be amazed what you can come up with free of charge.

Freebies from professional people-search sites
Professional people-search sites offer some basic information for free. They enable you to search by first and last name, and most include optional filters for city and state. Some sites let you narrow results down by age, as well.

Let’s say you enter your new sweetheart’s name, and last known city and state. The results that come back may be surprising. Often companies, such as Intelius , Abika, or MelissaData.com will list among the results, all previous cities and states of residence on record. These records can go back as far as 20-30 years or more, and you may have to guess which is the most recent one. They can also list possible relatives – these are usually people who have shared a residence with your sweetie at some point in time. They would include parents, brothers and sisters, and ex-spouses, among others. Sometimes, even in-laws may show up. Underage children will not be displayed.

Don’t discount the value of perhaps searching on one of those unfamiliar names that shows up as a potential relative! Do a search on them, and see if they have lived with your honey in other places too. Be suspicious of opposite-gendered roommates around the same age.

Does he say that he lives in an affluent, gated community? Zipskinny gives you informaiton, such as average household income, average number of unemployed, occupations, and racial diversity, all according to zip code.

What you need to pay for at people-search sites
For a fee, these same sites will do more in depth research and provide you with information such as the person’s current age, complete address and phone number, property ownership (did he say he owned his house? Or, is he renting?), aliases or maiden names, the current occupants of the most recent address on file, neighbors, and criminal records.

Is he married? The following states list marriage and divorce records as public record and would be available in an easy search: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. Professional search firms can still get you the information you desire, but if you don’t know the state in which your honey might have been married or divorced in, it could get expensive. Each state has its own regulations and would have to be searched individually by an actual employee of the search firm. To get around this, some sites offer a “Current and Ex-Spouse Search”, which details where the current and ex-spouses live. Potentially, this information would give you a starting point at which to base your search. (Also, logically, if there are no ex-spouses, then maybe he has been single all his life!)

For a fee, there’s a wealth of information out there, including license plate searches (not all states), driving history, police reports, criminal records, sex offender status, civil court records, just to name a few. Additionally, some companies extend their services far beyond the United States! Try Abika for a vast and comprehensive array of services.

How can you find out information for free, on your own?
Name searches
Straight out search using the person’s name, in quotation marks. Sites like monstercrawler and dogpile will enable you to search using several engines at once. If you get too many results, then add the person’s state, or some other identifying information. Google and Yahoo will sometimes give you complete name, address and phone number, just by searching on the person’s name and state.

Hint: From your results, use the “cached” link, so when you open the page, all the words you searched on will be highlighted within the page. (This will not work on PDF documents.)

**Note, if you “Google” yourself and find your name, address and phone number, you can eliminate it. Click on the “Phonebook results for…” link. When the screen refreshes, click “Request to have your name removed from this list.” You will need to complete a brief removal request form, but Google is pretty quick in responding to your request.

**If you find yourself on Yahoo, click Help and click “Remove My Listing” on the left hand menu. You will need to complete a brief removal request form. Yahoo promises to remove the listing within 24 hours.

Another interesting search would be their name and (potential) spouse name.

Also, just for grins, search on their name in the Images. (An Images link can be found on both the Google and Yahoo web browsers.) It’s just a simple touch of the keypad. You never know what will turn up.

Phone number searches
Search on an email address or phone number; in either the Google or Yahoo search engines. If the number is listed, and sometimes even if it’s unlisted, it will return the phone customer’s name and address. Again, if you find yourself in this search, and wish to have your listing removed, you may do so by following the instructions in the Name Search notes above.

Email address searches
Generally, an email address won’t bring in any results in a search, but if you search on part of an email address, sometimes the part before the @ symbol will get you something. Some times it’s is a ‘user name’ for another site, such as myspace, or facebook. Once you get in there, who knows what you’ll find on their page!

Dating sites
Check personals and singles sites, such as Plenty of Fish, American Singles, and Yahoo Personals. Many enable you to search by age, location, and email address (if applicable) for free. You probably won’t be able to contact the person for free, but finding them there is probably enough.

Try suspected nicknames. Select the ‘profiles with pictures’ filter, if you’re short on time. You’d recognise his/her face immediately, right? Without the picture, it’s a little more difficult. You will have to actually read all the profiles that result from your search.

A rather calculating idea is to search within a dating site by location and age, and just look at all the pictures.

Your dating safety
With all this information available, I would advise anyone involved in online dating to at least do a preliminary search on his or her date. Make sure name, age and place of residence line up.

If you are going to meet someone out of town, I’d definitely pay for a preliminary background check. Get the most recent address and phone number listed. Look to see whom else may be living at the residence. The most basic report can cost you as little as $7.95. Criminal searches can be run for $19.95. I think you’d agree that your safety is worth it.

My Life List (or, Things I Want to do Before I Die)

Note: All entries subject to change

Life List
Go to Poland
Skydiving 11/05 & 08/06
Go to Lake George
Go back to UK
Go to a shooting range
Ride in a hot air balloon.
Go hiking
Ride a motorcycle
Be happily married, and have a partner who is happily married to me.
Live on a farm or ranch
Drive across America and photograph the entire trip.
Find a job I love
Go camping without kids. 8/08
Go paragliding
Learn to play piano
Read all the books I should have read by now.
See Alaska
Go back to Canada and rent a cottage.
Go to Statue of Liberty
Go to the Smithsonian
Go to the Whitehouse
Go to California
Pet a lion or tiger
Take a drawing class
Become a better person through my relationships.
Drive the Autobahn
Spend one Christmas or New Years on the beach drinking pina coladas
Learn to meditate
See Northern Lights
Hear a wolf howl at night
Go to France
Go to Germany
Go to Italy
See the Grand Titons
Lounge in a tube on a river, without snakes. :)
Take more pictures
Get a belly ring.
Live proactively
Keep static out of my life
Learn to live in the moment.
Become a literacy volunteer
Be able to do 12 push-ups.
Learn to maintain the house
Learn to be an instrument of God’s love.
Understand art.
Learn to cook vegetarian food my family will eat.
Socialize with friends more.
Create clothing, and finish.
Go to a symphony Carnegie Hall 11/06

Technology: Dynex Web Cam

I've been using the Dynex web cam (DX-DTCAM) for a year and a half now. The clarity of the picture cannot be beat, especially at the $25 Best Buy price. This web cam can be used with chat applications such as, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). It is compatible in both the Windows and Mac environments, and it plugs into a USB port. (I am running it on Windows.)

Features include the main interface screen, offering a preview mode, snapshot mode, video clip mode, security monitoring, camera controls (utilities) and exit. Preview enables you to zoom, move the image up/down, left/right and select a resolution anywhere between RGB24 and I420. Snapshot mode is used to take and email still shots taken with your cam. You can elect to snap one photo at a time or continuously. I have used this feature and was happy with the ease and results of the shots. With videoclip mode, you can send a videoclip via e-mail, convert AVI files to MPEG-1 format, record and exit. The resolution feature is also available for enhancing your images. This was actually a fun feature. File size naturally grows with the length of the clip, but it was fun, simple and satisfying.

The tool to convert AVI to MPEG was invaluable, as there are still computer novices out there who cannot view AVIs. General audiences will want to convert their file before sending to friends and family. Security monitoring enables you to take video within a self-specified time period. You can also adjust the degree of variance per second of recording, ie. When the variance is over a threshold that you set, the system sends an alert.

Camera controls include: Image positioning (flipping the image, and low light), picture elements, resolution, white balance adjustments, reset-restore-and-save,indoor/outdoor options, back-light compensation, zoom, and a black and white mode. There is also a special effects tab that offers options such as: video effects and frames. I play with these features all the time. They're fun and it's easy to go back and forth.

The camera and base combination is basically "L" shaped. The base has foam adhesive pads to affix the cam to any surface. The cam can be adjusted, through its software, to project images accurately from any angle. The only problem in setting it up from any angle other than right side up is that humidity affects the original adhesive on the base and the camera falls from position. (My cam is affixed upside down to a shelf.) To hang the cam in any other position, you'll need a more efficient adhesive, such as Velcro or double-sided tape.

The one issue I have with this cam is that when I had to reinstall the software, I had a problem. The light would go on (indicating the cam was on), but the preview screen would come up black. I definitely had the correct drivers. Additionally, I would get an error message stating, "Camera not found. The camera is in use by another application, or not connected. Make sure the camera is connected, then try again."

In searching the forums, I found many, many other frustrated users with the same difficulty. In the end I did resolve the problem. This is what I did:

1.Uninstall the driver you had installed and unplug the webcam.

2.With the webcam unplugged, insert the driver CD-ROM

3.Plug the webcam into the USB. A message displays, "new device detected"

4.Click the advanced option and open the drivers folder.

5.Click the *manually choose* option.

6.You will see the Dynex file in the display. Select it and install.

It seems that this issue has caused other users to seek out help from Dynex' customer service and were met with troubling poor service. Personally, I did not need to go through customer service, once I performed this driver installation.