Knowing how to find someone you have lost touch with can be a real uphill struggle, if you feel like a rabbit in the headlights then follow this simple plan to reunite yourself with people missing from your life.

How to find someone is something we all wonder from time to time, we wonder, what happened to… this is perfectly natural. Some people think that when they start to look for someone they are snooping around but in truth most people are happy to be contacted by people from their past and in a lot of cases they were also wondering what happened to you.

Since the internet began, it has become so much easier to find people you have lost touch with. In the years prior to the internet if you wanted to locate someone you would have been best served visiting the local library – not your own local library – that would be too easy, no you would have had to visit the library in the area where the person you were looking for lived. You would also have had to visit the council offices in the same locality, not an easy task by any means!

By visiting the library and council offices within the area where the person lived you gave yourself a chance of locating the person by looking through the records that were held at the library or council office. Very little of this information was available electronically so you would be expected to go through the paperwork yourself or be supervised by someone from the council, it was a long drawn out process. Cut forward 20 years to 2011 and you can now search most records used to find people electronically from the comfort of your own home in a matter of minutes.

The internet has made the question of how to find someone so much easier, so how do you do it?

Firstly, get yourself some quiet time with your laptop, a pen and paper, a cup of tea and a telephone, these are the key things you will need if you are going to become a professional people finder. Now, write down everything you know about the person you are looking for, key data sets include

• There full name – could this have changed?
• There Date of birth – This never changes, this is an important fact to remember
• There last known address – could they still live in this area?
• Names of members of their family – Would their parents still be alive?
• Where did they work – Could they still be there?
• Where they courting when you knew them? – could they of married the person they were previously dating?
• Did they do much travelling?
• Did they have relatives in another part of the county?
• Where they in good health at the time you knew them – Not a nice thought to think that they could have passed away but certainly something you will have to consider if you really want to find this person.

Try and build up a clear picture about the person you knew, this all might of happened over 40 years ago, I appreciate that but you still need to have a really good think and right everything you possible can about the person, this is key to been able to locate where they are now. Now you have the information you need to work out more about their name.

Their name

What’s in a name? – Well not much, names can change, names can be entered on to websites incorrectly, – did you say Stephen or Steven? People get married and change their names. It going to get worse in the future as a high percentage of men are now changing their name when they get married! Could the person be called something else now?

Their Age/date of birth

If you know their date of birth, you are in a strong position as this information is something that cannot be changed, yes it can be acknowledged that a date of birth could be inputted incorrectly or someone could lie but in most cases the day you were born is a constant in your life. Using someone’s date of birth can be key to successfully locating him or her. You can use Birth, death, and marriage records to locate someone’s birth certificate and find out when they were born.

The last known address/area

If you have an address for the person then you further increase the likelihood of locating them. The electoral roll is a good way to find people and people wondering where people have gone use it frequently. The electoral roll is online at various costs from 1992 to 2011 but remember if you use an online service to perform an electoral roll search, since 2003 you have been able to edit yourself from the electoral roll so bear this in mind. It is still an excellent way to locate someone you have lost touch with and one that you will have to do if you want to find the person you have lost touch with. Make sure you find an electoral service that offers the best quality data to maximise your chances of success.

Other information

If the persons parents are still alive and you know there name it may straightforward to locate them and then contact them to find out where their offspring still resides. If you knew where they worked, could they still be there? It may be worth checking this out or checking other similar businesses in the area and asking for your person. Most people will not mind as long as you only ring once so make sure you write everything you do down so you do not repeat yourself.

How to work

Make sure you write everything down; this means that if you stop for a break you know where you got to and do not spend hours getting back to the same place. You are going to have to make a lot of telephone calls so make sure you are courteous with the people you are speaking to and don’t get frustrated if they cannot or will not help.

Online systems.

So many online systems can be used to locate people but remember this. Unless you use a professional people finder service to locate the person you have lost touch with then do not expect one search to give you all the answers, if you are trying to do the job of a professional people finder company that performs searches like you are doing everyday then you are going to have to be prepared to spend money. You will spend money on electoral roll searches, death certificates, marriage certificates and birth records as well as electoral roll searches and telephone searches. It may be cheaper and easier to instruct a no find no fee service that will locate the person you have lost touch with for a fixed price.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to find someone. Whatever you decide to do make sure that you are courteous to everyone, you speak to and enjoy the process of learning how to find someone.