Trying to find a person on the internet is can be hard. Some people just don’t have much of a presence on the internet or there’s a lot of information and how do you interpret that data. This is a short tutorial example on how to find information on people.
There are three kinds of searches for finding people. The first just finding information on people, using known or found information to find someone, using friends or associative groups to connect with some organization or group.
Finding Information
I will try and find information on Terry Roebuck. If I type Terry Roebuck in quotes, “Terry Roebuck”, I come up with numerous results, but the first is one of the most interesting.
It has the Curriculum Vitae of Terry. It is a very good thing to find. A Curriculum Vitae documents old jobs, it has references that you can contact, and basically what they do have done and want to do. The CVs usually have lots of personal info on there as well, but this particular one does not. The personal information is available on request so you just have to request it with the e-mail address provided. If you go further down the page there’s a link to www.ratemyprofessors.ca or more specifically http://www.ratemyprofessors.ca/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=35736. If you view the page you find out he’s a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and teaches CMPT 100. By viewing the student comments you can learn a little more about Terry.
Using Information Known or Found:
Let’s say you know me (a student), but lost my e-mail and want to contact me. You type my name into Google and it turns up zero results. You do know some things about me though -- you know I hangout on www.gaiaonline.com and you know my username is Ohlin. You go there and do a search of the members for Ohlin http://www.gaiaonline.com/profile/index.php?view=search.ShowSearch&type=username&item=Ohlin It doesn’t say my name anywhere, but it has my birthday, that I’m 22 and that I go to university. That’s sounds like me, but you’re not sure. You can create an account on Gaia and give me a personal message and I’ll respond. Most people respond when you e-mail them so if you want information just ask.
You can use information that you known about people to find them. Google isn’t perfect and can’t find every lasting bit of data. It can with the right keywords, but that’s hard to guess. So if you know they like something let’s say banjos. Then you can go to a well-known website about banjos and they will most likely be a member. Though it would probably work better with something pop culture oriented like celebrities or movies.
Using friends or associative groups to connect with some organization or group:
[The idea in this type of search is to find potential leads for further investigation] This will be a fictional example instead of a follow along tutorial. Consider a company where there is a suspicion of insider trading. You do the searches on the suspects involved and find out person A goes to a certain church. The listings of this particular church are online. You check out all of the people listed in the church and see person B also plays the Stock Exchange. Stock records indicate that he sold his stocks in the business on the date in question.