Personal Investigation Series
The PeopleFinders.com Education Center

People Finders.com People Search Glossary

People Search: A basic online search on a person which yields standard contact information including their name, address, age, date of birth, and phone number.

Marriage Search: A search that lists marriage certificates, or proof that a marriage took place, that are issued by state and/ or local governmental agencies. Often, these searches will provide the user with the bride and groom's name as well as the date of their marriage. However, marriage searches can also provide such useful information as the bride's name and age, groom's name and age, as well as filing number and date of their marriage certificate. A file date is the date when a couple has filed for a marriage license while a file number is the number that corresponds to that license.

Divorce Search: A search that provides basic information to let the user know if someone is divorced, still married or filling for divorce.

Death Search: A death search is a search that will tell you if a person is deceased. These searches may also yield a person's age at death, last place of residence, date of death and birth date. The death records of a deceased person may not always show up on a death search. In fact, a death record will only show up on a person if their death has been reported to the Social Security Administration, which is not always guaranteed to occur once someone passes away. Also, if the deceased did not have a social security number, a record will not show up. Note: death searches do not yield official death certificates.

Unclaimed Money Search: Unclaimed money searches are inquires to determine if someone is owed money from a bank, governmental agency or a business for a variety of reasons. Often, this money is lost, or unable to be delivered, due to such factors as incorrect addresses and account numbers, misspellings of names and failure to notify recipients of the money. Unclaimed money search reports may yield such information as the amount owed; name and address of the owner, or person owed funds; name and address of the holder, or entity holding the unclaimed funds; the date that the funds were reported as being unclaimed; and the expiration date, or the date that the funds will no longer be available to the holder. Official online unclaimed money searches are also recommended to prevent unclaimed money fraud, which has been increasing in recent years. Note: unclaimed money searches cover records from only 28 states.

Background Check: A background check is a report that summarizes numerous searches including criminal records checks, marriage and divorce records checks, death indexes and real property ownership, or immovable structures that are considered part of the property, as well as the previous and current addresses and phone numbers, age, aliases, maiden name, possible relatives, and neighbors of the person being searched.

Business Search:Business searches provide various data on a company including basic information such as the name, address and phone number of a business to more complex data such as the physical description of the building that the business is located in and corporate filing information.

Criminal Check: A criminal check is a search on a person's criminal history. The comprehensiveness of these checks depends largely on the data available but usually include date of name, date of birth, race, and gender of criminal; court where criminal was tried, offense code, conviction date, docket number, offenses/charges, and disposition date or date on which judgment on the case occurred; felony and misdemeanor records; warrants and wants or if a person is wanted for a crime; risk level or chances of sex offender recidivism in a community, from criminal records databases and sex offender lists.

Bankruptcies & Liens Search: Bankruptcy and Lien searches, or a legal claim on property, are designed to yield information on bankruptcy filings, federal and state tax liens, and civil judgments for individuals and businesses. Note: these searches only cover the last twenty years.

Property Search: A property search is a search designed to provide users with important information surrounding the ownership of a property including the property's owner, address, value, and the date it was last sold.

Skiptracing: Skiptracing is the process of locating a person's whereabouts for any number of purposes. (Wikipedia.org)