September 1, 2002

The things I can learn about you on the Internet

By KEITH DARNAY

Even if you've never logged on to the Internet, you're there.

Bits and bytes of information about you are digitally circumnavigating the globe. Information freely available to anyone with an Internet connection and a desire to know something about you.

To be fair, information about you has been available to anyone with an interest long before the Internet came around. Credit reports have been around for decades. Birth, marriage, divorce and death records have been publicly available for years. City court records and bankruptcies have been longtime staples in newspapers.

If I'm willing to spend a little money ($15 to $100), I can get some real dirt on you (provided, of course, there actually is any dirt to dish): Outstanding warrants, criminal convictions, drivers license info, background checks and more.

If I'm cheap, there are a few things I can learn about you online without spending a cent:

1) Your phone number. There are numerous telephone search databases online, most of which are current. Among the best in terms of depth and current information are QwestDex (www.qwestdex.com), Switchboard (www.switchboard.com), AnyWho (www.anywho.com) and infoUSA White Pages (www.infospace.com/info.abii/wp/index.htm).

2) Your street address. This runs hand-in-hand with telephone number searches. Again, QwestDex, Switchboard, AnyWho and infoUSA are excellent starting places.

3) Your e-mail address. A good starting point is Yahoo! People Search (people.yahoo.com). The Freeality Web site (www.freeality.com/findemt.htm) offers a metasearch feature which allows you to look for someone's e-mail address in several search engines at once.

4) Driving maps to your home. Once I know your address, I can generate driving directions and maps on how to get to where you live. MapQuest (www.mapquest.com) is a popular mapping web site, as is Yahoo! Maps (maps.yahoo.com).

5) Aerial photos of where you live. The U.S. Geological Survey has mapped nearly every square inch of the United State in the form of satellite and aerial photos and topographical maps. You can access these images through TerraServer (terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com) and TerrFly (www.terrafly.com). Using the "advanced find" option, enter a street address and, within moments, you'll see an aerial view of that address. The resolution can go down to one meter, meaning you can make out the rooftop shapes of individual houses. The images are not necessarily current -- many date back to the 1990s, with some going back to the 1970s.

6) Comments you've posted online. If you've ever posted a message to any newsgroup, a record of your digital thoughts can easily be found. Go to the Google Groups web site (groups.google.com), which is, essentially, a searchable collection of every posting to every newsgroup over the years.

7) Whether you're a registered sex offender. The North Dakota Attorney General's Web site has a searchable database of registered sex offenders in the state and in what communities they live (www.ndsexoffender.com). Similar databases are available for most other states.

Other starting points for finding information about you online include the U.S. Vital Records site (www.vitalrec.com), Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com) and Search Systems (www.searchsystems.net).

You can also do a "low-tech" search by simply typing in a person's name in any search engine and seeing what comes up in the results.

(Keith Darnay is the Webmaster and designer for bismarcktribune.com. His Web site is at www.darnay.com/iec.)