How does Intelius know who my family members are?

For shits & giggles I put my name into Intelius and it came back showing most of my nuclear family under “Relatives”.

How does it know who my relatives are?

I’m not positive, but I think they look for:

  • Directly applicable public records, like birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc.

  • People with the same last name as you who have lived at the same address as you at some point

  • People who have the same last name as you and live in the same area(s) at the same time

and things like that. However they do it, they’re pretty good. And scary!

When I tried it, there was a listing labelled “relatives”, but nothing under it, nor any apparent way to expand that or open a new page on it. Is that one of the things they want you to pay them for?

It didn’t find it so smart. It couldn’t even find me.

Ditto. Not impressive. I’ll stick with Lexis-Nexis and its ilk.