Reliability of information on people search websites? (Mystery!)

Factual Questions
1

I was randomly browsing through notices in the German Bundesanzeiger (which is roughly the German equivalent of the Federal Register in the United States) about persons who were legally declared dead in absentia by German courts.

One case grabbed my attention. I’m not including details since I don’t know where this is going and because in my experience, stuff that is posted on the SDMB tends to show up in a Google search almost immediately.

There is a woman from a small town in Germany who was born in the late 1950s and who had emigrated to the United States. According to the relative who petitioned to have her legally declared dead, she last had contact with her family in the mid 1990s when she visited her home town in Germany to attend a family occasion. She returned to the US and (allegedly) was never heard of since then. According to the court document, there had been extensive efforts to track her down in the US, but to no avail. She was declared dead by the court in 2010.

When I read this, I did the obvious and typed the first name and the last name of the missing woman into Google (in quotation marks) and added the name of the US state where she allegedly last resided. The woman’s name is rather unique, and lo and behold, the first Google search results seem to be right on the money. They include matches from these websites:

www.intelius.com , www.peekyou.com, www.yellowpages.com , www.ussearch.com , www.yasni.com

Apparently, these websites tease you with part of the information and they want you to sign up for their paid service.

The informations I was able to piece together from the free factoids all add up: The unusual name, the woman’s age and the address. Assuming that the informations provided by these websites are accurate and up-to-date(!), this is indeed the lady who was declared dead. There is no doubt, it can’t be a coincidence.

My question, however is this: How reliable are informations on these website? Is there a possibility that the databases haven’t been updated in a very long time and that this lady is indeed long deceased?

As to the motivation of the relative to have her legally declared dead, I have a suspicion that this could have been a scheme to cheat her out of an inheritance.

2

I don’t know how often the info is updated, but I think that if the sites came right out and said “deceased,” they wouldn’t get any money from you, so they’ll give to the last known address, and possibly a city with no address, if it’s where the person is buried. These sites are out to make a buck.

As far as “cheating” the woman out of an inheritance, it may have simply been a matter of wanting to get an estate settled. I have no idea what German laws are like, but other people’s shares may have been held up as long as the woman’s status was in question. Or maybe she was married in the Catholic Church over there, and divorced but not the marriage was not annulled. Or it could have been as simple as her having once bought a cemetery plot in Germany, and the family wanted to use it for someone else or sell it, so they wanted to establish that she was never going to use it. I could sit here and come up with several more reasons, including spite for someone who cut herself off from her family, than she might have been declared dead.

3

I searched myself on one of those sites–don’t recall which.

The site said that I had an extra brother and that I had lived in a couple of cities I had never lived in.

My theory is that they use a bunch of data and then apply informed guesses about a lot of it.

Additionally, I did search up someone I know was dead. Their info is still out there.

4

I am basically familiar with the process of having persons legally declared dead in Germany. This case is unlike any I have seen in the past. Usually, they fall into one of these categories:

(a) there is no reasonable expectation that the individual is still alive (for instance born in 1899, emigrated to the US in 1920 and hasn’t been heard of since)

(b) war situations (mainly missing during and after WWII, this includes Germans who perished during deportations from Eastern Europe)

(c) major disasters like the Thailand Tsunami (I found a number of these cases in my research)

(d) special circumstances (for instance old person with dementia who disappears from nursing home)
Again, this case is different. Also, the court file in my opinion should at least have included the exact last known address. That was not the case.

5

All of those services are merely compilations of many many individual databases, and are only as reliable as the underlying sources.

For example, if she was registered to vote, she’ll show up on the list of registered voters until the local registrar gets around to purging the rolls. Depending on locality, that can be very quick or take a decade. If Intelius buys the list and sees her still registered, what are they going to do?

Similarly, if the lady shows up in utility or property or driver’s license records, she’ll be “alive” in the database long after she ceases to be so biologically.

My grandfather (who also has a fairly unique Germanic name) shows up in these databases with a “current” address. He died in 1976.

6

If one extrapolates from this case, wouldn’t this mean that these databases are inundated with obsolete information, essentially making them totally worthless?

7

Oh, definitely they have lots of obsolete information, but they’ll give you hints.

For example, in my grandfather’s case he probably stayed in the database because Grandma left his name on the utility bills and the property title for thirty+ years. SOMEBODY in the family was still living at the same address; it just wasn’t him anymore. If you were looking for him, finding his widow would not be totally worthless.

The data services do indeed apply guesswork (well, fancy algorithms, but these are mostly just educated guesses) to determine where somebody is at. For example, if they are registered to vote and have a utility bill in Locale A, but then the utility bill in A lapses and they show up with a new voter registration and utility bill in Locale B, the service assumes they moved even if they are still on the voter rolls in A. There are no utility bills in the cemetery, though, so it’s more difficult to ascertain death.

The more sophisticated data services (such as the credit bureaus) will cross-reference with the Social Security Death Index and/or other sources of death information, but these have the advantage of having the social security number, which isn’t present in many of the consumer-grade databases freely available. Not everyone is listed in the SSDI, and for common names there usually isn’t enough information to reliably match to a particular individual without the number.

In the case you cited, the data services will give you a last known address. From that, you can attempt to verify whether she’s still at that address. (Presumably, the relatives already did this.) You know she hasn’t shown up anywhere else with a more current address, so your best hope is going to be in the vicinity of that last known. If she’s not there, why not? If it is property she owned, when and how was it sold (e.g., estate/probate proceeding)? Are there court records in that location for her? Is it transient housing, or a settled neighborhood where somebody is likely to remember her and what happened to her? etc.

With the services, you’ve got a place to start looking even if the last information is obsolete. Without the services, where would you even begin?

8

The problem with this case is that it’s really none of my business, except maybe in my role as a concerned citizen. :rolleyes:

After studying the court document carefully, I can give some additional information: It is implied in the court decision that there hasn’t been any sign of life (allegedly!) of her since 1994. This would that mean the address the people search sites come up with (which is, BTW, in Fort Lauderdale, FL, without revealing too much details) must have been obsolete at least for almost 21 years. And again, the address isn’t mentioned at all in the court document which is strange.

I looked up the address on Google and on Google street view. The houses are one-storey apartment buildings (and the address does indeed include an apartment number). The neighbourhood doesn’t look fancy to me, but not run-down either.

9

Having heard about Spokeo being so much better than most, I searched for myself. As I expected, the free info was vague.
So I ponied up the $$ for the “Learn More” data. If I remember correctly there was yet another paywall behind that one, for even more detail. Paid for that too.

Results were all over the map.
Addresses I haven’t lived at for 15 years, relatives living with me who never have, my wife of 45 years dropping in and out of existence from one record to another, and so on.
In other words: pretty much useless.

10

My father (who passed away over ten years ago) and I had the same first name, but different middle names (and, of course, different ages). When I search for my name in Intelius, it returns my father’s name and age, and shows him living at my current address with my mother and my wife (and a mysterious individual with our last name, but an odd first name that appears to be an acronym of both my parents’ first and middle initials), and lists him as an employee of a local organization that nobody in my family has ever worked for. So, no, I don’t think the data is all that reliable.

11

Just because data is old doesn’t make it useless. If you are simply using these databases to find the current address of a living person - you are going to often be disappointed. They are more useful for situations like this:

Go to data site XYZ.com

Look up info for Amanda Warren Harrisgreenfeld

You find an Amanda W Harrisgreenfeld with same month and year of birth
You also see who else is living there and find:
Artemis Clay Foxamuffin

When you go to a different website abc.com to do a search - you look for BOTH Amanda and Artemis

You find Artemis C Foxamuffin and either:
A Harrisgreenfeld (which if we get another pice of data or so we might be able to guess is her)
Or
Amanda Foxamuffin (maybe Amanda got married)

Sometimes you will be led up blind alleys and such, but outdated data is EXTREMELY useful to some of us.

Many of the ads for these sites are misleading. They aren’t magic. But used correctly they are useful - but you need to spend the time in doing it. I think once it took me like 16 hours to find someone - and involved using these databases, online court records, online newspapers with obits (where I was able to find other relatives names and employers), articles in industry periodicals, Facebook - then using reverse image search on images on that, etc…

12

Oh and btw - these google ads will show up for virtually any name - they aren’t actually checking to see if it is in their database.

13

A lot of what is on the internet is old and outdated. I have use directory searches to look up person name to see where they live and it would show up the old address:mad: I know the person use to lived there and no longer lives there any more.

The problem with directory searches for the public is it is old and outdated. You will need directory searches the FBI and CIA have that update all the time.

14

With all the good advice in this thread in mind, I repeated my search. This is what I found out:
(I) www.pipl.com

This seems to be the best people search website out there. These are the informations it provided:

First Name: (+)
Last Name: (+)
Address/street name: (+)
Address/house number: (+)
Address/apartment number: (+)
Address/town: (+)
Address/ZIP code: (-) –> easy to look up elsewhere
Age (years old): (+)
Phone number: (-)

(II) www.intelius.com

First Name: (+)
Last Name: (+)
Address/street name: (-) –> street name is partly scrambled, otherwise consistent with (I)
Address/house number: (+)
Address/apartment number: (-)
Address/town: (+)
Address/ZIP code: (-)
Age (years old): (-)** –>** “is in her 50’s” (correct), but also: “Zodiac Sign: Virgo” (which is consistent with her date of birth according to the court document, so apparently they do have her exact date of birth)
Phone number: (-)
There are literally Hundreds of other people search websites (for a list, see for instance: https://www.privacyrights.org/online-information-brokers-list ). I’ve only tried some of the less-dubious looking ones, they provide parts of the information listed above, but nothing beyond that.

**Conclusions: **

  • all searches lead to exactly one woman, residing in an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
  • this is a valid address (according to Google maps and Google street view)
  • no past addresses to be found, no married name, no persons associated with her
  • her date of birth is apparently known.
  • these informations must have been committed to a database at some point in the past (which database(s)? when? by whom? why? regularly updated?)
  • there seems to be no phone number connected with this woman under this address
  • other than that, no trace of this woman on the internet: social media, blogs, websites, message boards etc.