# Searching for old friends **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 17, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553 "2005-10-17T03:04:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/1 "2005-10-17T03:04:38Z")
Let’s say you wanted to find an old friend from school. What information would you need to supply to find them? How do those “people finder” services work? What info do they have access to that I can’t get? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/2 "2005-10-17T03:17:33Z")
Try [Classmates.com](http://Classmates.com) for a start. List name, high school, graduating year. It requires joining, but is free. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/3 "2005-10-17T03:44:18Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Try [Classmates.com](http://Classmates.com) for a start. List name, high school, graduating year. It requires joining, but is free. If you have a name this is the most powerful (free) search engine I know of. > **[Popular Name Searches | Zabasearch](https://www.zabasearch.com/)** > > Find people, addresses & phone numbers for free using ZabaSearch's database of public information. Use our reverse phone lookup to find out who's calling you. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/4 "2005-10-17T03:48:57Z")
[Classmates.com](http://Classmates.com) is a good suggestion. I don’t know if you are talking about high school or college, but if it is the latter then many college alumni offices have tools to reunite people. Mine alumni office has the options of sending a message through them or letting me sign some documents to have access to their alumni contact files. I have found many people through google searches. It helps if they are male and have a somewhat unusual name but it is worth a try in any case. People have pretty steady personalities so can often get a good feel if it is a true match by what you see. I had a really smart geeky friend when I was young. His family had some terrible misfortune and he had to move to California suddenly and I didn’t hear from him again. I did a google search on his (somewhat rare) name one day (17 years later) on a whim and got some results for as a designing engineer on Jurassic Park and several other movies. It sounded like something he would do so I googled and pieced things together and in 10 minutes I had his e-mail address. My guess was correct and we had a great two hour chat on the phone that I will never forget. If you cross-connect tools like google, on-line directories, and the telephone, you can locate most people pretty fast. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/5 "2005-10-17T08:29:27Z")
Google is also a solution, and possibly more likely than [classmates.com](http://classmates.com). It just depends on whether your friend has ever done anything that has gotten him listed on a webpage anywhere. Finding him is just a matter of inserting his name, and any hobbies or whatever that he would be likely to show up for. For instance, my friend was a bassist–so I searched for “My Friends Name bass -fishing” and voila I was able to find him (on like page 15 of the results.) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/6 "2005-10-17T11:41:26Z")
Classmates did not help (the people I’d like to find aren’t much with computers). Their names are either too common or too unusual to Google. Zabasearch looks promising. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/7 "2005-10-17T13:16:22Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > What info do they have access to that I can’t get? Voter registration records, real estate ownership and tax records, change of address records, driver registration records. ---
**Author:** ![A.R.Cane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@A.R.Cane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.R.Cane)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/8 "2005-10-17T13:29:52Z")
[Zabasearch.com](http://Zabasearch.com) is good, but it’s best if you have the state they live in, if not you may get a ‘too numerous to display’ depending on the commonality of the name. You can often get an address and ph.# and they have the option of more info. for a fee. There is also the Soc. Sec. Death Index, which can be found at [rootsweb.com](http://rootsweb.com). ---
**Author:** ![Butterscotch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@Butterscotch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Butterscotch)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-old-friends/326553/9 "2005-10-17T13:37:34Z")
You can try [www.friendsreunited.co.uk](http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk) or [http://www.wayn.com](http://www.wayn.com) (where are you now) Friends Reunited also have web pages for Australia, New Zealand and SOuth Africa.