Evil Week: Everything You Can Learn About a Person From Public Information
Welcome to Evil Week , our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy life hacks that we usually refrain from recommending. Want to snag free drinks, play challenging mind games, or launder some money? We have all the information we need to successfully engage in questionable behavior.
You can learn a lot about someone on the Internet. Once something is online, it is nearly impossible to remove it (and trying too hard to hide something online can even lead to the ” Streisand effect “, effectively drawing more attention to it).
Yes, the Internet can bite you in the ass if you’re not careful, but it can also be a powerful tool that you can use against others. We have already told you how to find a person on the Internet . Here’s something else you can find out about any Internet user, often without paying a penny.
Search engines know a lot
“People search engines” are websites that do what the name suggests—think Google, but for people. These sites collect publicly available information from various sources and put it into a convenient package for you. They will show you some things for free, and some will cost you money. But typically, these sites create detailed profiles of everyone. If they haven’t gone out of their way to clear it (perhaps by paying for a service like DeleteMe ), it could include information ranging from current and past addresses and phone numbers to the names of their family members and more. Most of these websites are the public face of data broker companies that collect information from and about people in questionable ways and with the intention of selling it to individuals or businesses. But you can also learn a lot from more ethical websites, such as public records databases that collect public information, or background check services that landlords, employers and individuals can use to check someone’s information. Here are some free and popular websites you can use to find public information about almost anyone:
For example, with Spokeo, you can enter a name, phone number, email, or address and find a lot of related information, including gender, age, family members, marital status, education, and more. Even basic contact information can open many doors.
Find out their political affiliation
Voting is secret. But belonging to a political party is not. You can find out what political party a person belongs to, whether their voter status is active or not, and information about their constituency, such as what their congressional, senate, or congressional district is, all online. Each state will have its own voter locator website, but they are easy to find since it is all public information. For example, if you want to find this information about someone in New York, you can use the New York State Board of Elections tracker . You’ll just need their full name, date of birth, zip code and county of residence – all of which you can find in the public information section above. (This tool will also give you their full address.) For more basic political affiliation information , you can look at their FEC filings . Give it a try before your next date on Match.com!
Find out who they donated to
If you are looking for information about someone’s political activities, you can find records of who they donated money to. One way to do this is Opensecrets.org , a nonprofit organization that tracks the influence of money in American politics. They offer research tools for many specific searches, including ” Donor Search “. By entering just someone’s name, you can find Federal Election Commission records of contributions of at least $200. There are also similar databases for local states if you want to make your search more intensive.
Find out what properties they own (and how much they paid)
You can find out what kind of real estate a person owns by going to the website of the financial department of your city. This can provide you with information such as when someone bought or sold the property, for how much, number of rooms in the property, address, property tax information and who the seller was. You can even view document images. Again, this varies by city, but if you do some local research, you can probably even find out how big their mortgage is (and whether they’re making their payments on time). To find someone from New York, you should use the ACRIS database tool on the New York Department of Treasury website: Go to the ACRIS search tool and select how you want to search for their real estate information . (The easiest way is to search for him by his full name.)