Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve certainly seen one of those Internet ads: find your old classmates and click this banner. But do these systems really work?
I’m not going to say a that all of these firms provide a service that is substandard. Because many of them do try very hard to locate the individual in question. They even do occasionally have a success story or two.
The only problem with contacting some of these companies is that due to licensing and data access constraints, they just don’t have the resources to do the job in most instances. And frankly, most of what they are capable of, you could do yourself for free. You may not get the results that you want, but at least you’ll save yourself that credit card fee that would have been on next month’s statement. All for nothing but a little of your time. And with a little bit of luck, that small time investment COULD pay off.
By using the methods that these firms use, you may be able to locate someone really very quickly. Sometimes these techniques are right under your nose.
The very first place to start is the most obvious.
If...