FAQ: How to find people in Australia

Reasons for wanting to find people in Australia are many and varied. Whether it’s to catch up with old friends or loved ones, find long lost relatives, collect on a debt, or track down a spammer, there are a lot of people using the internet to find people.

This FAQ delves into online tools and techniques useful for locating people in Australia, and at times covers those offline as well. It also provides information on certain search types that are often asked about.

It is important to note that Australian privacy laws are some of the strictest in the world, and we simply do not have access to the range of information publicly available and promoted overseas. This does not mean that you can not find people in Australia, only that you may need to jump over a few more hurdles to do so.

Simple approach to finding people

Before progressing any further into this FAQ, have you tried making a few telephone calls? Often people who have moved can be found through a quick telephone call to parents, siblings, friends, or former neighbours.

People don’t often move without letting others know where they are/are going, and many of the aforementioned contacts may be willing to share the information you are seeking. If however you do contact someone who is unwilling to provide you with direct contact details, leave your own contact information, and request that they ask the person to contact you. Always ensure that you are polite when seeking information over the telephone or in person.

The simplest approach is often the most effective, and may save you a lot of time.

Can I find anyone in Australia?

In short, no. There are many factors that influence whether a person may be found or not.

Those who are intentionally hiding, or simply don’t want to be found, can be difficult to locate. This type of person is less likely to leave behind trails or easy means of contact. They often change jobs, move house a lot, collect mail away from their current residence, and instruct family members not to pass on any contact details. Some live under the blanket of another person, with rental or residence details, phone, electricity, and other services all provided for them under the others name.

There are people who go so far as to change their name, however this is not common.

Whilst people may take steps to avoid being located, there are tried and tested ways used every day to locate people. A persons ability to remain under the radar will often dictate the success of such techniques, however people do not normally have an intricate knowledge of what means may be used to find them. Therefore they can, and do, often slip up without even knowing they’ve done so.

Professional Private Investigators specialising in searching for people have a number of tricks up their sleeves. Experience, combined with a developed knowledge of human habits, access to a variety of information sources, pretext skills, and the willingness (for a fee) to source out and follow all leads, ensures they have a greater chance of success with finding people than the general public.

People who have no intention of hiding are usually a lot simpler to find. For the most part, they would not even have an idea that someone was looking for them.

Useful Information

The information you start with about a person will often dictate what searches you should conduct.

If you know the persons former School or University, then reunion and registry style sites offer additional opportunities for you to find a person. Should you know a persons former workplace, registry sites may also suit, however a phone call to a former workplace may also be as effective if not more so.

Before starting your search, you should consider what information you do have, and how that can be best put to use in your search. Information of interest may include:

• Full Name, including all middle names.
• Full name of parents or siblings.
• Schools, TAFE’s, or Universities attended.
• Last known address and the dates when the address was applicable.
• Last known address of parents or siblings, and the dates when the address was applicable.
• Places of employment.
• Date or year of birth. Age.
• Businesses owned.
• Any nicknames or aliases.
• For females – maiden name, married name, and names from former marriages.
• Telephone numbers, including those of parents or siblings.
• Interests the person has.

Document your people search

It can be helpful in your search if each time you take a step, you document it. Write it down, print it out, keep a log in a text editor. The longer your search for someone goes on, the more important this becomes.

Not only will documenting all relevant details save you time by not having to source information twice, but it can also help in creating a mental picture of where your investigation is at, where it’s going, and whether you’ve missed something along the way.

A checklist can also be a useful addition. Determine what searches you’ll need to conduct, then tick them off as you complete each one.

Web Searches

Online searches for people are as varied as the internet itself. From broad ranging search engines offering 8 billion documents, through to company phone directories with only 10 listings, people are listed everywhere. The trick when trying to find people using the web is to know where, and how, to look.

Australian Telephone Directories

In Australia, we are very limited in the way of phone and address searches. Telstra, through its subsidiary Sensis, maintains a stranglehold on its telephone directory service, and has been quite effective at removing any opposition that makes use of its data.

The online White Pages service provides a simple search by name, address, and location.

Australian telephone directories on CD have come and gone over the years, with independents sued out of business by Sensis. The White Pages on CD, produced by Sensis, has also been discontinued.

Business telephone directories can be useful at times for locating people. The online Yellow Pages service provides a who, what, and where search. Other Australian business telephone directories are also available.

Online business searches such as Green Pages are no longer online.

Organisation telephone directories, such as those provided by Universities and large businesses, can be used to obtain direct contact details for those within the organisation.

Reverse Phone Number Searches

Discontinued phone directory CDs, including those produced by DTMS, are one of the only means of conducting reverse number searches in Australia. DTMS CDs for sale are rare, although you may find copies at certain stores (usually at 10x its original retail price), or through online auctions such as eBay. Many Private Investigators and other organisations purchased CDs when publicly available, and still make use of them today. You may be able to locate an Investigator willing to conduct a reverse search for you, although this will undoubtably attract a fee. Note that the CDs are outdated, and their effectiveness reduces as each year passes.

It is reported that Sensis will provide reverse searches to government agencies and other companies at their discretion.

Online reverse phone number searches may still be available online, however these are usually run as underground sites, and require password access. These also rely upon outdated data formerly found in CDs.

It is unlikely that we will see openly available reverse phone number searches available in Australia any time soon, due to restrictions on the use of IPND data. The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) lists all Australian telephone numbers, and policy states that the data may not be used to provide a reverse search directory.

Note: Other countries such as the United States offer a wide variety of online telephone directory searches, including reverse phone, and reverse address.

Using search engines to find people

Web based search engines provide a window into the content of over 8 billion documents located on the internet. These range from web pages, through Word documents, and pdf files. If a person is listed within one of these documents, then you may be able to find them through a search engine.

Australian searches including Google Australia, NineMSN, and Yahoo! Australia offer searches with a focus on Australian documents, and those with content relevant to Australia. Whilst there are other Australian searches available, they pale in both significance and relevance when compared to the three already mentioned.

International Searches may also be used, as there are no boundaries on the internet. The person you are seeking may be an active participant on International forums and sites with no specific relevance to Australia. The issue on an international scale is of course the sheer volumes of results that may be returned for a persons name.

People Search maintains a multi-search form for both Australian and international search engines. It allows you to type your search once, then run your search using a variety of search engines. Visit the All-In-One Search Engines page.

When using a search engine to locate people in Australia, it is important that you first gain an understanding of how searches work, and what tools and commands are available to you to aid in your search.

The first step is to consider how you will format your search keywords or phrases. You are looking to return documents that contain details and information about the person you are seeking, hence you must use the terms most likely to be found on the documents themselves. For example, when people write a mailing address on the internet, they are much more likely to use the abbreviated version of a state. For example, people will write QLD, and not Queensland. This becomes an important issue when searching, as terms such as Queensland may not be found on any document on a web site at all, and hence a highly relevant page may never be returned for your search.

Advanced searching can aid you in returning more relevant results for your search. Each search engine has a wide variety of options available, and many can be used across all search engines. Phrase matching can be used to qualify words in a specific order and ensure they are located together. For example, a search for John Doe will return results from documents with both John, and Doe, located anywhere on the page. A search using the phrase “John Doe” however will only return results with the phrase John Doe written as is. Next time you visit a search engine, try clicking the “advanced” or “help” links, and you’ll find a plethora of commands and tools available to you.

Nicknames, when known, provide a good option when searching. There are many people making use of online discussion forums to talk with others about topics that interest them. Whilst the number of people using actual names is small, those using nicknames is high.

Email Address Directories

With the increase of spam, an increased awareness about protecting an email address also became prevelant on the internet. Less home pages and web sites are listing email addresses, and there are less directories than ever before.

Australia formerly had a number of email address directories, including Email-It, Sofcom, and SouthernX. All have since fallen by the wayside, and are no longer available. No new companies appear to have stepped up to the plate, leaving online Australia barren in this area.

Australian Universities, as well as other large organisations and companies, often provide email contacts for their staff online. Check the people search directory for listings of those that do.

International email address directories do provide Australian listings. Yahoo! for example, is one of the only online directories to provide an email search specifically for Australians. This may be found using their “advanced” search link. Others also contain spattering’s of Australian email addresses.

We have included an international FAQ in the next section for your reference. It has been built up over many years, and may provide some ideas that you can apply in your search for Australian email addresses.

You may also refer to the International FAQ on How to find people’s Email Addresses.

Messenger Services

Messenger services offering instant chat between people are a commonly used application online. The 3 major messenger services used by Australians, MSN, Yahoo!, and ICQ, all offer member directories allowing you to locate and contact users.

The MSN member directory incorporates all users of MSN Passport services, which includes Hotmail. Not all members choose to display a public profile, and many fake names are used, but it is worth the time to search as it can be a quick and free way of contacting someone.

Yahoo! also incorporates all users of it’s range of services, including free mail and groups, into its directory. Again there are many fake details used to sign up, and users may opt out of having a public profile.

The ICQ directory covers a comprehensive range of details, however there appears to be less current users than the former two services mentioned. The interesting thing to note with this directory however is the age of certain listings. Each person who has signed up, regardless of when they did, or how long its been since they used the service, is still listed in the directory. This can be very useful for finding out historical information about a person, or even if they are an internet user. Personal details were not nearly as protected on the internet as they are today, and this becomes quite obvious when looking through the directory.

Weblogs – Blog Searches

What is a Blog?

Weblogs, usually shortened to “blogs”, are web pages containing periodic posts (messages) by a person or series of people. They range from the ramblings of individuals, through to running commentary on major events.

A common use by individuals is to detail ones thoughts on a particular topic or range of topics, and also provide a diary or journal of events in ones life.

Searching Blogs

Within the Blogosphere (all the online blogs), it is common place to use ones own name. Therefore if you are searching for someone, and they happen to run an online blog, there’s a good chance you’ll locate them. What’s interesting with finding a persons blog, is that not only do you find a way of communicating with them, but you may also learn more about them in the process.

The are a number of specific blog searches on the web. These range from those which delve deep into the text of weblogs, through to directories containing just the title and a description or text snippets. Search engines also appear to do a good job of indexing blogs, and can be used. You might like to try adding the term blog, or similar, to your search keywords if you’re interested in finding a persons blog.

Web Based Registries

Registries are membership based web sites designed to help people reunite. They range from school and workplace registries, through to adoption and missing persons registries. Some registries are offered as a free service, whilst others have fees for joining or making contact with others.

Registers can be effective for finding people if you know the school/s they attended. Even if the person themselves has not registered, you may be able to locate contact details for someone they were/are friends with, and they may provide you with further information. Registries with a specific focus, such as Military or Adoption, can also be very useful when relevant.

Maiden name features in school based registries can provide current surnames for married females. Once you have a persons current name, your search may become a lot simpler.

People Search maintains the people finder registry as a free service to all Australians, and those seeking people in Australia. This is a unique style registry as it is open to public viewing and search engines. Visit the People Finder Register.

Australian Registries often require that you become a member before being able to browse or search the registry. Required membership details include items such as what schools you attended, and this information will become publicly available to other registry members. The advantage of this is that it ensures a huge number of members, as those even remotely curious are forced to register before they can look. The disadvantage is that people do falsify their information so as not to have their own details become public. As with anywhere you need to register your personal details, be sure to check their privacy policy (a statement of what they do/do not do with your personal details), as the last thing you need is to start receiving spam due to signing up.

Registries that charge fees normally ensure that no information that may be used to contact another is published. This means that whilst you may find someone, you also have no direct means of contacting them until you pay. Before forking over your hard earned, ensure you check all the free registries. A person that enters their details once, may have done so again on another site, especially after they also learnt about no pay/no contact policies. Also be sure to read what the person you are seeking has written about themselves. People commonly state the area in which they now live, occupation, and some even go so far as to drop clues as to how you can contact them through other means.

Personal Web Sites

Personal web sites, more commonly known as home pages, are a common first step on the internet for people learning to build web sites. Home pages are generally identified as such by the use of ISP given or free domain space to host the site (i.e. site.com/~username or geocities.com/2345/username). Very few personal sites venture out onto purchased domains and paid hosting.

Personal sites commonly detail the real names of adult family members, their interests, general location, and some method of contact – usually an email address. If you can find a persons home page, you should be able to contact them, or at the very least have a few leads to progress with.

There are a number of personal site directories that may aid you in locating home pages. Unfortunately, these lists represent only a small number of personal sites online.

General search engines are also an option for locating personal pages, however this can be difficult at times. Search engines commonly use link popularity as part of determining a web sites rank, and it is uncommon for personal web sites to have more than a few, if any, inbound links. Brushing up on the advanced features of search engines will go a long way with these types of searches.

The popularity of blogs may also result in the steady decline of personal web sites published on the internet, making this type of search less useful as time goes on. As blogs are ready made out of the box sites, which offer free hosting, and no requirements for web page building skills, more and more will turn in this direction for their personal slice of the internet.