words Al Woods
In the past, disappearing was pretty easy. A few decades ago, if you wanted to, you could abandon your entire life. You might walk out on your family and move across the country, and it would be tough for anyone to track you down if you took on an assumed name and made up a whole new identity.
You can’t do that so easily anymore. Investigative measures exist now that can locate you if you try and create a new life that way. Also, companies can find evidence of you online pretty easily. We’ll talk more about person lookups right now and how they’ve changed the modern world.
How Person Lookups Work
Most companies that do person lookups use that term and “background check” interchangeably. These companies generally have software programs that start working as soon as they put in someone’s name. The more information they have on that person, the more complete the report they get back.
These companies also usually have popular name search functionality. This can show you whether someone has searched for a person’s name recently. If you want to look into some popular name searches in 2022, you can definitely ask a company to do that for you.
The software scours the internet for news stories about this person. It will also look at their social media profiles if they have any. It will look at whether they have any arrests or convictions and whether they’ve spent any time in jail. It can see whether this person has any open warrants or whether they’ve ever had a DUI.
The software can also see where the person worked in the past. It can report whether they have a spouse or any children. It can determine whether a person owns any property and whether there are any liens against it at the moment.
Why You Might Do a Person Lookup
The modern world has changed because of person lookups in several distinct ways. Since companies exist now that can do this for you cheaply and easily, you can usually find out a great deal about someone, even if they tried to hide parts of their background.
Businesses often use the person lookup option before they hire someone. They can find out whether any company fired that worker in the past for any reason. They can also check on their references to make sure they worked the places where they claimed.
The company will find out whether that person has any criminal convictions, and they might choose to hire them or not based on that. The person lookup has made it much more likely that the company can weed out any bad apples before they hire them.
Other Person Lookup Reasons
Maybe you want to use one of these services if you’re dating a person and trying to find out about their past. Perhaps you ask them about that, but they will not give you a satisfactory explanation.
If you met someone via a dating app, you probably want to learn more about them before involving yourself with them any further. Many fraudsters try and find targets via online dating sites and apps, and you should make sure they do not victimize you.
Decades ago, it would be much harder to find out about someone you started dating. You would probably have to hire a private investigator. Now, the companies with their proprietary software programs that exist are so much faster and more affordable than that option.
Finding a Relative or Old Friend
You can also use one of these companies if you want to track down someone from your past who you miss. Maybe that’s an old friend from your neighborhood or a classmate. Perhaps it’s an old romantic interest you have not seen in many years.
You can use these services to find a relative who no one in the family talks to anymore. Maybe you feel like you want to reach out and welcome them back into the fold. If you have no luck exhausting online tools, then you can try hiring a private investigator that specializes in people tracing services. They will be able to conduct a more thorough investigation into finding who you are looking for.
These companies and their software programs make all of this possible. It’s much easier for you to find out about people, and doing so might enrich your life in any of the ways we’ve mentioned.
What’s Next for These Companies?
You might want to know what’s next for person lookup companies. They have already changed the world so much, but industries evolve, and this one is no exception.
Industry experts seem to feel this niche’s future involves person lookup subscription services. If you’re a company that does a lot of hiring, and you need to use this sort of service often, you can pay for a subscription and do many person lookups per month, or even per week.
Some companies will also probably move into hiring services in addition to person lookup or background screening. You will have a company that can both hire someone for a business and also handle the background check on them to see if they’re a suitable fit. This will free up HR departments to handle other tasks.
Criminal justice reform might come into play as well. These days, many companies will bar an individual from employment based on many different kinds of criminal convictions.
However, a time might come soon when companies will only engage person lookup services that exclude less egregious crimes and convictions. For instance, a new software model might leave out a minor drug offense, and it will only tell someone who looked up that person about more heinous criminal offense in their past.
There’s no denying the world is a different place because of person lookup capabilities. Most individuals would agree that it’s a lot safer.
You can find out quite a bit about someone, and you can often insulate yourself from harm because of that. That’s true if you’re dating that person or looking to hire them. You can also track someone down a lot easier and enrich your life and theirs by reestablishing contact with them.
