Sams Teach Yourself Internet and Web Basics All in One

Finding People

Using mainly the search techniques you've already picked up in this chapter, you can find people on the Internet—or rather, the email addresses, mailing addresses, or telephone numbers through which particular people can be reached.

This people-finding power is one of the Internet's most valuable and controversial capabilities. Applied properly, it can aid research, locate missing persons, track down deadbeats delinquent in their child support payments, reunite old friends, and even help adult adoptees find their birth parents, if they so desire. When abused, this capability aids stalkers and overaggressive direct marketers. Unfortunately, as is always the case with freedom of information, there's no practical way to preserve the ...