Snooping is such an ugly word. The info you're looking for is there on the Web, free—or really cheap—for the taking. So stop looking over your shoulder. Thanks to the Net, you can locate anyone—a client who's overdue on a bill, a business partner who skipped out on his end of a deal, or the cute girl from your 10th grade social studies class who's still on your mind after all these years.
Need someone's e-mail address? Start by plugging the person's name into a Web directory like InfoSpace.com. You don't have to know what city, state, or country the person lives in to locate contact information. If it's available from the phone directory, InfoSpace.com will also provide the person's address and phone number. The site provides reverse phone and address lookups too.
You can also find a person or a business with a couple of clicks from the Windows 98 desktop. Click on Start, then choose Find, People. Use the Look In drop-down menu to select which source to search. Your choices include WhoWhere, Yahoo People Search, and even VeriSign, which hosts a directory of public keys for sending encrypted e-mail.
Searches with InfoSpace.com, other Internet white and yellow pages, and Windows 98's Find People feature are free. However, they don't always turn up all the details you need. But there's no need to pay more than you have to for basic people searches. KnowX.com lets you search for a person or a business for $1 to $1.50 per database query. Cost for reports themselves vary. Basic address info costs 95 cents, for example, while property ownership info will run you $6.95. You can save money by buying all the reports in your results list for a fixed price, usually $5 to $15.
For about two bucks and 5 minutes of your time, you can find your target's address and phone number, and the system generally throws in basic demographics too—gender, median household income, and length of residence.
Hone In
Still having trouble pinning down your moving target? If it's as simple as getting driving directions to an address, plug it into MapQuest.com.
If the person you're looking for is an old friend or schoolmate, it's possible you'll find him or her by checking with ClassMates.Com, which keeps track of alumni from 30,000-plus high schools. For college buddies—or to find that person you always had your eye on in your junior economics class—PlanetAll.com, has a large collection of alumni groups, although you have to register to search among them.
As long as you don't mind blowing your cover, you can also enlist the help of People Finder. People Finder lists the names of those whom others are seeking by name under various categories (friends, relatives, and so on). You can add names or find out if someone's looking for you.
Sure, it's morbid, but depending on how long it's been since you last contacted the person, it might make sense to check the Social Security Death Index at Ancestry.com. Type in the person's name (or Social Security number, if you have it) to find out if he or she is still kicking. You can also get the whole scoop on someone by simply typing a name in the box on Ancestry.com's home page. It will serve up a categorized results list that tells you what info you can get for free—including the death index and message boards for that person's family name—and what you'll have to pay for.
News to You
Once you've exhausted the lookup services, take a gander at newsgroups. Deja.com can shed light on more than you may want to know about someone. Did you really want to know he was a member of the Deceased Terrier Support Group? Are you grateful to learn of her experiences as a UFO abductee?
If your results are too numerous, narrow your search. Deja.com lets you look through historic postings and include or exclude dates and other criteria. This helps you weed through the tide of junk that issues from Internet blabbermouths.
Bulletin boards and discussion forums—especially those on online services like America Online—can serve up enticing fare. If you've discovered that the person you're tracking uses AOL, be sure to look up his or her personal profile. If you don't have an AOL account yourself, find someone who does. With 17 million members, it shouldn't be hard to find a friend or two who has an account. If not, you can always try AOL for free, then cancel after you've found what you're looking for. Many other online communities, including eGroups and Yahoo Clubs, offer similar ways to reach their otherwise anonymous members.
Undocumented Dirt
Unfortunately, most of the richest information onthe Web eludes indexing of any sort. You'll have to go prospecting without a map. As long as your target doesn't use a proxy service, you can find his or her hosting ISP by following the @ symbol on his or her e-mail address. Point your browser to this server, then poke around. Many ISPs provide limited space for personal Web sites, which—thankfully, in most cases—go unnoticed by the big search engines.
Use the tilde (~) to pan for gold. If a person'se-mail address is bozo_clown@nowhere .com, for example, point your browser to www .nowhere.com/~bozo_clown. Alternatively, try www .nowhere.com/~clown and other variants.
If you're looking for dirt on a coworker who uses the same company network, your job just got easier. Log onto the network drive and run Windows File Manager, then cast about for folder names that seem unrelated to company business. You'll be surprised by how many of these are not password protected. You'll also be astonished at how freely employees use company storage space for personal documents: tax sheets, mock-up Web pages, résumés, screenplays in progress—you name it. Of course, it would be highly unethical for you to view the contents of these files. But simply knowing they exist might come in handy.
Spy on the Other Guys
Competitive intelligence, the corporate euphemism for spying, has also taken to the Web. To keep tabs on news related to competing companies, use a free service such as Yahoo Alerts. You can opt to receive alerts via e-mail or every time you visit the site.
You can also doyour own searches at NewsLibrary, which archives articles from hundreds of newspapers across the country. Searching is free (although you must register and provide a credit card number to begin), but the articles themselves cost between $1 and $2.95.
If the company you're tracking is public, there are lots of ways to find out what people are saying about its performance. One of our favorites is Company Sleuth, which stockpiles information that doesn't always make the paper or wire services. After you register (it's free), you'll receive a daily updateon up to 10 stocks, including message board postings and trademark and patent filings.
Hidden Cameras
Want to make sure your nanny is as sweet as she seems? Need to guarantee your employees keep their hands out of the cash drawer? No problem. Keep an eye on things with Security Data Networks' $699 MicroSentinel or FoneCam's $399 Remote Digital Camera. We prefer MicroSentinel's wireless camera and receiver, which can send stills or AVI clips to the base unit (attached to your PC), e-mail them, or post photos on the Web. FoneCam, on the other hand, doesn't even need a PC: It plugs into a phone jack and e-mails still shots at an interval you set or upon motion detection.
Be Big Brother
If you suspect your employees might be wasting company time playing games or lingering at ESPN.com, you can find out. WinWhatWhere Investigator slyly captures every keystroke—including typed text—a person makes on any PC on your network. Download a 30-day trial for free; pay $99 to keep it. Also check out TechSmith's SnagIt, a $39.95 utility that lets you automatically snap a screen shot from any networked PC at scheduled intervals.
Who's Watching You?
Developed for and sold only to law enforcement agencies, D.I.R.T. (Data Interception by Remote Transmission) infiltrates the PCs of known or suspected high-tech crooks and records their keystrokes. It then sends the info back to investigators in untraceable e-mail messages.
Nab Spammers
The best way to get back at junk e-mailers is to find out who they are and turn them in. To decode the message header, look for IP addresses or domain names inside parentheses in the header's Received lines (info outside the parentheses can be faked). An IP address is four numbers from 1 to 255 separated by periods. Read the Received lines from bottom to top to trace the path the message took from the spammer to you. Verify the address using Acme address digger. Finally, tattle on the spammer at the Network Abuse Clearinghouse.
Be a Busybody
Hey, it's your bottom line. Don't let employees squander it browsing the Web for fun. Put monitoring and blocking software to work on your server. We like Kansmen's LittleBrother Pro 3.2, which costs $495 for a 10-user license. Setup is a cinch and it shows at a glance what everyone's up to.
Who's Calling?
Sure you could pay for caller ID. Or, for free, you can look up the owner of any phone number on the Internet.
AnyWho
Offers dead-on reverse telephone lookup.
InfoSpace.com
It's your Internet snooping starting point: reverse lookups plus links to hundreds of ways to track people down.
InfoUSA.com
Reverse lookups are just the beginning. Mine this directory for business info and sales leads.
The Payphone Project
Indexes thousands of pay-phone numbers worldwide.
PeopleSearch.net
Offers reverse lookups for e-mail and street addresses as well as phone numbers.
One-Up the Competition
If you want to steamroll your competitors, it helps to know what they're up to at all times. Check out these sites to start building a dossier on the other guys.
CompaniesOnline
The fastest, easiest way to find a company's Web site if it's not obvious.
EDGAR Database
Keep track of public companies' SEC filings—including top executives' pay and perks.
Hoover's Online
Public companies can't hide from this research company's regular capsule overviews. And you can use the info to keep your edge. Plus: Get the scoop on expected IPO prices before they hit.
Intellifact.com
Search more than 300,000 company profiles for free. Also has an excellent collection of links to other snooping sites.
Kompass
Locate businesses and products throughout the world. Basic address searches are free; subscribers get info on revenue and other key subjects.inside info
Net Investigators
You can handle basic lookups, but sometimes it pays to use a pro. Web-based investigative services are fast, and you can pay by the report instead of by the hour. Discreet Data Systems, for example, offers preemployment screening for $75 and unlisted phone lookups for $45. Informus Corp. verifies résumés for $11 and checks criminal records for $25.
Undelete Key Files
An employee who goes to work for your competitor will certainly clean his hard drive of any incriminating files before he jumps ship. This doesn't mean deleted documents must stay that way. If the person exits your employ abruptly, check out PowerQuest's $70 Lost & Found. Though it runs in DOS, the program is easy to set up and use—and it will still work if you install it after the sought-after file has been axed.
