Perhaps you’ve wondered what happened to a particularly gifted student.  You wonder how he or she is doing after all these years. Did he go on to medical school and become a surgeon of note? Did she write a great American novel under a pen name you don’t recognize?   For many years, your only viable option was to retain the services of a private investigator, which could prove time consuming and costly, and felt a bit smarmy, to boot. Well, you might have hit the jackpot, because there are numerous resources online to make following up on your old students easier and less costly than it had ever been. Here are a few of the most popular.

Classmates (http://www.classmates.com/ ) – Originally established as a tool for reconnecting with fellow students, this website offers a reasonably comprehensive database of high schools and colleges and the students who attended them. Students and teachers can register for free, which will allow you to do a name search for a given school during the years you specify. If you spot your student’s name, you can click on it and obtain some rudimentary information about them. If you want more information or to actually contact the student, however, you’ll have to take out a paid membership, which will cost anywhere from $1.23 per month for a 2-year membership to $2.50 per month for a 3 month trial. If you sign up for a free account, you will get semi-weekly e-mail invitations to get a paid membership, and each invitation will have teasers such as telling you how many people have looked at your profile, who has uploaded new pictures, or who has achieved a milestone in their life. The good news is that the e-mails are pretty easy to ignore if you’re so inclined.

Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ ) – You’d have to have lived in a Tibetan monastery to have not heard about Facebook. If your student is under 30 years of age, you can probably assume that he or she has a Facebook account. In order to do any effective searching, you’ll need to sign up for your own page, and in many if not most cases, you’ll have to submit a friend request to the individual – which he or she must then accept – before you can see their page. One caveat: Facebook’s Terms of Service has been known to be somewhat cavalier about members’ private information, so if you do sign up, you’ll want to go to the options section and tighten up your privacy and security settings. There are clear tutorials on how to do this, and several online articles that are even clearer.

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/  – Where the previous two sites are geared more to the social end of things, LinkedIn has a decidedly professional-oriented flavour. In order to access other people’s information or connect with them, you’ll need to get your own account, but the basic account is free. Once you’re a member, you can search their huge database of individuals and companies, and when you find who you’re looking for, you can invite them to join your network, which simply means that the two of you will be connected. You’ll also have the opportunity to search through and join groups whose members share a common interest, from aeronautical engineers to zookeepers. Some groups are “open,” meaning you can join just by requesting, while others are “closed,” meaning that you’ll have to get the group owner’s permission before being allowed in. When you sign in, you’ll be invited to upgrade your account, but the upgraded version is geared more to marketing than simple contact, so the upgrade isn’t really necessary if all you’re doing is looking up old students.

Public Data and Skip Trace sites – There are numerous sites that list current contact information, arrest records, litigation records, and the like, which charge a fee, usually in the form of a monthly or yearly subscription, and allow searches by name, last known location, and/or other information you might have at your disposal. Some of these services are national or international in scope, while others focus solely upon a specific state. Inasmuch as this type of service is for the most part unregulated, caution should be exercised in subscribing. You would be advised to search for unsponsored commentary about the specific service you are considering before signing up. Ultimately, you need to decide whether the type of information they offer is consistent with what you are seeking, but the better examples do provide current addresses and/or telephone numbers.

Google search (https://www.google.com/ ) – We saved the most direct and obvious for last. You can type an individual’s name into a Google search field and come up with a wide range of hits. The more information you include, such as entering John Doe Tacoma in the search field, the better your chances of actually finding the right person. Given the enormous size of Google’s databases, you’re likely to get thousands of hits for any name you enter, and might have to wade through many pages of results before finding someone who resembles the party you are seeking. You can also set up a Google Alert for a given person’s name, which will result in you receiving e-mail notifications any time there is a new entry for that name in the database. If it is a common name, expect to be overwhelmed by the number of suggested pages and alerts you will receive. A Google search is the most direct and least costly of the options available, but you’ll end up doing a lot of the investigative legwork yourself. But if you’ve got plenty of time to kill…

Author Bio:

This is a guest post by Sarah Brooks from Freepeoplesearch.org, a people finder site. She is a Houston based freelance writer and blogger. Questions and comments can be sent to brooks.sarah23 @ gmail.com.