The Internet has lots of useful tools for digging up info on people. Here are just a few:

1. Court websites: most courts now have online case histories and some even have the actual documents for viewing. Search for the court in your county or whatever county you need and look for a link for record searches. You can usually get county records, district court records and criminal records.

2. Pipl.com: Very good FREE search engine that will pull up a lot of info on a person (i.e., social networking sites, addresses, court records, etc.)

3. Spokeo.com: Kind of good, if you can get the info you need on the first round. If you choose to go deeper, there may be a cost.

I'll try and think of some more.

Don't forget simple things like the phone directory and the electoral register.

I found OW's landline number in an international phone directory that I retrieved in seconds.

I have found that the Internet makes finding intel on the OP or his/her spouse really easy. You can start by just Googling a name and you will probably instantly get a number of listings for one person.

If you google my or my H's name, you will find our workplace websites where you will find our email addresses and work landline numbers. I HATE that this is so for me, but I found it a godsend when I was trying to find OWH.

Many companies put staff details online, for staff who in some way need to have a public face.

You would be surprised how many people never think of using the most obvious resource, the phone book. They are in a panic and will miss obvious, but valuable resources such as this. whitepages.com is a great resource.

I just did a search for "Mr. and Mrs. SugarCane" and I didn't find you guys anywhere! Hmmm. Since I live in Texas, maybe it's under "SugaCane".

I always was suspicious about that foreign devil gal...

You're both nuts!

Totally barking bonkers!

Mel, she's doing that foreign-language thing again!

For the umpteenth time, bliss:

I'm not foreign. All of you are.

Americans are not foreigners, you silly foreigner!!

The internet is American, how did you foreigners get in here anyway??

That's right. The internet was invented by our own Al "the sky is warming! the sky is warming!" Gore.

Oh, please!

The Internet was invented by Tim Berners Lee, and he's British!

Au contraire, mon frere.

The "Internet" was invented by ARPA/DARPA - the Advanced Research Projects Agency/Defense yada yada yada. It was a consortium of U.S. government agencies and academic institutions.

Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web (W3). Which is what we access when we use a web browser.

But the "Internet" is a technical construct that also includes email, ftp, telnet, finger, gopher, whatis, and a host of other technologies and programs that the everyday user has no knowledge of.

So where did Al Gore come into it?

LOL! That was a joke - sorry, I forgot you're over there.

Al Gore was a vice-president of our country who was once mis-interpreted in an interview regarding his part in the beginnings of the internet.

Many people have claimed that he said he 'invented' the internet, which is incorrect. He actually said that he took the 'initiative' to advance technology that resulted in the groundwork for the internet. His statement was self-serving posturing, at best, but no matter. People had a field day with it.

He's going to be the butt of internet-inventor jokes for the rest of time. Like the one I threw out there yesterday

Hello, I need to find a good reputable website, that can do a reverse email. The ones mentioned above have a bad reputation with the BBB. Anyone out there have tried a website that they would recommend?? Thank you.

Which websites do you mean, Eleonor? And what is the BBB, and in what do they say about these websites?

Better Business Bureau which has its own reputation problems, lol

I used intelius.com to get an email address. Not expensive and fairly reliable. I got the OW's street addy from pipl.com and it is FREE. If they have a landline, then they will show up from my experience.

link please!

The Better Business Bureau has complaints about the websites like, Emailfinder.com, spokeo.com, to name a few. Has anyone used a website and got satisfactory returns?

Can you clarify what you mean, Eleonor? Do you mean have we ordered spying stuff from websites and been satisfied with our purchases? If that's the question, the answer is 'yes.'

I am sorry for the confusion, what I am asking is, has anyone used a website where you pay money to find someones email, phone number and/or address? I don't mind paying money as long as the website is not fraudulent and they clean out your account, there is a lot of complaints like that at the Better Business Bureau, where the websites take as much as 150 dlls from someones account! I have an email and need to find who it belongs to. I also have a phone number and want to see if that is the same person. Thank you for replaying and your help.

Another good free website that I got emails and phone #s is www.peekyou.com

Like it better thank pipl.

Eleonor you might get good free info from both. Probably not cell phone #s but landlines and email addresses.

And if you have an address go to www.whitepages.com and look at reverse address..

Again all free

Thank you, I'll try them.

if you have the email addy did you try spokeo and pipl? I have had great luck with the FREE parts of these websites.

Don't forget that you can use online records to find people internationally. OW in my case is international, yet I was able to find her home phone number by looking up the online phone directory for her country.

If you have an address or even just a district, you can be fairly confident you have the right person.

Apparently, in your part of the world you can run something called a "background check". Does anyone know details about that?

Perhaps Al Gore invented it?