Find a relative search explained
In this article, we discuss the five things you need to enable a successful relative search. Although there are many useful things to obtain which help in the search for a missing relative, there are some very important informational parts that we have listed here to help your long-lost family search.
In the UK one person every 90 seconds goes missing or to put it another way 180,000 people go missing in England every year, that’s one in every 500 adults!
People disappear all the time, some are planned such as family break up or estrangement and some are unplanned such as escaping violence or domestic abuse. In London alone, the number of reported missing and disappeared person cases has increased 77 percent since 2010.
So to help the ever-increasing number of people looking for missing people in the UK we have compiled our top 5 list of important information or things to do to enable your missing person search.
1. Background information
The number one point is the person’s background details, what we mean by this is the information that identifies this person as a unique person, these things include information points such as
a. Full name including any middle name or maiden names
b. Date of birth or the approximate age of the relative you are looking for
2. The contact information
Useful information points such as telephone or email addresses will help even if the number is disconnected and not working as many people tracing agencies can use this information to obtain other linked information to help in the search for the missing person. A telephone number can be linked to an old address which then can be linked through to the present day address by using for example Credit Agency data sets.
All old addresses that the person has lived at over the years give the name-matched person an address to work through to the current day, many datasets will link the addresses right through to the current day so this is a very important piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
3. Social media
As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2.38 billion monthly active users on its social networks, active users being people that have logged in within the last 30 days. There are so many social media accounts to which the person could be a member such as Twitter or LinkedIn and these can provide valuable personal information as to whereabouts and connections the person of interest may have.
It could describe friendships and connections to unknown people who may know the whereabouts of the missing person. Many of these social networks have people search engines to help locate the correct person you are looking for and help in your search for your friend that you have lost touch with. These are normally in the search bar of the networking site.
4. Relatives and friends
Relatives and friends can provide so much added information on a long-lost friend or family member to help you find a person. Crucial information such as relative’s names and unknown friends’ names and contact details you may not be aware of to help you search for people such as a phone number or email addresses.
Relatives and friends may also know of where the person lived, even an area, which can help to narrow down a search to a specific geographic location.
A few questions of the people that knew the person you are looking for can unravel so much additional information that it is well worth spending a little time asking some questions of the people that knew them.
5. Tracing agents who find people
Once the information has been compiled in the steps listed above this is when you can instruct the professionals to locate and trace the current whereabouts of the missing person. Professional tracing agents or skip tracing agents as known in the USA will be able to access specialist databases that are not available to the general public such as Credit Agency data which can locate a current address of a person with ease.
A tracing agent such as Find UK People® can locate and trace people to a current address in just 24 hours and work on a no trace no fee basis which minimizes the financial risk of instructing them to locate your missing relative or friend.
