Finding A Needle In A Digital Haystack: The Art And Science Of Skip Tracing

When you think about the sheer volume of information that you can find about the average person online, you might assume that it’s difficult to truly “disappear.” However, you should never underestimate the perseverance of those who do not wish to be found. Regardless of the reason, many people are actively trying to disappear online – and they’ll go to enormous lengths to successfully do it.

Making sense of that particular puzzle represents the daily grind of a skip tracing professional. These are hardworking men and women who locate those who do not wish to be found, often reuniting creditors with the debtors who seem to have vanished overnight. If skip tracing sounds a bit like finding a needle in a (digital) haystack, that’s because it often feels that way. But it’s every bit as much an art as it is a science for several reasons, all of which are worth a closer look.

Skip Tracing: The Tools of the Trade

For many years, public record databases have been a big part of the toolbox of any skip tracing professional. Certain types of documents—like those about past or active court cases—are very difficult to truly “hide” from. Skip tracers look over court documents, car registrations, and even voter registrations—all in the name of trying to figure out where someone is based on where they likely were.

But thanks to the rate at which technology continues to advance, the types of “databases” that skip tracers can draw information from are constantly changing. Social media platforms can tell you who someone is friends with and who they’ve recently interacted with. If you know how to use more advanced search techniques on a site like Google, you may uncover someone’s personal website or an online profile you didn’t know existed. Even reverse phone lookup services have changed the game in terms of what is possible and how quickly you can accomplish it.

As the volume of information that skip tracers work with has changed, many find success in combining cutting-edge technologies with old-school detective work. This has proven to be a great match in terms of finding hidden clues to navigate the murky online world someone might be attempting to hide in.

For the sake of example, say you were looking for a person, and you happened to find their personal Facebook profile. It is short on actionable information, but it does lead you to the profile of someone they know who is much more open. If you do enough digging, you may even find their phone number.

A skip tracer would either call them directly to see if they can help get into contact with the target or use a reverse phone lookup service to find out more information about their address and other contact details. This would then help the skip tracer determine a more precise geographic area that they should be focusing their efforts on.

The Intrigue of Skip Tracing

Again, even in the digital realm, there’s no hiding from a skilled investigator. Think about the fact that most people take photos these days with a smartphone. That smartphone contains a GPS chip—that’s how you’re able to use apps like Waze to get turn-by-turn directions to a destination.

As a byproduct of that, the GPS chip adds precise location metadata to any photo you take unless you expressly turn it off – which most people don’t do. If the target takes a photo and uploads it to Facebook, a skilled investigator might be able to download it, read that location metadata, and see exactly where it was taken.

Of course, these have been mostly straightforward examples of what it is possible to do with the power of modern technology by your side. There’s nothing stopping anyone from scouring over someone’s Facebook profile to get a sense of their whereabouts – it doesn’t take a seasoned skip tracer to do that.

Data mining and analysis tools, on the other hand, are a bit more sophisticated. Based on the sheer volume of data you collect, these tools can help you identify trends and patterns that you may otherwise have missed. They can even use past location data to predict where someone might be headed with an accuracy far greater than a human might be able to on their own.

There is also a wide range of digital forensics tools that professional skip tracers often employ. Data can be recovered and analyzed from virtually any source, such as smartphones or other types of electronic devices.

This is all that is meant by saying that skip tracing is a bit like finding a needle in a digital haystack. Not only could the person you’re trying to find be virtually anywhere but there are also so many techniques you can use to begin your search. But soon enough, little by little, you do begin to chip away at the facade they’ve constructed for themselves. At that point, you begin to realize that finding them is truly only a matter of “when,” not “if.” From that point of view, the digital skip tracer and the old-school detective do have a lot in common.

In the end, skip tracing is about a lot more than using modern technology to locate those who have “skipped town” (no pun intended). It’s primarily following a trail of clutches that will help people solve a mystery—one that just happens to be taking place primarily in the digital world.

Yes, sometimes that involves a debt collector trying to find someone who is going to great lengths to avoid paying that which they rightfully owe. But it’s also about shining a light into the digital shadows. It’s used in real estate, in the legal profession, and more – and it’s a technique that is only going to get more powerful as technology continues to advance over the next decade and beyond.