Online Investigation: Basic Tips for Finding Facts and
People in Cyberspace

By Kirk Chocholek

Urban & Burt, Ltd.

The information age has revolutionized the legal industry offering attorneys and firms unprecedented access to public information through the internet. One can now find information about individuals, companies, and organizations relatively quickly with the assistance of search engines and other online resources.

Not all public information on the internet, however, comes from public records. Information can become public simply by posting a résumé online, discussing oneself in an online forum or by various other means. Public records can be created when one files for divorce, purchases a house, or files for bankruptcy. Whether or not you intended to make certain information about yourself accessible to the public, in the internet age, there is a good chance that such information is easily available to the web savvy researcher. Even more surprising is the information that one can find these days by simply using a major search engine and typing in a name. For all practical purposes, however, the internet has changed the privacy equation while simultaneously giving attorneys a powerful cost effective tool for conducting online research.

This article will primarily cover online resources that may be helpful to attorneys conducting personal injury related investigations or background checks. Please note that even when information is made available to the public on the internet, there might be restrictions on how the information is used. Researchers who investigate people or businesses should, therefore, be familiar with the permissible uses and exceptions of any such restrictions. Moreover, it is important to verify discovered information with other reliable sources.

Finding People on the Internet

Personal injury attorneys frequently find themselves in the need of locating a potential witness, defendant, or even a client that has recently moved without telling them. Too often phone numbers for parties related to cases become invalid due to the passage of time, unpaid phone bills, or switching cell phone carriers. Fortunately, the internet provides a number of resources for the web savvy lawyer to locate an individual when needed.

In the United States, however, few names are truly unique. As a result, many people have multiple namesakes scattered in their own state and around the country. If one simply has a first and last name to conduct an online search it can become difficult to find useful data about a particular person online. In order to find an address or phone number for an individual, one will generally need to know the person’s city of residence and full name at a minimum. Having a middle name can help narrow the search substantially.

Of the many resources available, online telephone directories can be one of the most useful ways of locating an individual on the Internet. A good place to start a web search would be switchboard.com. The website offers a useful reverse phone number lookup feature. A reverse phone lookup can be used to find name and address information about a phone number. Moreover, the website’s integrated Intellius powered public records search feature can return useful information about a person. For example, a search of a name will give you information about the person’s age as well as names of potential relatives. For more detailed information, one can buy a specialized report from the Intelius service connected to the site for a nominal fee.

Another excellent website for conducting a people search is located at http://whowhere.lycos.com. The website offers a number of people searching tips and the site can be useful for verifying data against results from other online sources.

Once you have narrowed your people search down to a few promising candidates, seeking additional clues on a social website is often helpful for completing your search. Even a basic profile on a social network can contain information about where the person you are searching is currently working, where they went to high school or college, and even who are their friends. Popular social networks include Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In order to search these sites effectively, however, it is sometimes necessary to create a free account with the particular social network.

Pipl.com is an effective way of searching a variety of social networks all at once. The Pipl search engine will return results covering social network profiles while simultaneously offering links to search results in various public records and publications.

Investigating a Business or Industry

In tort practice, it often becomes necessary to find out who really owns a particular business and what is its corporate structure. In order to do this, there are a number of different investigative routes that can be pursued. Often a good place to start, however, will be the company’s website. To find a website for a company, one can often simply query the company’s name in a major search engine. The results will generally provide you with a link to the company’s website from which you can get the company’s domain name. Important information about a company can often be attained simply by following the “about” or “contact” links on the company’s website.

Additional information about a company can be attained by conducting a domain search on a website like domaintools.com. Simply enter the company’s domain name into the search box and hit enter. Such a search can provide detailed registration information for a website, a related mailing address, info about past versions of a website, and other related information.

Sometimes, however, a company may not have a website. If this is the case, it may be helpful to check the Better Business Bureau at http://search.bbb.org to find background information about a company. One can also query certain state maintained databases of registered businesses to find business ownership information. For example, secstates.com offers a convenient portal for quickly finding links to various Secretary of State websites where corporation and business entity information may be searched.

Numerous other online sources can provide other interesting information about a business or industry. For example, OSHA and the SEC make information available online that the web savvy legal researcher may find useful. In addition, one can find helpful statistical information and other government safety reports on various state or federal operated transportation and labor websites. The University of Michigan’s Statistical Resources Website, available at http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html, can be an excellent place to find links to websites containing various statistical resources.

Various methods exist for finding the owner of a business or other related information. Such methods could be as simple as placing a telephone call to the business itself, contacting its licensing or regulatory agency, or searching various other online sources. The approach you choose depends on how much you want to invest in the search itself and what information you are looking to obtain. The aforementioned sources, however, are generally an easy and cost effective way of starting one’s research.

Finding Information about Injuries, Medical Devices, and Professionals

Tort lawyers often find it necessary to become familiar with medical terminology and the practices of medical professionals. In order to understand a client’s claim of injury or malpractice, time will often need to be invested into learning about a client’s medical condition and circumstances. Fortunately, many resources exist online that can help a lawyer get acquainted with various injuries, medical practices, and terminology rather quickly.

Innerbody.com is an excellent resource for gaining an understanding of the human anatomy. Everything from the skeletal system to the digestive system can be reviewed on the website. The website also provides excellent graphic representations of the various areas of the anatomy you are trying to learn about.

Medicinenet.com offers an online medical dictionary as well as in depth articles on a variety of subjects. One can get a basic understanding of a disease or condition by using the website’s search feature and reading the presented and related articles. The site also provides diagnosis and treatment information for a condition as well as the commonly associated medications. The site can be particularly useful as a starting point for researching an injury or disease that you are not familiar with.

One can also find detailed information about particular Physicians on the internet.

For example, docboard.org/docfinder.html, offers a searchable database of physician licensing information for the participating states as well as links to where information can be located for non-participating states. In Illinois, one can find detailed physician profile information by searching the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation website at http://www.idfpr.com.

If one is looking for information about medical devices, the website for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health can be an excellent resource (http://www.fda.gov/CDRH/). The website’s MAUDE database, for example, consists of voluntary reports of adverse events concerning medical devices. The website also has a database tracking various Recalls of Medical Devices.

Conclusion

An entire book could be written on the subject of using the internet for pretrial preparations, skip tracing, and case investigations. It is important to note, however, that online information can be erroneous, and that verifying information online can be a difficult process. This is because online resources can get their information from the same initial source. Thus, if two or more of the online sources got their data from the same inaccurate source, it is possible that both sources will be inaccurate. Therefore, online investigation should be approached as a tool to be used when appropriate, and practicing attorneys should be cautious when relying on information attained from an online investigation.