Data aggregators
There are sites that exist on the web which act as a sort of a search engine for people. These sites search only selected web pages or “scrape” the web for the name as a keyword phrase. Many of these “aggregate and organize” sites use public records sites as well. All of the information the site finds is aggregated into a single results page for that particular name. These sites have a large focus on social network sites, online directories, and sites where users have deliberately submitted their name and information. These sites include the likes of Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, FourSquare, Twitter, and YouTube.
Through the use of a few algorithms, an array of public data can be amassed from numerous public domains. This may not always be entirely accurate, but it has the advantage of presenting a third-party perspective, which can be valuable for people-research purposes.
These sites can now distinguish an online identity through phone numbers, email addresses, and URLs and then pair it to an isolated search query.
