Guides
How to find and verify people using nothing but public information. Each guide is written to be useful whether or not you ever run a search here.
Who called me? How to identify an unknown number
A practical, step-by-step way to work out who is behind an unknown number — what the area code does and doesn't tell you, and when to stop and block.
Updated 7 min read
How to find someone's social media profiles
How to go from a name, username, or email to the public profiles that actually belong to the same person — and how to tell a real match from a coincidence.
Updated 8 min read
Is reverse phone lookup legal?
What public-records search is and isn't allowed to be used for, why the FCRA line matters, and the decisions you must never make with a lookup result.
Updated 6 min read
How to verify someone is real before you meet them
A checklist for confirming an online contact is who they say they are, using only public information — and the warning signs worth walking away from.
Updated 9 min read
How to find out who owns an email address
What an email address reveals about its owner, how to read the parts of one, and how to check whether a message really came from who it claims.
Updated 7 min read
How to remove your personal information from people-search sites
How to get yourself removed — starting with us — what California's DROP now forces data brokers to do, and why removal is maintenance, not a one-time fix.
Updated 7 min read
What 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877 and 888 numbers actually mean
The seven toll-free codes, why newer ones feel less trustworthy than they are, and why the prefix tells you nothing about who is calling.
Updated 5 min read
Romance scam warning signs, and what to do next
The structure nearly every romance scam follows, the investment variant that never asks for a favour, and the exact order to act in if you're in one.
Updated 7 min read
How to spot a fake or stolen profile photo
Stolen, stock, or AI-generated — how each fails differently, what reverse image search really does, and the one check that doesn't go out of date.
Updated 6 min read
What a VIN tells you — and what it doesn't
How to read all 17 characters, where to decode one free, and why mileage, accidents and ownership are not in the number at all.
Updated 5 min read
How to work out where a photo was taken
Why photo metadata is usually gone, how to read location from the image itself, and the cases where no honest answer is possible.
Updated 6 min read