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Avoiding the Investigative Rabbit Hole
It’s pretty commonplace for investigators to get stuck going down a rabbit hole into a vortex, which sucks you into a dark place that renders you nearly powerless. One thing leads you to another to...
View Article101 Investigative Links for Digging Up Information on People (2019)
This post was originally posted on March 27, 2014, but was updated on May 3, 2019 with new information. As private investigators, it’s safe to say that we use thousands of online websites and...
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Intelius vs. Spokeo vs. BeenVerified — A Private Investigator’s Review
I frequently get asked about commercially available investigative databases such as Intelius, Spokeo, and BeenVerified. The truth is that I have never used them, so I could never really give an...
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TLO vs. IRB vs. IDI – Which Provides the Best Phone Number Information?
Telephone numbers and address information are the lifeblood of private investigators. Getting in touch with people either by phone or in person is absolutely essential to any private investigator,...
View Article10 Challenges When Trying to Locate People
In 2019, one would think it would be pretty easy to locate people with the plethora of information available on the Internet. And generally it is, as we found in our recent review of some commercially...
View ArticleReflecting on the 10 Years Since I Started My Business
Ten years ago this month, I was about to take the biggest risk of my life: starting my own business. And I was doing so with a mix of excitement and exhilaration, along with a healthy dose of fear and...
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Finding Someone When You Are Unsure of the Spelling of Their Name
This week, we received a pretty routine request from a client: track down the address and phone number of a former employee of a company. The client wanted to interview this person in relation to an...
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5 Lessons from Corporate Investigations Gone Bad
This has been a bad couple of weeks for private investigators. First, there was the story of Credit Suisse, which hired private investigators to follow a former top executive whom the bank thought was...
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Ronan Farrow Exposes the Dark Underbelly of Private Investigators
This week, Ronan Farrow, the investigative reporter, published a three-part series (read Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here) on the Israel-based “intelligence firm” Black Cube, whom Farrow...
View ArticleHow One NFL Player Showed How Our Memory Is So Biased
Last week, the San Francisco 49ers played the Cleveland Browns in Monday Night Football. It was a pretty unremarkable game (the 49ers won 31 to 3). But what happened after the game was more...
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Public Service Announcement for Fellow Private Investigators
Private investigator Scott Ross called me a few months back and relayed a story about a Florida investigator whom he had spoken with a few years ago. Scott is a nationally renowned expert on cell...
View ArticleAdvice for High School Seniors from a Private Investigator Who Nearly Failed...
For the past three years, around this time of year, I’ve been visiting Putnam Valley High School to speak in front of a class of seniors. The class is run by Bob Baker, whom I’ve known since I was 9...
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27 Signs You are Dealing with A Shady Character (in GIFs)
1Someone who seems too good to be true 2People who have absolutely no social network profiles (it’s 2019 people!) 3Insecure people 4People who describe himself or herself as “the only person to …” or...
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Guide to Search Civil Court Cases Like an Pro
In this post, we are going to discuss how to search court records, specifically relating to civil lawsuits. (If you are interested in reading more about how to conduct a criminal background check like...
View Article24 Observations, Takeaways, Quotes and Tools from OSMOSIS 2019
For the second year in a row, I attended the OSMOSIS Conference for open source intelligence professionals (you can read last years OSMOSIS review here). I go into these conferences with a pretty open...
View Article10 Most Popular Blog Posts of the DECADE
Blogging and social media have been a very important part of expanding our footprint and growing our business. We have been blessed with a strong online following, especially in the PI community....
View Article12 Most Personally Impactful Blog Posts of the Decade
It’s the end of the decade, a decade that has pretty much coincided with the founding of my business in August 2009 and the start of my blogging career, with our first post being published in...
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Open Source Training with Henk Van Ess
Henk van Ess has been on my radar for the past few years. He’s a former investigative journalist who’s morphed himself into a social media investigative guru. He’s done work with a bunch of major...
View ArticlePrivate Investigator Tips to Find a Long-Lost Friend or Relative
In the era of the internet, finding a long-lost friend or relative often can be done easily and at a low cost. But to locate people who are flying under the digital radar, you may need to use some...
View ArticleAfter the Pandemic: The One Thing Private Investigators Must Do
Spoiler alert: Adapt. But before I ponder the future, I want to share some history. During my nearly 20 years as a private investigator, I’ve ridden several waves of business. Your mileage may vary....
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