Welcome to Evil Week, our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy hacks we’d usually refrain from recommending. Want to weasel your way into free drinks, play elaborate mind games, or, er, launder some money? We’ve got all the info you need to be successfully unsavory.
You can learn so much about someone on the internet. Once something goes online, it’s virtually impossible to remove it (and overzealous attempts to bury something online can even lead to the “Streisand effect,” actually bringing more attention to it).
Yes, the internet can bite you in the ass if you’re not careful, but it can also be a powerful tool you can wield against others. We’ve already told you how to find anyone on the internet. Now, here are some other things you can find out about anyone using the internet—often without paying a dime.
“People Search Engines” know a lot
“People search engines” are websites that do what the name suggests—think Google, but for people. These sites aggregate public information from various sources and put it into a nice package for you. Some of it they will show you for free, and some of it will cost you money. But generally, these sites build detailed profiles of everyone. Unless they’ve gone to some lengths to scrub it (perhaps by paying for a service like DeleteMe), it might include information ranging from current and past addresses and phone numbers to the names of their family members and more.
Most of these websites are the public face of data broker companies that collect information from and about people in questionable ways, and with the intention of selling it to individuals or businesses. But you can also find out a lot from more ethical websites like public records databases that compile public record information or background check services that landlords, employers, and individuals can use to verify someone’s information.
Here are some free and popular websites you can use to find public information about almost anyone:
Using Spokeo, for example, you can input a name, phone number, email, or address and find a lot of linked information, including gender, age, family members, marital status, education, and more. Even basic contact information can open a lot of doors.
Discover their political affiliation
Voting is secret. But political party affiliation is not. You can find out what political party someone belongs to, whether their voter status is active or not, as well as their voter district information, like what their election, senate, or congressional district is—all online. Every state will have its own voter search website, but they are easy to find since it’s all public information.
For example, if you want to find this information about someone from New York, you can use the NY State Board of Elections’ tracker. You’ll just need their full name, date of birth, zip code, and county of residence—all of which you can find in the public information section above. (This tool will also give you their full address.) For more basic political affiliation information, you can look up their FEC filing. Try it before your next Match.com date!
Find out who they’ve donated to
If you’re looking for information about someone’s political activism, you can find records on who they have donated money to. One way to do this is with Opensecrets.org, a nonprofit organization that tracks the effects money has on American politics. They offer research tools for many specific searches, including “Donor Lookup.” With just someone’s name, you can find Federal Election Commission records for contributions of at least $200. There are also similar databases for local states if you want to get more intense with your search.
Find out what properties they own (and what they paid)
You can find out what real estate someone owns by going to their city’s finance department website. This can tell you information like when someone bought or sold a property, for how much, the number of rooms the property includes, the address, the property tax information, and who the seller was. You can even view document images. Again, this will vary by city, but if you do your local research, you can likely even find out how big their mortgage is (and if they are current on their payments).
To look up someone from New York City, you would use the ACRIS database tool from the NYC Department of Finance website: Go to the ACRIS search tool and select how you would like to look up their real estate information. (The easiest way is to look it up by their full name.)