Genealogy | Ancestry | Find People

The Social Security Trace is a very effective search used to locate a missing person. It requires that you have the social security number which is used as the input information. This search is actually the top portion of a credit bureau file containing the name and address information. The reason it is the most effective search is because address updates often end up in this database without people realizing that various activity will trigger new address information input into credit bureaus. These reasons could include:

• Extension of credit
• as a direct result of filling out an employment application
• As a direct result of filling out an application to rent an apartment.
• AS a direct result of a loan company or bank attempting to collect a debt (they skip traced the
• subject, located the subject and provided the new address to a credit bureau network)
• As a direct result of applying for insurance.
• As a direct result of applying for various utilities such as water, gas or electric (Many utility companies are now running credit bureaus to determine user deposits).
• As a direct result of an investigator or other professional using the National Identifier as a trace on the subject to either obtain the SSN number or verify identity information

It’s important to realize that there are about 200 million credit bureau files that are consistently being instantly updated by hundreds of thousands of input updates weekly.

Social Security Tracing is unregulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act which means that it is not a restricted search and does not require permissible purposes under the federal law. However, some state laws have superceded federal law. In a few state such as California, a Social Security Trace requires that a notification footer be created every time a Social Security Trace is run. What that means is that a record is kept on the bottom portion of the credit bureau file of the company running the SSN Trace.

One of the added features of an SSN tace is the fact that you’ll obtain other information that can be helpful.

1) Death Claims Notification
All the credit bureaus subscribe to the Social Security Administration’s National Death Claims Index. This is a database of people who have filed claims on an SSN number for death benefits. The original purpose of this extra feature is to insure against credit fraud by using a dead person’s SSN number.

2) Multiple Social Security Numbers
When investigators run an SSN Trace on various types of people who are under investigation, they soon notice that many of these people are using more than one SSN number. Sometimes this is a clerical error on the part of people who input information to credit bureaus. More often, however, this is a result of the subject attempting to use a secondary SSN number to cover his trails. Nine times out of ten, this is instantly spotted and tagged with the subject’s other file.

A missing person could be anywhere and thus the searches should be nation wide. There are many internet based services offering national people trace searches at fair prices. Don’t have a social security number? Then get a birthdate trace using just the person’s name and date of birth