PeopleFinders offers free Sex Offender search.
Lately we’ve been finding more People Search Engines than we know what to do with! (PeekYou, Wink, yoName, Spock, ZabaSearch, pipl, Whozat?, ex.plore.us, Zoominfo, Ziki, and RapLeaf - just to name a few!).
Of course they’re all just a little bit different, which is why we’ve been trying to present them to you as best we can. One of the key details is that some searches are free, and some you have to pay for.
PeopleFinders is very clear regarding the types of searches that they perform, what that type of search involves, and how much it costs.
But this post is not trying to sell you on any of their services. We will leave that to you. What I do want to point out is their new free service, searching for sex offenders in your (or any other) area. Is it really free? Does it really work? Well, as usual, I gave it try so that you could see for yourself. This is what PeopleFinders does for you:
Sex Offender Search
One of the most important measures that you can take to protect yourself and your family is to know the locations of convicted sex offenders in your neighborhood. Sex Offender Searches give you not only the addresses of these registered offenders but also their physical descriptions, age, risk level and conviction information. Perform a Sex Offender Search today to know exactly who is in your neighborhood.
So, I asked PeopleFinders if there were any registered sex offenders in nice, safe Charlottesville, Virginia USA. There are 49! (A large report like that is not free.)
When I saw that, I searched for my neighborhood, which is in the peaceful countryside south of Charlottesville. This was free, and the map has an “x” just up the way from where we live. It’s also near the Little League field that author John Grisham built. (The offender was charged with carnal knowledge of a child 13-15 years old.)
Think about it. What if you saw this guy hanging around the ball field where your 13 year old was playing softball? Would you at least want to have this information?
Or how about this one? Would you like to have this map of registered sex offenders before you put a deposit on a house in that neighborhood? Maybe not, but it is easily available, and this map was free, too. (I entered my best friend’s address!)
Below are the paid services that PeopleFinders offers as well. I did not purchase any of their paid products, but my name certainly came up (no, not as a sex offender!) in case you want to buy one. I think PeopleFinders is providing a very valuable service.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:34 am
where does peoplefinders get this kind of information like ‘who is a sex offender’? Does they get it from the police database or something like that? If a social search engine can take advantage of police database or other governmental information, that is completely another story.
there might be a ethical problem. like ‘one an offender, always an offender’. of course i would like to know how dangerous my neighborhood is. But these offenders, they’ve made mistakes,should they be given another chance? No one want to bear that mark forever, does it?
September 17th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Hi Charles!
Thanks for mentioning Ziki! Ziki is growing fast and, as you write, people search is only our core service. We bring out new functionalities nearly every week in order to satisfy the growing number of Ziki users.
As an example, we recently launched a VCard export service which allows you to export all your networks personal data as a VCard file or a feature enabling you to monetise your content through Ziki.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:02 am
[...] meiner lieblings Informationsquellen altsearchengines.com berichtet über einen kostenlosen Service von PeopleFinders. Die Suchmaschine bietet seinen [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 10:47 am
[...] PeopleFinders offers free Sex Offender search - AltSearchEngines [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] September 14th, we ran a post about the search engine PeopleFinders entitled, PeopleFinders offers free Sex Offenders search. It was a very serious application of a Real Estate type search to determine if an offender lived [...]