A lot of great info here! I'll add a few of my own faves. All sites are accessible free of charge, including searches:
I love ZabaSearch! Long live!
SearchSystems is now a subscription-based service.
Few - if any - of their searches remain free as of about 2 years ago. They were awful nifty and useful until they went that way. Now I tend to do my searching the long and messy way, but I generally get what I'm after.
I personally like SearchBug (
http://www.searchbug.com/) for locating instances of public records, getting names of individuals affiliated with a subject (family members, roommates, spouses), and performing reverse telephone and address searches.
SearchBug also does a couple of other nice things. It can tell you if a phone number is a land line or a cell and who the service provider is. It also allows you to send text messages to a whole roster of cell service providers. You can get satellite maps and images, verify social security numbers and track down IP addresses to their geographical point of origin. All very handy stuff.
Missing Money (
http://www.missingmoney.com) is a great way to find out if you have money being held for you somewhere that you might not have otherwise known about. It can also be useful for locating people and institutions with which a subject has had financial/business dealings. Most states are searchable through the site, and those that aren't have links to their respective state controllers' offices.
The Better Business Bureau (
http://search.bbb.org) has a searchable online database, and often has information on companies who aren't members of the BBB.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has a page on their site (
http://www.arrl.org/fcc/fcclook.php3) that is darn handy if you're trying to locate someone who is a licensed amateur radio operator. If someone in traffic ever pisses you off who is silly enough to have call sign vanity plates, you can track them down without having to go through the state's motor vehicle department.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a searchable database of licensed pilots at
http://faa.gov/pilots/lic_cert/.
The United States Tax Court has a searchable docket database at
http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/UstcDockInq/asp/SearchPartyOptions.asp.
Business permits can often be located by Googling the county name and state + Uniform Commerical Code (UCC). Many, if not most counties make UCC filings available to the public online, free of charge, but often you have to do a little digging to locate the site you're looking for.
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) maintains a very useful list of links to courts by state (
http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html). There are also links to Federal and Tribal courts, located near the top of the page.
Happy Searching!
