Professional skip tracers have skills and experience that can improve their odds of finding someone. Those whose job duties only occasionally include skip tracing may find it a tougher assignment. Whichever camp you’re in, upgrading the tools at your disposal goes a long way to improving your odds.
Let’s take a brief look at the state of skip tracing, and how Spokeo’s powerful people search tools can help you streamline your tracing process.
Skip-Tracing Basics
Skip tracing is a simple concept at its most basic level: you want to find someone, and the contact information you have on file is no longer valid. As long as the tracer has a legitimate purpose for doing so – and debt collection is a legitimate purpose – and doesn’t break any laws along the way, it’s completely legal and above-board.
Some skip traces are more complex than others, depending on the situation. A debtor who’s simply moved, and absent-mindedly forgotten to provide a new address to a creditor or two, is relatively easy to find. A debtor who has consciously decided to evade contact from creditors is a more challenging prospect.
In a given scenario, the skip tracer may be in search of:
- A new physical address for communication and process service.
- New points of contact for the subject, such as phone numbers and emails.
- The location of collateral associated with the debt.
- Finding associates of the debtor, and current contact information for them.
- The debtor’s employment status and place of employment.
- Locational or other insights that could lead to the above.
The question is how that information can be sourced in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Public Data is a Rich Resource
There is a well-established handful of data providers serving the skip tracing industry with personal data, usually gleaned from the vendor’s partnerships within the financial sector. Those remain a powerful resource, but within the past several years the rise of open-source intelligence (OSINT) has opened up a new avenue for skip tracing.
OSINT, simply stated, consists of information about private individuals that’s available through public sources. It is a rich resource for skip tracers, and sometimes even a simple Google search can turn up useful leads. Social media intelligence (SOCINT) represents an especially valuable subset of OSINT: diligent social media research can often turn up information about the debtor, or about family members or other associates who may in turn enable a successful skip trace.
Government websites are another powerful OSINT tool, with a surprising amount of information available at every level from counties and municipalities to state and federal agencies. Not all of it is searchable or easily accessible, and some – especially at the county and municipal level – may still require an old-school in-person search, but the information is there.
Data procured from traditional, credit bureau-derived sources is regulated by law, because of how the information is collected and its inclusion of such personally identifiable information as birth dates and SSNs. Integrating both regulated and open-source data holds tremendous promise for skip tracing, but can be logistically challenging and poses potential compliance issues.
Advanced People Search for Regulated Skip Tracing
Consumer behavior continues to change: it has become progressively easier for debtors to avoid contact with creditors, through tactics such as relying on hard-to-track gig work and off-the-books cash jobs for income. By using a broader set of data – both public and regulated – from new and emerging sources, you will have a better chance of picking up signals that will lead to debtor engagement. Spokeo for Business provides that capability, drawing on both regulated and open-source data within a single unified platform with a simple, intuitive interface.
The advanced people search tools available through Spokeo for Business can speed your research dramatically by aggregating and sifting this data for you, presenting you with actionable intelligence in just seconds. Among other powerful advantages, Spokeo for Business:
- Doesn’t simply list phone numbers and email addresses, but identifies the ones your target is likely using at present.
- Helps find extended connections you might otherwise miss due to siloed data sources.
- Provides you with the freshest social media data available, as opposed to whenever your vendor’s traditional database was last updated.
- Gives you a broader, deeper dive into your target’s social media and online activity, scouring over 120 platforms for accounts that trace back to them (even if they’re using a pseudonym).
- Provides a robust set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) so you can integrate Spokeo’s powerful search and reporting features with your existing software tools.
Let’s look at how you can leverage its power in the real world.
Using Spokeo for Business in Skip Tracing
New technology often feels like “a solution looking for a problem,” but skip tracing comes ready-furnished with plenty of problems that can be addressed with Spokeo for Business. This holds true whether skip tracing is your primary business, or a subset of your duties in another industry.
Locating the Unbanked and Under-Banked
Many skips are among the country’s lowest earners; those who can’t access the mainstream credit-reporting system and may not use formal banking services. Instead their business goes to non-bank lenders, rent-to-own operators, and similar enterprises. In 2021 the FDIC reported that 4.5 percent of the country’s households were unbanked and another 14 percent were underbanked, meaning almost 1 in 5 fall into this hard-to-trace category.
Spokeo’s profiles pull from billions of sources other than financial reporting data, especially social media activity, giving a clearer picture of their lives, locations and connections than you could gain from more-traditional data services. This may also be the most effective path to locating debtors who rely on gig work or cash jobs for their income.
Identifying and Locating Skips Through Surroundings and Possessions
A really difficult skip may not have a permanent home address, or may deliberately keep moving to avoid detection, but a detailed look at their social media presence can yield useful insights. They may own a highly recognizable vehicle, or their photos and posts on social media might contain details that betray their location, or help you recognize which of their contacts they’re staying with.
You could theoretically do this manually, but it’s slower and less comprehensive. Spokeo began as a social media aggregator and still offers one of the most complete social searches available, including platforms you might not have considered. Often you may need to follow up with old-fashioned surveillance in order to make a positive identification, but it puts you in the right spot.
Cost-Effective Batch Skip Tracing
Skip tracing in small numbers (“retail,” if you will) is much different from tracing in volume. Tracing skips in “wholesale” quantities is called batch skip tracing, and it requires a tool robust enough to find data on as many skips as your clients forward to you or as many as your team is capable of processing.
Some data vendors will charge you by the number of searches in your batch, so if you get only 700 “hits” from each 1000 of searches, you’ll still pay for the full thousand. Others charge you only for successful “hits,” which is more cost-effective but makes budgeting more difficult to project. Spokeo’s robust APIs make it possible for you to do those searches on a subscription basis, keeping costs predictable and manageable. Batch processing through the API is currently available only for open-source data, but work is in progress to extend that capability to regulated data soon.
Negotiating With the Skip
Finding the skip isn’t the end of the process, just a means to that end. The actual result may involve negotiating the payment of a debt, the serving of legal papers, or some other outcome that involves interacting with the skip. Those who work purely as skip tracers won’t necessarily have to do this, but those who skip trace as part of their job duties in other fields – the law or debt collection, for example – may also need to bring things to a conclusion.
The FDCPA and other statutes prohibit the use of strong-arm tactics, and in truth they’re often a poor choice anyway. The so-called “soft skills” needed to build empathy and rapport with a skip will often get better results. Spokeo’s profiles give the tracer plenty of scope for learning who the skip is as an individual, and which of their interests can be used to establish common ground. It may not be decisive, but it’s helpful.
Managing Your Team
Whether skip tracing is your primary business or just a tool you need in your primary business, managing that activity effectively is important. Spokeo for Business has a powerful dashboard that streamlines those administrative chores, reducing the reporting overhead for everyone on your team. From the dashboard you can add and remove team members, monitor their searches, view search history, and see saved search results, all in one easy-to-use interface.
Give It a Real-World Test
Every data-search tool sounds good in theory, but in practice may not prove useful in your specific circumstances. The interface may prove clunky, the data unreliable, or key information may simply not be there.
Spokeo for Business is an outlier in its ability to aggregate open-source intelligence, regulated and sensitive data, and especially social media data through a simple, intuitive interface; and to deliver this combination of ease and power cost-effectively. The best way to evaluate its ability to complement or replace your existing tools is by trying it hands-on, through a free 10-day trial.
To arrange a trial or a demonstration of the product, by telephone at (888) 895-5122, or use the Contact form at the bottom of this page.
About Tom Brown
With a career spanning three decades, Thomas C. Brown stands at the intersection of the risk information, FinTech, and RegTech landscapes, specializing in identity centric solutions, including those benefiting collections, investigations, and financial services. Throughout his career, he has covered the entire spectrum of the collections industry, from hands-on collections to providing innovative software, data, analytics, and skip tracing solutions. At Spokeo, he leverages deep industry insights to deliver data-driven solutions, empowering professionals in collections and financial services with unique access to actionable intelligence.
Sources
ISACA: Categorizing and Handling Sensitive Data
US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): 2021 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households
US Federal Trade Commission: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act