I am dating a man who is secretive about his personal affairs. As a
single mother of four children I must be careful. I like him very
much, yet have a feeling he may be married. I am wondering if I can
find out more about him using his email address or other information
that I have (which is very little) I have his name and Town that he
lives in. Thank you.

Hi, Chelsea13,

The amount of public information you'll be able to locate about him
may well vary, according to how accurate the information you have is,
how actively he's trying to conceal it, and so forth.

However, there are steps you can take to track this down, if you
choose. One of the difficulties with your question is that there are a
lot of resources out there, so I've tried to narrow it down to the
most valuable ones.

I should also add that I'm assuming you live in the US. If this is not
the case, please feel free to ask for clarification.

You should probably start your search with free services.

I've tried these solutions with my own name and city in a cursory
attempt to judge the quality and accuracy of the information. Because
I'm generally familiar with my own publicly available information, I
can usually take a good guess as to where the information came from
and how accurate it is.

Because these services often attempt to compile and combine
information from different sources, the quality of the data is not
always reliable. You may want to try several searches in order to
confirm the information you get.

This page provides multiple white pages searches from a single portal:

http://www.whiterpages.com/

A fairly accurate search is available from Lycos WhoWhere? service,
here:

http://whowhere.lycos.com/

Make sure you type your query in up at the top of the page, in the
yellow banner area. Narrow down your search by city by entering the
city and state into the blue area on the left side of the screen. The
"main" section of the page leads to a pay-only service.

Note that the dropdown box in the yellow area lets you search for
telephone numbers, email addresses, and websites relating to the
person's name. However, it appears that the most accurate information
is the telephone number search. This search appears to locate listed
telephone numbers. I wasn't able to locate any of my own email
addresses based on a name search.

Another free service to try is:

http://www.switchboard.com/

Although this search got my city wrong, if you don't have any luck
with the first option, you may want to try give it a shot.

Some other available free searches are available at the following
locations:

http://www.anywho.com/wp

http://bigfoot.whitepages.com/ 

http://wp.superpages.com/people.phtml?SRC=

(Oddly, this search brought up my name and phone number, but listed
the city incorrectly, and included a street address I've never seen
before.)

Once you've located his phone number, you can conduct additional
searches on that, to see if there are additional listings for that
number.

Try this service, which provides multiple reverse directory listings:

http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/

If you have an address now, you can also do a reverse search on
multiple sites from this page:

http://www.reverseaddress.com/

If he's posted to Usenet, you can find his posts by entering his email
address in the search box here:

://www.google.com/grphp?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=

And you can also do basic searches at:

://www.google.com/

on his name (use quotes around it to search on his name as typed), his
email address, and any other information you have.

Other resources:

http://www.anybirthday.com/

This service will attempt to locate the person you're looking for and
provide his birthdate.

At this point, you should have a great deal more information on the
person you're looking for.

Unfortunately, things such as marriage records are only freely
available on a local basis. So, if he is married, his license would be
located in the county he was married in.

To do further searches, based on the information you already have, you
may want to do a paid search. There are quite a few of these
available, but this one seems to be the most comprehensive and
inexpensive of those readily available online:

http://www.1800ussearch.com/

They offer searches starting at around $10, with escalating prices
according to the amount of information provided.

The cheapest search that provides marriage and divorce detail is the
Expert Assisted People Search, for $59.95.

This service will allow you to perform a perfunctory search on his
name and location, at which point you can select his record (the
information returned includes name, city, and approximate age.)

Alternately, if you are only interested in finding out if he's
married, this website offers a report for $25:

http://www.marriagedeterminator.com/

Note that New York records are not included in this search, and you
cannot obtain marriage licenses from New York State unless you are one
of the parties, or have a documented reason.

From this page:

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/vr/forms/marriage.htm

"Who is eligible to obtain a marriage certificate copy?

The bride or groom 
Other persons who have a:

documented judicial or other proper purpose 
New York State Court Order "

Finally, I know you didn't ask for advice, but I can't help it. I'm a
single mother myself, and I realize that it's even more important to
look out for yourself when you have children who depend on you.

If this man is being secretive with you, maybe he's not worth all this
in the first place. If he likes you as much as you like him, he should
understand that you have a lot at stake, and should be willing to tell
you more about himself before you get too involved. And whatever you
do, don't give him more information about yourself than he gives you
about himself.

Good luck, Chelsea, and please, if you'd like more detailed
information on any of this, or if you have any questions, feel free to
ask in a clarification, and I'll see what I can find for you.

SEARCH STRATEGY

"find a person" 
"reverse directory" 
"reverse address"
"marriage records"
"marriage records" "new york"

---

Request for Answer Clarification by chelsea13-ga on 27 Nov 2002 12:27 PST

Hi
Yes. I am and he is (I think) in New Jersey
I am so grateful for your help and advice!  I dont want to overstep or
ask for too much. But I will tell you what I know and hope that you
can help me.
His name, address, home phone, approx date of birth (month and year) -
I have several phone numbers from where he has called. He is a sales
person and travels. I have an email (aol) and a name for Yahoo IM. I
did pay and use US Search. It gave me the address, phone and
neighbors. Nothing else, except for former address and a person at the
former address who was female. But no female listed at the current
address. I hope this is not too much. We get along so well. But after
all these months to not know and feel so uncomfortable? If you can
help me that would be great. IF there is nothing else you can do, I
thank you for everything!  Happy Holidays!

---

Clarification of Answer by lisarea-ga on 28 Nov 2002 08:17 PST

Hi again, Chelsea.

Unfortunately, we're not allowed to provide personal information on
individuals.

My recommendation would be to ask him outright. Explain to him that
you do like him and enjoy his company, you're a little nervous about
the fact that he hasn't told you enough about himself. This is a
perfectly reasonable concern, particularly because you have children.
People just tend to become more cautious once they have children, and
this is perfectly natural.

There are several possibilities at this point:

* He really is hiding something.
* He doesn't really have anything substantial to hide, but is cautious
in his own rite.
* He's not really hiding anything, but your heightened awareness is
making you a little more cautious.

Regardless of the real situation, I don't think much harm could come
of asking him, without being confrontational or accusatory, to tell
you more about himself. If he's too reticent and refuses to share this
with you, he's probably either hiding something, or he doesn't care
enough about your feelings to address your concerns. And either way,
no matter how charming he is, he's not worth your time or effort.

Good luck, and Happy Thanksgiving.