Skip tracing
The professional practice of locating a person who does not want to be found.
In more detail
Originally a debt-collection and bail-bond discipline, skip tracing is now a product category. Brokers sell tools specifically built to find a current address from stale identifiers, and the 'also known as' and 'relatives' fields on people-search sites exist primarily to serve it.
Why it matters to you
Those fields are not incidental — they are the product. Relative-linking is how a skip trace works around a removal, which is why removing one household member rarely achieves much.
What to do
Remove household members together, and remove every name variation separately.
- People-search site
A consumer-facing website that publishes a searchable profile of a named individual.
- Data broker
A company that collects personal information about people it has no relationship with, and sells it.
More terms
- Doxxing
- Pretexting
- SIM swap
- Swatting
- FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act)
- Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA)
- File disclosure
- Expungement
- Record sealing
- Clean Slate law
- Ban the box / fair-chance hiring
- Adverse action notice
- California Delete Act
- DROP (Deletion Request and Opt-out Platform)
Full glossary