During the pre-internet days, researching your family tree involved sifting through stacks of old paper records or microfiche in dusty library archives. But nowadays, anyone with a computer and internet connection can visit a genealogy website and quickly trace their family tree back many generations.

As a private investigator, I’ve used genealogy websites a number of times to help develop a profile on the subject of an investigation. They can be particularly helpful in missing persons cases because they can provide a list of family relatives, including siblings and parents, and dates of birth for both the subjects and their relatives.

For example, a missing persons case might be to find a John Smith who was born in NY state, is in his 50’s and has a sister whose married name is Susan Miller. Without a critical personal identifier like a Social Security number or date of birth, finding information about the correct John Smith might be very difficult since there are likely many John Smith’s fitting that description.

Using a genealogy site, you could research Smith families from NY with siblings John and Susan in the correct age range. Susan’s married name Miller should help you find the correct John Smith and his date of birth. This will give you the critical personal identifier you need to do more detailed research. Best of all, most of the information on genealogy sites is very inexpensive, if not free, to access.

A few of the more popular and useful genealogy sites are:
Genealogy.com
Ancestry.com
FamilySearch.org

BirthDatabase.com – Database of 120 million official government birth records with date of birth and place of birth by subject name.

Social Security Death Index (SSDI) – Database of birth dates, death dates and last known residence for millions of deceased individuals with United States social security numbers whose deaths were reported to the United States Social Security Administration. Birth years for the individuals listed range from 1875 to last year.

SSN Validator – Tool that instantly identifies valid and invalid social security numbers by verifying whether a number has been issued, the state in which the number was issued, and if the number was reported as belonging to a deceased person.