Use 123people to find your old friends online

Start by heading to www.123people.com and press Return on the keyboard. The interface for 123people is simple and it is possible to get started straight away by just typing the name of the person into the empty box at the top using a ‘first name/last name’ format and then clicking the search button on the right. To show the results structure, we’ll search for the actor Edward James Olmos.

123people divides the search results into different sections, which makes it easier to analyse them. The section headings are lined along the top: web links, images, videos, social network profiles, email addresses, phone numbers, blogs, documents, Amazon wishlists, instant messages and news. Results are displayed in section ‘pages’ with a number at the bottom and arrow buttons that make it easy to navigate back and forth. Where no results are available in a particular section, 123people marks them clearly.

One way to check a people-finder is to search for yourself. Here we have typed in the name of one of our writers, chosen United Kingdom instead of World from the dropdown menu and then clicked the Search button. When the results come back we can scan through the photos at the top, or click the tabs to choose photos from a specific area of the net –­ for example, Facebook. Clicking on a thumbnail displays a larger version of the picture (yep, that’s him) while clicking the icon on the left opens the site itself.

Click the ‘x’ to close the picture and then scroll down the results list a bit. See the section entitled Amazon? 123people can scour Amazon looking for wishlists created by people whose names match the person we are searching for. Click on the name and the Amazon wish list appears in a new window together –­ if you are lucky they will have included potentially useful information like their birthday and delivery address.

123people also trawls publicly available documents. This can throw up some very interesting finds, such as CVs, covering letters, reports, meeting minutes, interviews and so on. Here for example, we have clicked on the Documents category to jump to that section (this is an alternative to scrolling down) and then clicked on one of the documents. It is actually a PDF stored on a website that contains a Q&A session with the Eagles tribute band our writer plays in, and opens in a new window.