Skip Tracer — Address History & Relatives Finder 🔍

Look up anyone by name, phone, email, or address and get their address history, known relatives, name variants and location — from public people-search records.

Why Skip Tracing?

Skip tracing means locating someone (or confirming who they are) for legitimate purposes: debt recovery, serving legal documents, reconnecting with people, or verifying an identity. Doing it by hand across scattered public directories is slow. This actor automates the lookup and returns a clean, structured record per person.

What You Get

Each matched person record includes:

Field	Description
matched_name	Full name and name variants as found in public records
addresses	Current + full historical address list (city, state, ZIP)
current_address	Best-supported current address
relatives	Known family members / associated people
confidence	Overall match confidence (0–1 scale)
match_quality	Tier: "high" (≥0.75), "medium" (≥0.45), or "low"
phones / emails	Included when publicly available (see coverage note below)
sources	Which sources corroborated this record

Zero matches above your confidence threshold are never billed — you only pay for actual results returned.

Data coverage — read this

This actor reads public, free people-search listings. Be aware of what that means in practice:

• Always returned: name (+ variants), full address history, relatives, city/state, and identity confirmation. This is the actor's core strength — great for confirming who someone is, where they've lived, and who they're connected to.
• Phone numbers and emails: returned only when a source exposes them in full. Many public listings partially mask phone/email behind a paywall; the actor deliberately drops masked/incomplete values rather than return junk. Do not buy this actor expecting a guaranteed phone number for every lookup.

If your use case is address history, relatives and identity verification, this actor is a strong fit. If you strictly need a guaranteed phone number every time, it may not be.

Sources

Public, login-free people-search databases (no API keys required):

• ThatsThem — primary source; name / phone / email / address reverse lookups → address history, relatives, name variants.
• TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch — additional coverage where reachable (these are heavily bot-protected and may not respond on every run).

The actor automatically picks the right source(s) for each search mode to avoid wasted queries.

Use Cases

• Debt recovery & collections — Find contact info for debtors
• Missing persons investigations — Locate individuals
• Background verification — Cross-check identity & contact data
• CRM list cleaning — Verify or enrich customer records with phone/email
• Fraud detection — Validate identities in bulk
• Due diligence — Research individuals in business transactions
• Skip tracing services — Resell as a white-label API

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
search_mode	string	"name"	Search by "name", "phone", "email", or "address"
full_name	string	—	Person's full name (required for name mode)
city	string	—	City (optional, improves accuracy)
state	string	—	2-letter US state code (recommended for name mode)
phone	string	—	Phone number (required for phone mode)
email	string	—	Email address (required for email mode)
street_address	string	—	Full address (required for address mode)
zip	string	—	ZIP code (optional, helps pinpoint)
queries	array	[]	Batch array of query objects (overrides single query above)
max_results_per_query	integer	3	Max people to return per query (1–10)
min_confidence	number	0.35	Drop results below this confidence (0–1)
include_relatives	boolean	true	Include family members in output
include_address_history	boolean	true	Include previous addresses
request_timeout_secs	integer	20	HTTP timeout in seconds

Single Query Example

{
  "search_mode": "name",
  "full_name": "John Smith",
  "state": "NY",
  "min_confidence": 0.5,
  "max_results_per_query": 3
}

Batch Query Example

{
  "queries": [
    {
      "search_mode": "phone",
      "phone": "5551234567"
    },
    {
      "search_mode": "email",
      "email": "john.smith@example.com"
    },
    {
      "search_mode": "name",
      "full_name": "Jane Doe",
      "state": "CA"
    }
  ],
  "min_confidence": 0.35,
  "max_results_per_query": 5
}

Output

Each record in the dataset represents one matched person:

{
  "matched_name": "John W. Smith",
  "confidence": 0.9,
  "match_quality": "high",
  "current_address": "W Sample Rd, Coral Springs, FL 33065",
  "addresses": [
    {"address": "W Sample Rd, Coral Springs, FL 33065", "confidence": 0.3},
    {"address": "NW 70th Way, Parkland, FL 33067", "confidence": 0.3},
    {"address": "Union Blvd, Lakewood, CO 80228", "confidence": 0.3}
  ],
  "relatives": ["Jason Smith", "Joy Smith McCourt"],
  "phones": [],
  "emails": [],
  "sources": ["thatsthem"],
  "query": {
    "search_mode": "name",
    "search_input": {"full_name": "John Smith", "state": "FL"}
  }
}

(Real example output. phones/emails are empty here because the source masked them — see the Data coverage note above.)

Pricing

$0.005 per matched person record returned.

Example costs:

• 1 name search returning 3 matches = $0.015
• 100 lookups returning 60 matches = $0.30

Queries with zero matches above your confidence threshold = $0.00 (you are never charged for failed searches).

Tips

Scheduling: This actor is designed for batch/scheduled runs (hourly, daily, weekly) rather than real-time individual lookups. Use batch queries array for list-cleaning jobs to reduce run overhead.

Accuracy vs. speed: Stricter min_confidence (e.g., 0.6–0.75) returns fewer but more reliable matches; looser thresholds (e.g., 0.3–0.5) return more candidates but with lower certainty.

Search mode choice:

• Name mode works best with state (US addresses are state-specific) — returns address history + relatives.
• Phone / email mode — reverse lookup: give a number or address and identify the person + their address history.
• Address mode returns everyone associated with an address (residents, family, prior occupants).

Batch sizes: For large list-cleaning jobs, submit 100–500 queries per run and schedule multiple runs to stay within rate limits.

Coverage: The underlying data is US-centric (public records aggregated from US databases). International queries may return no results.

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This actor aggregates publicly available information from third-party people-search sites (TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch, ThatsThem) for informational and skip-tracing purposes only. It is not a consumer reporting agency and its output must not be used, in whole or in part, to determine eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, tenant screening, or any other purpose covered by the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or similar regulations elsewhere. No geographic restriction is enforced on input, but coverage is strongest for U.S. persons and addresses because that is structurally where public-record aggregation exists — you are solely responsible for ensuring your use complies with all applicable laws in your jurisdiction (FCRA, GDPR, state data-broker laws, etc.). Use at your own risk and discretion.