Skip tracing – how it works and why is it important

Think of skip tracing essentially as a service dedicated to protect you or your business interests. A skip trace service in Phoenix can prove useful in multiple situations that require to track down hard-to-find individuals or conduct a background check for verification purposes.

Although it has been commonly associated with bounty hunting, skip tracing’s value extends to many other situations. Cases where there is a legitimate need to locate someone include searching for people with unpaid debt or fleeing legal action, witnesses in legal cases or even long-lost friends or relatives – in those cases, the services of a private investigator with extensive experience and skills in skip tracing are required.

Skip tracing is an entirely legal process and plays a role in numerous business and professional activities in industries including financial, debt collection, legal and real estate.

What does skip tracing involve?

Information is at the core of all skip-tracing searches. Skip tracing involves collecting, verifying and using historical and current data for insights into the movements of an individual to help discover their current location.

As a starting point, a skip tracer may use readily-available data such as a person’s former addresses, their previous workplaces and other contact information to follow patterns and changes. People search databases are often used to gather such primary contact information as they are storehouses for residential addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

In addition to contact information and location data, information that a skip researcher may also find useful includes property title deeds, credit reports, utility bills, public tax records, criminal background, job applications and legal history, and court records. Social media accounts, too, can offer a wealth of information a skip tracer can use.

Who can use skip tracing services?

Skip trace searches play an indispensable role in a great number of industries. Professional skip tracers are often hired by professionals in the following fields:

  • Debt collectors
  • Real estate agencies
  • Repossession companies
  • Legal professionals
  • Law enforcement agencies
  • Genealogists
  • Employment and property rental agencies for verification purposes
  • Insurance fraud investigators

Why is it important to use professional skip tracing services?

Are professional skip search services worth the cost or should you conduct a do-it-yourself skip search? Locating hard-to-find persons is fairly cumbersome. The process involves much more than carrying out a web search.

A skip tracer will often have to go through swathes of data and perform the art of social engineering, which is a way of engaging with others who may be able to provide information that is useful in the search process.

As with many other specialized services, success in skip tracing services depends heavily on the expertise and skills that only a professional would possess.

Access to as many databases as possible to mine information is a key factor in each skip trace search. A private investigator is a professional with the pertinent experience and abilities to obtain information from unique sources that are not easily accessed by the general public. This is why a private investigator with skip-tracing expertise is your best chance to get the results you want.

The skip trace process is also governed by legal parameters, and professional skip tracers know what is permissible and what is not. Ignoring these parameters involves the risk of falling into the trap of “invasion of privacy.”

Why use Cutty & Associates for professional skip tracing

Trust your skip tracing needs to our skip tracing experts at Cutty & Associates. We have amassed an impressive 20 years’ worth of valuable experience in recovery services, and our skip trace experts have built a reputation for being discrete and efficient. To find out more about what we do, give one of our recovery specialists a call today.