Locating debtors is one of the many challenges debt collectors face. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, skip tracing is the process of locating the whereabouts of a person for any number of reasons. In our particular case, it would be due to outstanding debt.

Often debtors move to a different location which complicates collecting debt. After all, how can you collect when you don’t know where to send the bill? Well fortunately for us there are skip tracing services whose sole mission is to locate individuals, who may have relocated without providing their new address to the collection agency.

How do skip tracers locate people you may ask? Well thanks to:

• Online directories, Phone books, Social Sites and search engines – Debtors may have accounts and profiles across various directory websites and Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. Skip tracing services can also use search engines to search for news articles and posts that people on the internet who may have written entries about them or even posted pictures.
• The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) – For every individual that drives a vehicle or has a license registered, it is likely they have their information in the DMV.
• Associations, Affiliations, Organizations, and Groups – Often when debtors have specialized occupations in industries such as Pharmacy or BI, they also have membership in certain organizations. Skip tracing services will try to search these various groups to find the debtor.
• Pay per search- Certain sites incorporate public records with banking and finance industry data, agencies can pay per searches related to social security numbers, corporations, home, and business address, etc.

There are many sources skip tracers use in order to gather the necessary information. And thanks to their services, collection agencies are able to provide clients with receivables owed or enough information to decide how to proceed with next steps.