Facebook as an Investigative Tool

I had reason today to use one of those "people search" websites you've probably seen from time to time. I was wanting to find out who the owner of a particular AOL address was, so I Googled the address. Although the address didn't come up in the search listings, two paid ads for search services came up and I took my chances with one of them.

I got what I was looking for, but in the process a big light bulb came on for me: with over 400 million members (currently), there's a good chance that the owner of that email address is a Facebook user. Sure enough, when I signed into my FB account and searched for that address, the person I was looking for showed up -- along with their likes and interests and various oher information.

Some people will lock down their privacy settings a bit more than others and so this may not work, but, if you're looking to find out who belongs to a particular email address, make Facebook your first stop.