While I was on my walk, I saw a kid on a bike who reminded me of Charlie from the old neighborhood. So I threw Charlie’s full name into #DuckDuckGo and #Google and followed some links to see whether he left any tracks. So neither search produced the sort of results which used to be routine just a few years ago.

First of all, any time you do this, the top half of results are the “search for anyone and we’ll find them … for a fee” sites. If you go to those sites and throw in first-middle-last name and age, you usually get hundreds of results, but that’s because they are not filtered … there will people from 18 to 80, people who only share one of the names in your search, people who have or had relationships with a person with the name, and people who have aliases close to the name in question.

Next are “close, but no cigar” results: Similar names. Mug shots sites.*

Only then will you see any interesting results.

I haven’t been in contact with Charlie since we were both less than half our current ages. I am pretty sure I saw him walking across a store’s parking lot in the 1990s, but no contact was made. Nor was contact the object of my search. A good chunk of the people I once knew have passed on, so I really just wanted to see whether he was still among the living and to have a general idea where he might be.

* In the past, I did find out about both Steve and Jay because of a mug shots site. Steve is presumably still behind bars in another state. Jay served a year or so and was released.