Internet sleuths

Image from "The amateur detectives tackling murders and kidnaps," BBC

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Somewhere I picked up the term internet sleuth. I thought it was in a TIME Magazine article by reviewer Daniel D'Addario writing about The Hidden Danger of Making a Murderer and Other True Crime Entertainment. But it seems I'm wrong, 'cause it's not there, online at least.

But the concept is fascinating: using your computer and the records available through the internet to solve mysteries. The goal is often finding missing persons and solving cold cases.

Two sites stand out: Internet Sleuth, a repository of links to information on airports, phonebooks, death records, to name a few of the categories; and Websleuths, a forum for sleuths and would-be sleuths. To delve into the information offered by Internet Sleuth, check out the How do I... page. To learn about and assist with informal (not official) investigations on Websleuths, sign up and verify. Note that Websleuths recognizes Professional Posters & Verified Insiders. There seems to be a lot of health care professionals and lawyers; the reporters and private investigators seem to me a given. Pursuit Magazine has an interesting article on Locating Mobile Phones through Pinging and Triangulation.

Also helpful for sleuthing are meta search engines. SocioSite, based in Amsterdam, offers three--Dogpile, Metacrawler, and SavvySearch--plus interfaces for other tools.

If you wonder whether relatively untrained investigators can be helpful in investigations where they have no official role, take a look at this collection of headlines: The amateur detectives tackling murders and kidnaps (BBC); How Internet sleuths on Facebook and Reddit solved the 20-year-old mystery of a missing teenager (Washington Post); and Internet sleuths are furiously trying to find out who made an ominous viral video (Washington Post).

To check out the mechanics of sleuthing, I picked out the name of someone missing at random---Palmgren, Gail Nowacki--at Websleuths. In respect for Gail's family I won't publish here all the details of my search. But following leads and ferreting out information is definitely absorbing.

Happy hunting to you, Sleuths.

-- Marge