In this day and age we can find just about anything and everything in the virtual world. But does this fact apply to locating people? There are sites that claim to provide free locating people programs, but are they really as useful as they are claimed to be?

It's no longer just the CIA or police using "special" tools to locate people. Spouses, cousins and old classmates are now trying to locate certain people they know. There are free locating people programs, but the question is, are they useful?

These so-called free locating people programs are basically search engines. They are comparable to Google and Yahoo! search engines. You type in a word or phrase and the search tool provides you with results related to that word or phrase. At first impression, it all sounds too easy to look up somebody. But if you've ever tried it using a search engine before, you know it can be frustrating. A common name will result in thousands of hits, while an unusual name will still result in hundreds or even none. You'll find yourself asking, "but how can this be"?

Then there are online lessons for you to get familiar with online people search processes. You'll learn how to use quotation marks, plus signs, minus signs and the word OR to narrow down the hits. However, you're still likely to end up in frustration, and this confuses you.

The reason why it's extremely difficult to obtain personal information online when searching for someone is that people don't use their real names in online profiles. There are other reasons too. Even public records are well kept by the government. You'll need to pay a certain amount to obtain it and you'll also need to provide your own personal information first. So this pretty much answers the question, are free people search programs useful? The answer is, not really. That's what paid sites are for, so they can do all the work for you for just a small fee.