How Does A Debt Collector Find Me?

Debt collectors are a smart group of people. They know if they want to find you so they can collect from you, they are going to need to get creative.
You see, the average debtor is a fairly mobile person. They open an account, and when they move they never send a new address to their creditor. So, the creditor has an old address, phone number, and other information.

Trust me, this doesn’t even slow a collector down! They will be hot on the trail of a debtor just as soon as they buy the debt. And they have a bunch of tools at their disposal. Unlike a few years ago when the collector only had information from the original creditor and perhaps a credit report, they now have a huge amount of information at their fingertips through the modern marvel, the Internet.

While a collection agency has many ways to track you down, here are a few that work really well for them:

1) Public records – It’s true, they can see what you do. If you buy a house, or file taxes, or open a business, they will know of it quickly. A typical collections agency will do a monthly sweep of all accounts through a computer process, and will see what data is available during that sweep. If, as an example, you buy a new house, they will see that and have your new address. Bingo, they got you! Interestingly, even 1099 information for a business is online, so that can be checked to see if you own a business. There are many other pieces of information they can check, but this is a great starting point for them.

2) Lexis / Nexis – Lexis, and other firms, provide information about pretty much everyone to you if you can pay for it. They have current and previous addresses, phones, job information, family information, and probably even your blood type. A few years from now they will probably keep a piece of your DNA! Collectors pay less than $30.00 per month for unlimited service, and they do take advantage of the service whenever they can. A lot of information comes back in a very short amount of time, and they can find you quickly.

3) Skip Tracing – This refers to hiring an outside vendor to find information about a debtor. A skip tracer will do all the leg work for you, and come back with a summary report telling you where a debtor is. If the first skip tracing firm is unsuccessful, they may use another to search again. This is highly cost effective, and highly automated.

4) Calling people you know – This is vicious, but it really works. Lexis, and other vendors, have a list that they call “nearby’s”. Let’s say you had a house at 123 Elm. They know who lives in 122 Elm, 124 Elm, and other surrounding houses. They have the names and phone numbers for each of those homes. So, the collector will call, and try to get a forwarding address, or a new phone number, or any other information they can get. They will also call relatives, friends, and anyone else that is shown to be an associate of the debtor.

5)) TransUnion – A fairly new TransUnion service will allow you set a watch on a credit file, and if a new entry comes in, say from a new credit card company with whom the debtor has opened the account, TransUnion will determine the address for the account and send it to the collectors. This is a great way to track people down, but may have some legal privacy flaws before everything works out.

This is just a few of the ways collectors can find you. They have a bunch of additional tricks up their sleeves, and more than likely they WILL find you. So, how do you hide? You can’t, unless you can find a way to hide your personal information from every source on the Internet. Instead, you just have to be prepared for the worst, and make sure you can deal with the collectors if they finally do call.