There are many online resources that can help you locate an old friend, including phone number lookups and social networking sites, all of which can assist you at no charge. Free people searches access these and other online services, and with a little basic information about how they work, you can quickly and easily find the results you need.

While many people searches cost, sometimes regardless of your success, free people searches can often deliver the same level of detail and personal information to help you locate a friend. Free people finder services cannot return private information, including cell phone records, but there is a surprising amount of material that is public, and can be accessed by these services. Among this material are public phone directories containing numbers and addresses.

Social networking sites are online collections of user profiles that, while you often have to get permission to view, are completely free to use. One great feature of free people searches is their ability to turn up links to social networking site profiles, on which people often post personal contact information such as phone number and e-mail address that can be vital to helping you locate an old friend. By registering for and using social networking sites, you can not only locate, but keep in touch with friends from throughout your life.

If free people searches or social networking sites cannot find a phone number or other way to locate an old friend, phone number lookups can help you find public and private directories, and sometimes even cell phone information. Reverse phone number lookups can help you find an address for someone whose number you found using other online services. By using free people searches to access social networking sites or a phone number lookup, you can help find all the information the internet has to offer with the click of a few buttons.