I wanna search for someone

betterbargains4u

Hi

I know you can buy memberships to sites for online census, but does anyone know where you can obtain the information for free?

mzungu74

If your looking for an old school friend, try friendsreunited.com.
Or theres always myspace/bebo/facebook to find old (and new!) friends.

betterbargains4u

Thanks for that, but have already tried.
I was thinking more like a census search site, which was free or at least cheap to join.

Middlers

If you know the town this person may be living in try the voters register

moneylover

The last fullcensus to be made available is 1901. The next one (for 1911) will be available in 2012 as information about individuals on a census is only available 100 years after the census was taken. Most libraries subscribe to Ancestry which means that in your local library you can look at these censuses on the library computers for free.

However, I presume you are looking for a living person. I am a librarian and have access to the last full electoral register that was made available on cd rom. This is for 2001. Many people are at the same address today or if not, the current householder may forward a letter for you. You can pm me if this would help.

Post 2001 individuals have the right to keep their names off the register apart from the master that is kept at the local electoral registration office. So, for example, if you know that someone lives in Chelmsford in Essex you could go to the local borough office and search the register. But its in street order so that would take a long time. If you pay online to search the register it will be national becuase a company will have bought up all the local registers to compile this database eg 192.com However the registers they buy are only abridged registers - that is lists of people who have not opted to come off all publically available registers other than the original kept with their local authority. About 60% of the UK voters 'hide' their details, so its a fair bet that anyone not on phone directories won't be found on online electoral registers either. When you pay to search online services what you get are a search of the 2001 electoral register, the abridged registers since that time and phone directories. Plus a few other bits like companies house records.

There are other ways too to trace friends and relatives - for more info click on www.answersdirect.info and put 'tracing friends' in search box and click on the first entry.
Hope this helps.

superscaper

I thought making pre-2002 electoral roll data publicly available was illegal? At least that's what I was told. And that was the main reason the b4usearch website got served with cease notice and had to update their entire site (and is still in the process of doing so). So none of the companies should be providing any electoral roll data from before 2002.