Facebook, Instagram and others all include search bars that let you look up people by name. You could also run a Google search for the person's name along with "Facebook" or "Instagram."
Unfortunately, if the person has a common name, it might return hundreds or thousands of results to sift through. Fortunately, there are a few ways you can speed up the process.
Before we tell you how, though, let's clarify that we're not telling you this so you can cyberstalk someone. We're telling you how to do it so you can keep your child safe, or make sure that your potential romantic partner isn't hiding some devastating secret, like that they're married.
Along those lines, be careful because you can turn up accounts from unrelated people with the same name. Take whatever you find with a grain of salt until you're sure you have the right account.
Also, we encourage you to use these techniques to look up your own accounts and see just what other people can find if they go looking. You might need to take steps to hide information you don't want seen.
1. Google Image Search
A Google search for the person's name is a good start, but an image search can be faster. That's because instead of clicking on result after result and loading page after page, an image search puts everything you need right in front of your eyes.Go to images.google.com to start, and then simply search for the person's full name. If you want to narrow down the results, add information like the city they live in, the school they go to, or some other identifying tidbit.
Next, scroll down the page looking for the person's image. There's a good bet you'll come across their profile picture for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or another site. Once you find an image of them, click it and select View Page to open up the social media page.
In the cases of linked accounts, such as the person posting images from Instagram on their Twitter feed, you can follow those images back to the other account. Sometimes the person will also place links to other accounts in their social media profile, so be sure to check there.
2. PeekYou
You can also turn to a people search site like PeekYou. People search sites collect publicly available information and combine it into a profile you can find if you search for a person's name and location.Handy hint: If you want to look up a neighbor and aren't sure about their full name, White Pages Neighbors has you covered. It helps you look up people in your immediate area.
You usually have to pay if you want to get the full information, but PeekYou gives you the person's known social media accounts for free. It also gives you the username on the account(s), and that's important.
3. Username
Something not many people think about is that they use the same username for every account. PeekYou lets you click on the person's username to pull up other social accounts that have the same username. Or you can type the username manually into Google.Note that you can usually get the username on any social media account from the Web address as well. For example, Kim's Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/kimkomando, which means my username is "kimkomando."
Sure enough, if you add "kimkomando" to the address for Twitter (https://twitter.com/kimkomando), Instagram (https://instagram.com/kimkomando/) or Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/kimkomando/), you'll see she has accounts there too.
This username hack is a good way to turn up someone's accounts, even if the person has chosen not to include their real name. Of course, if that's the case they'll probably also have their privacy locked down tight, and you should, too.
