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What makes a Trace?

Luke • 11 March 2021

What makes a Trace? How do you Trace?

Tracing is 50% science, 50% art. You have a set process, databases to search, documents to request, certificates too peruse and then still nothing? Here comes the art.


The first part of your artistic side comes from taking information from social media. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Dating website like POF, Tinder etc and of course good old directories. The devil is in the details, using photographs and friends of friends details you piece together information. Sometimes as small as the time of day, the weather and other factors. Sometimes it as simple as the POI's sister taking a selfie on the driveway of the parents home (that's third party corroboration of your facts there sunshine).


Every PI has a process, every process is different. They usually start with a google and end with either a 2 hour job or 200 hour job. Ask us how we do it, you will get an answer but not the answer you want. The process, knowledge, wisdom from experience and our artistic traits of piecing information together, well that's our value.  Indeed we cannot share this.


There are some great stories though. Like how we found someone's address starting with 1 photograph outside a Pub (the Pub's name was not visible), there is no greater feeling then cracking the almost impossible trace. You can learn a process but to really dig deeper is to understand the truly great tracers are artist who attack things with logic and thinking outside the realms of what most people see in just 1 photograph. All those smalls details matter, what they are wearing, the ground, the sun, the cloud, the bricks and oh don't forget the EXIF data even though most websites remove it.


 
To all the budding PI's and those who don't want to hire one for that Trace. Practice makes perfect, hone your skills, develop your process and don't forget that no one has a success rate of 100% even the pros. But if you don't have 200 hours and the patience then your probably better off hiring someone like Operant Investigators to get the job done in a few days.



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