Has anyone here ever used LexisNexis? Does it offer biographical and investigative searches of people's names?
What are you trying to find out out? Its cheaper to use the TX DPS website and pay the small fee. Last time I used it was under $10 and will tell you alot of info.
An acquaintance said that LexisNexis offers an investigative tool (a search function) that purportedly will reveal a lot about a person, such as who they network with, biographical info, financial info, etc. That's all I know so far. NCU offers LexisNexis, but I speculate that there are a couple of different kinds of LexisNexis, such as legal, academic, etc.
Excelsior's virtual library includes LN academic. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any decent information about anything or anyone I ever search on it. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
I'm not a big fan of it either. It is more or less just some syndicated newspaper archive. They have a search function especially for "people", but the results are mostly "who is who" articles or similar high-profile accounts. But I have only access to the business database, maybe the others are better...
You might also check out knowx.com, which is owned by Choicepoint, which has a scary amount of data they've mined (warranty cards for millions of purchases, other consumer data, web use data, etc) I don't know how much of Choicepoint's data you can get without a PI license, but it's pretty spooky what's available to professionals.
The specific LexisNexis product that you're referring to is called Accurint. They are a skiptracing service designed for use by collection agencies or anyone else looking to track someone down. They offer a wide variety of searches, most priced around a quarter each or so, that will tell you things like a person's address and phone number history to known associates and family members. In some instances, you can do fairly detailed public records and asset searches as well. The searches are cheap, but the website is organized to get you to "bounce" from product to product and run up clicks (and charges) quick. If you're interested, their website is Welcome to Accurint. They are only interested in signing up businesses who will pull a decent volume, so if you are looking at only a few searches, you may want to start with a service like the one at People Search by ZabaSearch - Honestly Free People Search, which is a pretty good free people search site (although nothing like accurint). Good luck!
