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What Is Skip Tracing?
Skip Tracing is a fancy word for finding people. It is most commonly referred to as the location of a person or people for the purpose of debt collection. This is where it gets the name of "skip" tracing. The skip tracer is the one "tracing" the person who has "skipped" out on a debt. A person will be known as the skipper if they flee or leave their permanent place of residence without notifying anyone or entering a change of address or phone number. Skip tracing is not just for collection agencies or detectives anymore. If you are trying to find someone, it is a skill that can be learned relatively easily.
Skip tracing today is used for anything that involves the locate of an individual. This could be for debt collection, legal matters, to repossess something, witness location, missing person location, secure life insurance beneficiaries; lost relative locates, and so on. A skip tracer can be needed for several reasons, but is commonly known for debt collection. Locating people that have fled and neglected to provide notice can be done. Anyone that is deemed as missing can be deemed so for any variety of reasons, and in this day and age, a paper trail is almost always left behind. There are two kinds of "skip". The Intentional and the Unintentional. If you know which category your missing person is in, it may be easier to trace them.
An Intentional Skip is one that has fled from the authorities because of criminal actions, or they simply do not want to be found. It is unlikely that the standard trails skip tracers are searching for will be left behind. At this point, an Intentional Skip knows the system fairly well and is aware of what they need to do to prevent from being found. An Intentional Skip will avoid the law and debtors by moving their residence frequently. They could change their phone numbers and rent a P.O. Box in order to avoid their responsibilities. Generally they will not make a complete identity switch and they usually leave a paper trail that can be eventually followed. In these cases, the Intentional Skip works very hard to stay hidden, and they know how to and skip tracing is very difficult. The skip tracer simply hopes that the skipper will slip up somewhere along the way, and they usually do.
An Unintentional Skip is simply just that. It could be that they really forgot to submit change of address information, or fell into circumstances and had their phone disconnected, or something to that effect. In all cases of an Unintentional Skip the individual is not intending to hide, and more than likely, is not even aware of they are being sought. In these cases, skip tracing is very easy to accomplish and will be resolved much sooner than an intentional skip.
Skip tracing is performed for a variety of reasons. The capability of finding someone will depend on a number of factors: the type of skip, the length of time that has passed, and the available resources to the person trying to find them. There are a variety of tools used in skip tracing, and in more cases than not, the individuals are found.
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