Glossary


Address Search Software

Address search software is exactly what it sounds like. It’s software that helps you get more information about a person’s previous address. The ways in which you’re able to gather this information can be varied, but you’ll typically need at least a person’s name and another identifying characteristic, like their phone number.

Once you have that information, you can set off to learn more. Anyone looking for information on how to find a previous address history will be happy to know that address search software typically doesn’t require as much work as you may expect. Especially in recent years, it’s become more accessible to the general public than ever before, making it a great option for your company. Learn more about address search software.

API Recovery Solutions

In simplest terms, API recovery solutions are just a way for businesses to make collections recovery easier. When you’re handling collections normally, you’ll typically have to search for each individual on your own. Although you can use just about any searching process you want, it can still be complicated to manage when you’re using someone else’s search process.

When you incorporate Tracers’ API into your own search process, it combines the best of both worlds. You’ll be able to utilize the breadth of the information available through Tracers while also utilizing your own system of searching. This can make it much easier for you to find people that haven’t paid off their debts yet. Learn more about API recovery solutions.

Batch Skip Tracing

The simplest explanation of batch skip tracing is that it allows you to skip trace, multiple people, at once. Skip tracing is the practice of finding someone who’s “skipped town,” and it traditionally has required individuals to painstakingly track down a person individually, often by going through a variety of resources to find the person in question.

However, with batch skip tracing, you no longer have to worry about whether you have the time and ability to find every person individually. You can put together a list of information, then receive back additional information on all the people on your list. This can range from a list of names to phone number appends. Learn more about batch skip tracing. 

Batch Processing

Essentially, batch processing is when you take a lot of searches and run them through a search engine all at once. Most commonly, the search engine will ask you for a list of the things you’re searching for and information about the data you want to append to the search. Then it will run the search internally and give you the list with the appended data.

There are many types of batch processing. For example, phone appends and address history searches may both offer batch processing opportunities. Often, you only need one or two identifying characteristics, like someone’s name and address or phone number, to run a batch processing search and gather more information. Learn more about batch processing.

Big Data Analytics

At its core, big data analytics is about making sense of a lot of information. When you comb for data, you can end up with a lot of information and not a lot of understanding regarding that information. Big data analytics essentially uses certain methods to help you understand what this data is and how it can benefit your company.

When you’re using big data analytics, you’re often trying to comb for meaning in something that seems like it might not have a lot on its own. You may be looking for information about where your customers tend to be, whether certain area codes are more common for your customers, or a variety of other trends in your niche. Learn more about big data analytics.

Bulk Skip Tracing

Bulk skip tracing is essentially what it sounds like: a way for companies to skip trace a number of people at once without having to do each one manually. When you use bulk skip tracing as opposed to manual skip tracing, you only have to put the list together once. From there, you’ll be able to generate a number of leads.

There are multiple ways to use bulk skip tracing, so it’s important that you tailor it to your business. Do you already have names and addresses, but you’re looking for numbers? Do you already have phone numbers, but need an address history search? Are you looking for REI skip tracing? Regardless of the reason you’re looking for bulk skip tracing, you can use it to flesh out your lists of clients. Learn more about bulk skip tracing.

Credit Header

First off, what does “credit header” mean in the first place? A simple way to explain credit header data is that it’s the identifying information you might find in a credit report. When you run a credit header search, you’ll receive information that someone might gather from a credit score report. This can include all of the following:

  • Full name.
  • Name variations.
  • Current address.
  • Former addresses.
  • Telephone numbers.
  • Unlisted telephone numbers.
  • Typically incomplete date of birth.

You can see how beneficial all of this information can be if you’re a business trying to reach out to brand new or existing customers. This type of data isn’t regulated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act because it’s not part of a customer’s credit history, which means you can use it in a variety of ways for your business’s benefit. Learn more about credit header.

Contact Tracing

Contact tracing, in short, is the process of identifying the connections within and between social groups. This has many applications but is most often used in medicine to track the spread of disease and infection (especially right now). Effective medical contact tracing can not only map the spread of an infection, but it can be used to control it. The same principles, however, can be applied to many other situations to provide information about the social networks within, for example, a company or industry and to illustrate how they often collide. Learn more about contact tracing. 

Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

Customer due diligence is when you perform due diligence research on your customers and gain information about them to help mitigate risk and make more informed decisions for growth. Customer due diligence involves performing real identity verification during onboarding and then continuously monitoring your customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

You may want to continuously monitor basic information such as customer relationships, customer locations with a home address lookup, or previous workplace records. You may also want to dive a little deeper and perform a personal background investigation to find criminal records or social media activity. When you do your customer due diligence, you’ll be able to understand your customers on a deeper level and gain information that can be used to reduce risk, maintain compliance, and boost growth. Learn more about customer due diligence (CDD).

Data Batch Processing

Data batch processing, which some people may refer to as batch data processing, is a method of processing large amounts of data at once. To utilize data batch processing, you collect large amounts of data, then process it all at once. That makes it great for any company that doesn’t need to process things in real-time.

There are many advantages to data batch processing over data real-time processing. When you don’t need information immediately, data batch processing allows you to save your data and do everything at once. From there, you can work on the results of that data while you’re collecting more. It’s an effective way to work all the way through a batch of data before moving on to the next batch. Learn more about data batch processing.

Data Enrichment

In simplest terms, data enrichment is when you take your existing data on customers, then utilize a third-party resource to add more data to it. For example, if you currently only have names and phone numbers, you may be able to use a third-party resource to find out an address history. This can be beneficial for many different companies from many different industries.

Data enrichment requires the use of a third-party resource. Customers often give you certain pieces of information on their own but may prefer not to disclose other information. However, if you’re able to utilize a third-party data source, you may get access to that information anyway. It’s important that you trust the quality of that third-party source since you’re likely going to rely on that information fairly heavily. Learn more about data enrichment.

Debt Buyer

A debt buyer is a third-party company that buys debts from other companies for a fraction of the total debt. When debt buyers collect on the debt, all the money they collect is theirs to keep or they work out to keep a certain % of the recovered money. Companies often sell debts to debt buyers when a debt is very long overdue and there’s a lower chance it will be paid back. Usually, the longer a debt goes unpaid, the less a debt buyer will have to pay for it. Debt buyers may buy large portfolios of debt at a time, and when they purchase the debt, it is entirely theirs to deal with. Learn more about debt buyers.

Due Diligence

Due diligence is a broad term that, in its most basic form, means to take all reasonable steps to avoid committing an offense in both a legal and moral sense. The precise meaning of this differs for different industries, but it always comes down to three main factors:

  • Safety.
  • Legality.
  • Responsibility.

For those in financial services, for example, it means keeping a paper trail to show that regulatory requirements and necessary checks have been made. For those who work in hospitality, it can mean keeping records of food temperatures, spoiled food destruction, and the regular maintenance of equipment. It’s all about showing you have done your research and have taken all necessary and reasonable steps to provide a fair, ethical, and safe service. Learn more about due diligence.

First Party Collections

First-party collections refers to any collections process that a company takes on behalf of itself. This is in contrast to third-party collections, which is when a company outsources collections processes to a second company. If a company wants to try and collect on debts using employees it hires itself, that’s a first-party collections process.

First-party collections is less common than third-party collections. Most companies assume collections is an extremely difficult job that they simply can’t do. You don’t necessarily have to sell your debts to a debt buyer to ever be able to receive something from them. Collection agency software is available for a variety of companies. Learn more about first-party collections.

Global Watch List

There are many different types of watch lists out there, but when people refer to a “global watch list,” they’re typically referring to a global terror watch list. Essentially, these are people with confirmed or suspected ties to terrorism, whether domestic or foreign. That means the Department of Homeland Security may have barred them from doing business in the United States. Learn more about the global watch list.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA)

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA), also called the Financial Services Modernization Act, is a law that ended regulations preventing banks, stock brokerage companies, and insurance companies from merging in order to allow them to provide more financial services. Along with ending these regulations, the GLBA also included three rules in Title V that regulate the use of personal information by financial institutions.

These laws prohibit financial institutions and databases that buy information from the financial institutions from disclosing nonpublic personal information about a consumer to nonaffiliated third-parties unless the institution satisfies various notice and opt-out requirements and the consumer has not elected to opt-out of the disclosure. However, the exception to this rule is that these businesses can disclose information to people with permissible use. Learn more about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA).

Hidden Asset Search

A hidden asset search is basically what the name sounds like. When you run a hidden asset search, you’re looking for any assets that one party has hidden. This most frequently comes up in the area of family law, especially during a divorce. If the divorced couple will split their current ownings 50/50, the wealthier partner may try to hide some of their assets so they don’t have to split those things.

However, when you’re able to use asset search software, you can go through the records and make sure you know what assets the couple may have to split. There are many legal routes for you to utilize. You might be able to look at legal records like driving records, licenses for flight and boating, and property records. Learn more about hidden asset search.

Identity Access Management Tools

Identity access management tools are tools designed to help businesses manage and verify the identities of everyone in their business, including vendors, customers, and other third-parties. Identity management tools may include identity verification solutions, big data search analytics, and a customer identification program. Identity management tools may also be tools that control access to certain information with permission settings. Any tools that confirm people’s identities and ensure information and services are being provided to the right people can be considered identity access management tools.  Learn more about identity access management tools.

Identity Management

Identity management software simply describes the process of ensuring you know the true identity of every person your company interacts with. For example, an identity management system may include identity verification software, which ensures the credentials a user provides match the rest of the information on file.

This is just a portion of identity management software. Typically, identity management software encompasses a variety of methods. All of these methods help you understand more about the people using your business. Whether you’re managing vendors, customers, or even employees, identity management software is key to the process. Learn more about identity management.

Identity Verification

Identity verification (also known as ID verification) is the process of verifying that an individual is who they claim to be using an identity verification service. An identity verification service takes information provided to you, like a name, and matches it against other records, such as address history, property records, or multiple credit headers, in order to help you authenticate the identity of an individual. Learn more about identity verification.

Insurance Prefill

Insurance prefill is a method of filling out forms more effectively. In the insurance world, it’s common for there to be a number of forms you have to fill out along your path. For example, to help with fraud detection, it’s common for companies to require that every party fill out and sign a number of documents attesting to whatever the insurance is covering.

When it comes to insurance forms, it’s common for you to have to fill out a lot of personal information. That personal information may even be necessary if you want to reach certain people in the first place. Regardless of the personal information you’re having to find, insurance prefill can help you reach those people more easily. Learn more about insurance prefill.

Investigation Software

Investigation software encompasses any software that helps you with an investigative process. That means investigation software can utilize anything from individual searches to batch processing. The main goal of the investigative process is to understand more about a person, regardless of the information you use to do so.

There are many different types of investigation software out there. No matter what type of investigation you’re doing or what software you use to do it, investigation software is a great way to do your investigations. From learning more about a certain individual to doing due diligence investigations on the people you’re planning to enter into a contract with, investigation software can be incredibly beneficial for companies. Learn more about investigation software.

Ongoing Monitoring

Ongoing monitoring and evaluation is when you continuously monitor the situations of your customers, vendors, and third-parties for any changes. When you perform ongoing monitoring with a public and private records database, you can monitor the profiles of all the people who interact with your business and automate notifications for when something changes. For example, if you work in collections or financial services and someone files for bankruptcy or has another change in their financial situation, you can receive a notification of that change when you use ongoing credit monitoring. Ongoing monitoring and evaluation involves accessing comprehensive and up-to-date data about all the people who interact with your organization so you can update profiles and tailor your services accordingly.  Learn more about ongoing monitoring.

Online Skip Tracing

In its simplest form, online skip tracing refers to the practice of using online tools to skip trace. That can be anything, including online tools that companies offer specifically to skip trace as well as simply looking through online social media handles and search engines to learn more about an individual. It’s important that you have the best tools to do this, however.

Of course, just looking through online sources like search engines and social media handles has the most margin for error. This is more of a manual method of searching; general investigations most commonly use this type of searching because it uncovers a wider variety of information. When you use an online tool specifically for skip tracing, however, you’re more likely to get narrow, strict results. Learn more about online skip tracing.

Open-Source Intelligence

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an intelligence technique that involves gathering and analyzing information from publicly available sources for a specific intelligence purpose. Data that is used for OSINT doesn’t have to be free  — it just has to be available for anyone to gather without breaking the law or needing a specific license or permit to access.  Learn more about Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT).

PACER Court Records

PACER, or Public Access to Court Electronic Records, is an online-based, public resource that allows its users to obtain access to case and docket information from Federal Appellate, Bankruptcy and District Courts. As a service of the United State Judiciary, PACER is run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and has access to the records of each court system, though they are held separately. Unlike some other resources, such as Bloomberg Law, Lexis Advance CourtLink, and Westlaw Dockets, there is a fee associated with using PACER to access court records. Learn more about PACER court records.

People Search Service

In simplest terms, a people search service helps you find more information about people. For example, basic people searches often comb through birth records, marriage records, and death records to tell you when a person was born, that person’s name, anyone they may have been married to throughout their life, and more.

Different types of records can also give you different pieces of information. For example, a court search, which is a type of advanced people search, may be able to help you with a background investigation. These different types of records are all equally important when you’re looking for more information on someone, whether it’s for business or an investigation. Learn more about a people search service.

Phone Append

In a phone append search, you have a list of names and addresses. From there, you can cross-reference those with records of people, making it easy to get their phone numbers. The phrase “phone append” tends to refer to batch processing, but you can often also do individual searches with a certain person’s information to find their phone number.

A phone append search is a great way to make it easier for you to contact people. Although it’s possible to get in contact with someone through their address, that’s often a more cumbersome and difficult method of contact. Instead, a phone append search allows you to contact someone directly and accurately. Learn more about phone append.

Private Investigator

A private investigator is essentially a professional information finder. Private investigators are individuals who are hired by other people or organizations to find specific information for the people that hire them. As the name implies, private investigators specialize in investigative research like skip tracing — their skill is finding information that other people cannot.  Unlike a law enforcement agent who works for the government and investigates criminal matters before they are brought to court, a private investigator works for private clients and investigates only what the client wants them to. Learn more about what is a private investigator?

Right-party Contact

The term “right-party contact” is a term that refers to your ability to reach the right person every time. Just because you have a file with information on a person doesn’t mean that information is necessarily current. For example, someone may have changed their phone number or moved since you last collected the information in question.

However, if you’re part of an industry that really needs to connect with the right people, like the repossession industry, you need to know you’re calling the right people. If you have to jump through multiple phone numbers before you’re able to find the person you’re looking for, you’re just wasting time. Right-party contact saves you time and money. Learn more about right-party contact.

REI Skip Tracing

When you use REI skip tracing, you’re most commonly doing it to enter the real estate market. It’s also possible, however, for you to start REI skip tracing when you’ve already entered the real estate market. This will help you expand your reach in the real estate market, often to talk to homeowners who otherwise wouldn’t reach out for real estate opportunities.

Real estate requires a lot of research, which is why many real estate investors use batch skip tracing; you may want to look at records from law enforcement, collection agencies and more. This may be able to give you an idea of a homeowner’s background, which can give you some insight into whether or not the person might be willing to sell once you talk to them about their home. Learn more about REI skip tracing.

Skip Search

In its simplest form, a skip search helps you find someone, typically someone who doesn’t want you to find them. The person in question may have intentionally left the area, which is where the name “skip trace” comes from. You’re looking for someone who’s skipped town, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and left seemingly no traces behind.

Of course, there will always be some sort of trace this person left behind. Skip tracing services are all about searching through a broad number of sources to find the most up-to-date information about where someone may have gone. For active and effective skip searching, you need to make sure you’re gathering the best possible information. Learn more about skip search.

Skip Tracing for Collections

When you utilize skip tracing services, you’re trying to find someone who’s stopped using their current address or other contact information and didn’t give you a forwarding address. The name of the process comes from “skipping town.” Skip tracing software allows you to gather information from a variety of sources and use it all to find the person in question.

Skip tracing for collections tends to use the same tools as skip tracing real estate or any other skip tracing tools. Skip tracing tools are great for gathering information — regardless of the tools you’re using, you’ll get more knowledge. There are also different methods of utilizing these tools; for example, anyone may be able to use skip-tracing batch services to gather information on many people at once. Learn more about skip tracing for collections.

Skip Tracer

A skip tracer is a person or a tool that helps you with skip tracing. At its most basic, skip tracing is about finding someone that typically doesn’t want you to find them. The phrase comes from the concept of “skipping town,” and it’s something people use to refer to an individual who has left on purpose to avoid an encounter with the law, a creditor or someone else.

If you’re working in an area that requires skip-tracing services, it’s typically because you’re trying to track people down. These people may or may not care if you find them, but they usually have one thing in common: They’re not easy to find. Skip tracing tools utilize information from a variety of sources to help with skip tracing. Learn more about a skip tracer.

Skip Tracing

Skip tracing is a process of finding and tracking persons-of-interest, fact witnesses and other individuals. Tracing often includes more than simple location and contact data.

Other details typically sought by skip tracers are things like:

The term in question comes from an individual being difficult to find (aka, the “skip”) and the process of finding them (tracing). Learn more about what is skip tracing.

A social media search is a search of all social networks and accounts to gather information about an individual. Rather than manually Googling individual websites and social media profiles, a social media profile search will aggregate information across a variety of social networks, from Instagram to Facebook to Etsy, into one comprehensive social media report on that person.

Because most adults have at least some presence on social media, a social media search can help you find information about individuals that may not turn up in a traditional records search. For example, a social media search can turn up profile pictures, names, past names, current locations like an address history search, past locations, school and work experience, and more. Learn more about social media searches here.

Synthetic Fraud

Synthetic fraud is similar to identity theft, where a criminal steals your personal information to create fake accounts and spend your money. However, synthetic identity fraud involves using real information combined with fake information to create a new identity.

To start, the fraudster will steal the social security number of someone unlikely to notice. Perhaps a child, or a homeless person who won’t check their credit as often. Learn more about synthetic fraud.

UCC Filing

A UCC filing is a filing that a lender places on a debtor’s assets, usually business assets, stating that the lender has a right to repossession of those assets until the loan is completely paid off. For example, when a business doesn’t have funding for capital on its own, it may take out a loan to fund the capital from another business. In order to ensure the loan is paid back and protect the lender’s finances if it isn’t, the lender will file a UCC filing, stating that the lender has the right to repossess whatever capital they financed if the debtor defaults on their debt. If the debtor doesn’t pay back a debt, the debtor may take possession of those assets again. Learn more about UCC filings here.

Vendor Risk Assessment

Vendor risk assessment is the strategic evaluation of the potential risks of working with third-party vendors (or suppliers). When a company performs vendor risk assessment, they create a set of criteria to score a vendor’s risk and determine whether or not to work with that vendor based on whether the benefits of working with them outweigh the potential risks.  Learn more about vendor risk assessment.

Vendor Risk Management Software

As the name would suggest, vendor risk management software is any software that helps you manage your company’s risk when it comes to vendors. Vendors can be anyone you have a business relationship with. You may need vendors for your raw materials, vendors to sell with, or vendors for completed materials that you sell.

Regardless of how you interact with them, every company is going to have some vendors to handle every day. It’s extremely important that you do your due diligence and manage your company’s vendor risk. Active risk management software requires that you maintain your vendor risk assessment needs throughout the process. Learn more about vendor risk management software.