Detect the detectives
We've all gotten them: e-mail messages that claim to reveal the secrets of bosses, relatives, and even your spouse, for a price. While such claims can be tempting if you're, say, feeling neglected or suspicious, the truth is almost always less enticing. More often than not, you can find the same information (or lack thereof) without spending a dime.
Spam Spade
Take Marketing Resources, which sells the $25 Cyber Seeker ("the software they want banned in all 50 states!"). This anonymous outfit, which operates out of a private mailbox in Lynn Haven, Florida, also hawks human pheromones, work-at-home schemes, lists of government auctions, and (surprise!) e-mail marketing lists.
Give your credit card number to people like this, and the best thing that will happen is that you get some useless trinket in return, says Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters>, an antispam group in Green Brook, New Jersey. You'll probably end up on a lifetime sucker list for more spam, and you may see mysterious charges on future credit bills.
"Anyone who gives their credit card number to a spammer should expect to see a broad cross-section of white-collar crime appear on their next billing statement," Catlett adds. In other words, if you get an e-mail message from someone you don't know offering to find dirt on someone you do know, don't take them up on it.
Fictional flatfoot
Probably the most popular for-pay sleuthing software is the $29 Net Detective 2001, sold by Harris Digital Publishing. The company's Web site claims that you can use Net Detective to get a copy of your FBI file, check driving and criminal records, and "find out everything you ever wanted to know about your friends, family, neighbors, employees, and even your boss!" The site also features letters from CEO Jean Harris and a series of product endorsements, including one from the National Association of Independent Private Investigators (NAIPI).
In our research into the software's legitimacy, we could find no record of Jean Harris. The NAIPI is sponsored by Net Detective's parent company, and there are no other members. Private detectives we contacted were unfamiliar with the organisation.
"Never heard of 'em," says Lenny Accardo, executive secretary for the National Association of Licensed Investigators.
Doing the legwork
We obtained a copy of the $29 Net Detective and discovered that it's little more than a collection of text files and links to public Web sites, government agencies, and fee-based data services. For example, if you click the FBI Files button in the software's main window, Net Detective brings up a document telling you how to file a Freedom of Information request, along with addresses for regional FBI offices.
Basically, Net Detective won't dig up anything you can't find just as easily somewhere else. In fact, by comparison, a simple search of Florida's excellent public records database reveals that Harris Digital Publishing is a subsidiary of Cyberspace to Paradise (CTP), which is owned by John Stanley of Deland. It's one of several businesses operated by Stanley, including Cyber Detective, which sells a clone of Net Detective, and Customer Care Dot Com, which handles orders and customer service for CTP.
Trouble is their business
Meanwhile, the Better Business Bureau gives CTP an unsatisfactory rating due to complaints that its software "does not perform as represented." Bureau President Judy Peppers said that her office had received 35 complaints about the company.
Stanley stands by his product. "We sell hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide," he notes. "If the Better Business Bureau gets 20 or 30 complaints, they rate us as unsatisfactory. They evaluate us without considering the magnitude of our business."
Stanley admits that he made up the name Jean Harris to avoid crank e-mail and that his program is aimed squarely at Net neophytes. "We don't offer a lot to the sophisticated user," but, he adds, "We offer an unconditional guarantee and honor it without exception." (Note: Harris Digital removed the NAIPI endorsement from its site shortly after we contacted the company.)
Bottom line? If you want to find someone, you'll save more money doing it the old-fashioned way; use Web sites and search engines, pick up the phone, or call a private investigator.
I wish there was a name on this article so I could send the author a great big WELL DONE! Harris is a rip-off, not because the software does little (I did not mind that) but because they simply stop supporting the Serial Number they sent making the disc I paid Harris $39 for totally useless after 18 months.
I did not buy a membership, I paid for software. I now have a $39 coaster next to my new computer. As the article implys, do not waste a dime on Net Detective or the scamer that sells it.