Many have heard of the term "skip tracing" but few know the meaning.

Hard-to-locate debtors are known as SKIPS (i.e., accounts submitted with invalid addresses and/or telephone numbers). Skip tracing is the use of electronic databases to track down debtors who have skipped out. Creditors, bounty hunters and private investigators make use of skip tracing. The growth of the Internet has made available many online resources for skip-tracing, which in turn raise privacy issues.  Skips are traced with database searches, social security number traces, credit reports, asset searches and through public records. These searches can result in direct hits; past and present contact information, traces of activity, contact information of friends and relatives.

Landlord2Landlord offers skip-tracing services such as:

eFunds Credit Issuance Report tells you how an applicant handles there checking account and can be used as a collections tool where you will often get the current phone number of the account holder.

People Search is a national credit header search.

People Locator Detail returns all known addresses along with all the names and phone numbers, of the people that live on the street.