Social Networking sites have increasingly become a successful resource in missing person cases and police investigations. After you have tried every other traditional effort in locating a runaway or missing; why not turn to a social website like Facebook for help?
Facebook can assist in these cases in many ways for example, some runaways will leave hints on their homepage through their updates, wall posts or comments, also friends and third party communications, that the parents may be unaware of, can possibly add additional assistance.
A social website has become a person’s identity, it tells people about an individual’s character. Your profile on social websites are not private it’s broadcasted to the whole world. Any information found on social networking sites like Face book could be used in criminal or civil cases, for or against an individual.
Few interesting articles I came across “one investigation, a young woman went missing after a night of bar hopping. When all else failed, they tried contacting her through her Face book page; within minutes there was a response from the woman.”
“Young adults, who ran away, often will still check their profile and can be located by tracking their IP address."
“An elementary school teacher disappeared for several weeks after suffering a rare form of temporary amnesia. She was recognized at a store, thanks to a Facebook group which was created after her”
Most recent article, “Family turns to face book for their son’s disappearance” The family has created a face book page for the son, which has been passed to friends and friends of friends in different nearby cities where the family guesses the son might be. The facebook page is filled with messages from the loved ones and friends urging the son to come back. It seems Facebook has given many happy endings and we pray this family soon reunites with their son.

Nisha Shrimanker
nisha@webgemnet.com