Al Ruechel, Your Technology

For a small fee, one Web site will allow you to legally search public databases.

The name of this Web site is publicdata.com.

They give the fee schedule right up front. The most popular is $25 a year for 250 lookups.

You'll want to start by selecting the demonstration feature. It shows you what kind of information is available.

Your can locate criminal records by name, date of birth and zip codes, as well as sex offenders, civil court, voter registration info, driver licenses, license plates, professional license and property tax records.

Look under property taxes. After selecting the state, in our case Florida, then type in the first, middle and last name. The public data will pull up any property tax records on the individual.

Department of Motor Vehicle’s driver's license information works the same way. You can see the states that make that information public and online.

You can also use this area search function to go directly to state public record databases.

In the interest of public safety, this site does offer access to the national sex offender database for free. Type in a zip code and the site shows you the location of registered offenders in that area.

For the rest of the site, again, there is a cost so you need to see if spending money on this kind of information is actually helpful.

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