Today's fraud investigators need to have an arsenal of tools to assist them in identifying fraud and building their cases. While there are many resources available on the Internet, it would be irresponsible to assume that everything you find is true and accurate – therefore it's vital that you verify, verify, verify.

Besides verifying any information you find, it's important to capture anything as soon as you see it, so print pages or use the print screen function and create PDFs of all relevant information. If you're building a legal case, you'll need to produce the records at some point and sometimes it's difficult to get back to a page if you've traveled down a few rabbit holes.

At the recent IASIU conference, Joe Stephenson, managing director of SIU for Hagerty Insurance, spoke about investigative tools that are available for free on the Internet.

Here are 10 sites you probably didn't know you could access that can provide a treasure-trove of information at your fingertips.

siuhelp.com

Siuhelp.com

This free information clearinghouse provides a wealth of resources for SIU professionals. Your price for admission – a willingness to share what you've learned with your peers. This may include other websites, training courses, helpful hints, basically whatever will help everyone do a better job. There is a help desk as well as news, tips and advice.

mamma.com

Mamma.com

There are plenty of search engines available: Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask to name a few. Mamma allows you to open multiple search windows and creates tabs for each new search so you can track who you've searched for.

Millionshort

millionshort.com

Another search engine is millionshort.com. Most other search engines will capture the most popular search results. Millionshort removes them from their searches, allowing you to dig deeper for your information. You can set the number of popular sites you want removed from the search such as the first 50 or 100 sites.

Google

Google+

A Google search can involve a lot more than just typing a name into the Google landing page. Click on the icon in the upper right-hand corner that looks like a bunch of little squares and you can access Google's advanced search settings. Click on “images” and you can search for specific images or .jpgs with someone's name – like the “friends” who have tagged the person you're looking for on a Facebook page. You can also change the search settings, create advanced search parameters, and use Google's search tools. The more information you add to your search combinations, the less information you will actually have to search through.

spydialer.com

Spydialer.com

Sometimes investigators only have a phone number. Spydialer allows you to search for the owner of the cell phone number without calling it. This free search will go directly into the voicemail of the phone number so investigators know who owns the cellphone without tipping off the owner.

blackbookonline

Blackbookonline.info

A scary amount of information is available online. Think of all of the online forms you've filled out or the websites that allow you to log in through Facebook or other sites. User names and emails are the Social Security numbers of the Internet, says Stephenson, so guard them carefully and be creative when generating them.

With that being said, if you need to check public records, blackbookonline.com will give you access to arrest warrants, criminal records, federal records, military information, sex offenders, incident reports, parking tickets and a plethora of records you probably didn't consider. You can also search public records by state.

Again, verify the information you find because it may not be accurate.

twiangulate.com

Twiangulate.com

We can't seem to help ourselves – social media has made it too easy to post useless information for millions of people to see. We can share our feelings, our thoughts on the latest trends or our displeasure with a vendor at the touch of a button. Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are just some of the social media options.

And our love of social media has spawned a variety of programs that can help you track people by their posts. Twiangulate lets you see who's following whom, what kind of reach they have and what they've posted recently. Tweetpass can provide a map of someone's tweets, helping to identify places where they spend a lot of time like work, home or school. TweetTunnel will color code tweets to help you track who's tweeting what and find friends or associates of the person you're seeking. As their site says, they help you “chart Twitter's hidden networks.”

dualmaps.com

Dualmaps.com

Another Google product, dualmaps allows you to customize the maps you need and combine features like street view, Google maps and Bing's map features. You can get a bird's-eye view, add street names, put in markers for specific locations and create tabs with different information on the locations. The program also works on mobile devices.

batchgeo

Batchgeo.com

Another cool mapping program is Batchgeo because it makes mapping easy. It creates Google maps from all kinds of data: addresses, intersections, cities, states, zip codes – even websites – and maps out the data in an easy-to-read format.

If you import a table with information, it creates a Google map of your locations, color codes the flags according to the different groups, and when you mouse over the various flags, the information on that area will pop up from the table. Then you can save the map and import it into other documents.

Instagram

Instagram

If you're not using a mobile device as part of your research, then you're missing an entire segment of social media. Some of the newer paid programs available actually allow you to map a person's conversations via their social media posts. In addition to Snapchat (where posts doesn't actually disappear from their servers, even though they disappear users' phones), Instagram is another highly visual program that allows users to post videos and photos. It's free for all users and it can be shared in conjunction with Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. (See how we connect the dots?)

There are literally hundreds of other sites with information, videos, names, addresses and information most people think they can hide. You just need to know where to look.

Special Reports /

10 websites (besides Google) that insurance investigators can use to research claims

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