Distributed personal information aggregator

A method of indexing information available from public sources over a network and corresponding to a person via a personal information aggregation system that includes a personal information aggregation system that includes a first server, a processor, and a database of profiles stored in a memory device, comprising:

• receiving at the first server, data associated with a person, the data associated with the person being publicly available over a network and including name data comprising at least a first name and a last name and including other data;
• using the processor to determine whether the other data includes a unique item of information associated with the person, and when the other data includes a unique item of information associated with the person, performing the steps of:
• querying the database of profiles, the database of profiles including a plurality of data profiles, each of the data profiles having data corresponding a previously-profiled person, to determine whether the name data and unique item of information of the data associated with the person match name data and a unique item of information of one of the plurality of data profiles of the database of profiles;
• merging the data associated with the person with the one of the plurality of data profiles when both the name data and unique item of information of the data associated with the person match the name data and the unique item of information of the one of the plurality of data profiles;
• determining whether the other data includes a location when the name data and unique item of information associated with the person do not match the name data and unique item of information of the one of the plurality of data profiles, and when the other data does not include a location, creating a partial-profile data record including the name data and the other data;
• querying the database of profiles to identify data profiles having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is in a geographic vicinity of the location of the other data;
• merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is in the geographic vicinity of the location of the other data;
• and
• calculating a frequency for instances of the name data having a location within a distance threshold of the geographic vicinity, and wherein merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is within the distance threshold of the location of the other data comprises only merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is within the distance threshold of the location of the other data when the frequency is less than a predetermined threshold, otherwise creating and storing a new data profile including the name data and other data for the person.

A method of searching for personal information available from public sources over a network, comprising:

• receiving at a client computer search-request data associated with a person;
• transmitting from the client computer over a network, a request to search for personal information associated with the person to a personal information aggregation system, the search request including the search-request data associated with the person;
• receiving at the client computer search-result data transmitted from the personal information aggregation system in response to the search request, the search result data including the personal information associated with the person, and retrieved from a database of the personal information aggregation system, the personal information aggregation system including a first server, a processor, and the database stored in a memory device, and configured to create and store the database by implementing the steps of:
• receiving at the first server, data associated with the person, the data associated with the person being publicly available over a network and including name data comprising at least a first name and a last name and including other data;
• using the processor to determine whether the other data includes a unique item of information associated with the person, and when the other data includes a unique item of information associated with the person, performing the steps of:
• querying the database including a plurality of data profiles, each of the data profiles having data corresponding a previously-profiled person, to determine whether the name data and unique item of information of the data associated with the person match name data and a unique item of information of one of the plurality of data profiles of the database of profiles;
• merging the data associated with the person with the one of the plurality of data profiles when the name data and unique item of information of the data associated with the person match the name data and the unique item of information of the one of the plurality of data profiles;
• determining whether the other data includes a location when the name data and unique item of information associated with the person do not match the name data and unique item of information of the one of the plurality of data profiles, and when the other data does not include a location, creating a partial-profile data record including the name data and the other data, and when the other data does include a location and the name data matches the name data of the one of the plurality of data profiles, perform the steps of:
• querying the database of profiles to identify data profiles having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is in a geographic vicinity of the location of the other data;
• and
• merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is in the geographic vicinity of the location of the other data, thereby indexing publicly-available information of the person;
• calculating a frequency for instances of the name data having a location within a distance threshold of the geographic vicinity and wherein merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is within the distance threshold of the location of the other data comprises only merging the data associated with the person with an identified data profile having name data that matches the name data of the person, and having a location that is within the distance threshold of the location of the other data when the frequency is less than a predetermined threshold, otherwise creating and storing a new data profile including the name data and other data for the person.