We can’t choose our families, but we can choose our friends. Unfortunately, sometimes we lose contact with them. We may have gone in different directions in our lives, and that means losing touch no matter how well-intentioned both parties may be. We may have lost all contact information and have no idea how to find someone again. In any case, you can always use your internet connection to see if you can find them online.

You should always think about what you know about your friend. If you only know his name right now, that’s fine. However, if you know where they might live, how old they are, or anything else that might help a search engine, you may have much better luck, or at least a way to get more information that might improve your search.

Try entering a name into the search engine. You should try to add any other information you may have. you can try searching Jerry Smith, New York if you know you live in New York State. If you only have the person’s name and you can’t be sure that other things you knew about them are still current, look only at the name. Use forms like “Sandy-Jones” Y Sandy-Jones instead of fair Sandy Jones for more accurate listings and matches.

You can also search places where people often hang out, at least in the abstract. Some of the most popular places for this these days are social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and professional networks like LinkedIn and Orkut are also gaining popularity. You can search through any and all of these sites (and many others) to see if you can find a profile for your old friend.

If you have an old phone number, whether it’s landline or mobile, you can try a reverse phone number lookup service. You can enter that number to see if someone is still using it or not. Some of these sites also have an advanced search that can bring up a current number for your friend.