As much as I dislike running into creeps occasionally on Craigslist or MySpace, I’ve come to appreciate these Web sites for their use in exposing creeps.

I frequently use the Internet to research just about any person I come across, whether that’s a buyer or seller on Craigslist or just some Joe Schmoe I met on the street. Part of it is the reporter inside of me, but, it’s also because I’m a curious person by nature, and, yes, I admit it, a snoop.

Typically I search both the name and e-mail address (or any known demographic information) on Google, MySpace or Facebook.

Not only am I wanting to find out general information about someone (like if some guy is single), but I’m also looking for the clues to their character.

Sometimes, I even go a step further and check the district court case database. That’s come in handy as I vet potential sources for news stories. I recently averted someone who was claiming they had bad townhome management, but it turned out this person also had a lengthy history of evictions for not paying rent.  

And twice now my sleuthing has saved myself from potentially bad roommate situations.

The first case was a man advertising a room for rent in his home. I used details about him to find his MySpace site and determined he might be a porn addict. (I’ve pretty much decided to stay clear of males since.)

The second time came this month with a Craigslist ad for a young woman seeking another female roommate with a really cheap rental price.

The person who responded to the ad wasn’t the tenant, but rather the place’s caretaker.

The man seemed nice enough and coherent in his e-mail, but I still thought this was odd. So I automatically Googled him. I discovered a Twin Cities man by the same name who is a real estate investment advisor (he also had a PO BOX set up for mail-order get-rich schemes), and he supposedly works rental property management. If this was him, as a long-time investor, and at his age, it seemed odd he would be a caretaker, and especially for one of the less desirable apartment buildings in Shakopee.

This didn’t sit right with me. So I searched his name on MySpace and found a long-discarded Web site. The age matched the real estate investor guy. Then I researched MySpace using his e-mail address and the same site popped up.  

This is what his Web site said: “Who I'd like to meet:
“Sexy, open-minded women who are either, not in this order: single, dating, engaged, or married, who are looking for something casual with overnight expectations.”

Isssh.

I went further and checked the man’s criminal and civil case records on-line. I cross-referenced his middle name and address history found with the free background check on Whitepages, and they matched.

His civil record included a lot of evictions of tenants, as to be expected. The criminal record included violation of an order of protection. Red flag.

Although I’m not 100 percent positive this Craigslist guy (who for sure had the smutty MySpace account) is the same person as the real estate investor and the man in the criminal database, there was so much overlap I’m pretty darn sure.

Needless to say, I e-mailed this man and back and told him I was no longer interested. Not only would I not trust the female tenant if she was friends with him, but who would want such a creepy apartment caretaker?

The moral of my story? Always investigate a stranger. Have a weird feeling about someone? Expand your search. It’s amazing what trails people leave about themselves.

Call it female intuition, but more times than not, my suspicions or hesitancy is confirmed. Sometimes there’s nothing I can do with what I’ve come to know about someone (even when working on news stories, sometimes a person’s history of lawsuits or criminal actions doesn’t rise to the level of obligation to mention). But it’s always nice to have that info in my back pocket in case something in the future ever does come up with that person.

Now, as snoopy as I am, I expect others may want to search my criminal record. I’ll save you the time and readily admit, I have a heavy foot.

The plus side to having all this information at one’s fingers is you can help protect yourself from seedy people.

The down side, of course, is that people do change and mature, but the electronic record is permanent . . . or at least as long as Google continues to cache it.