Skip trace — the practice of locating a person whose current address is unknown — is a regulated activity in the United States. The regulation that governs it is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., and the regulation cuts a sharp line between two uses of the same underlying data.
What FCRA governs
The FCRA is a consumer protection statute. It governs "consumer reports" — information from consumer reporting agencies used to determine eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing, or "any other purpose authorized by section 1681b" of the act. The "permissible purposes" list in §1681b is finite and specific.
Critically, the FCRA does NOT govern every database lookup. It governs use of consumer reports. The same underlying database record (an address history, an employer record) can be a consumer report or not depending on the purpose of the inquiry.
The litigation-support exception
Section 1681b(a)(3)(A) permits a consumer report to be used in connection with a credit transaction. Section 1681b(a)(1) permits use in response to a court order or subpoena. Subsection (a)(3)(F)(i) permits use in connection with a "legitimate business need" for a transaction initiated by the consumer.
For process serving, the practical authority comes from a different angle: many states (California included) authorize process servers to access certain databases for the specific purpose of locating parties to active or imminent civil matters. The activity is treated as litigation support, not consumer reporting, when:
- The purpose is to locate a party to a current or imminent civil case
- The skip trace is requested by a party to that case, their attorney, or their authorized agent
- The output is used only for service of process, witness location, or judgment enforcement
When those conditions are met, the trace is not a "consumer report" for FCRA purposes. The boundary is not theoretical — courts have addressed it directly in cases like *Trans Union Corp. v. FTC*, 295 F.3d 42 (D.C. Cir. 2002).
What Servd will trace
Servd performs skip trace for the following litigation-support purposes:
- Locating a named defendant to serve a complaint or summons
- Locating a witness to serve a deposition subpoena
- Locating a judgment debtor for asset discovery and post-judgment enforcement
- Locating a respondent to serve a family law petition or protective order
In each case, the skip trace ticket records the case caption, the requesting party, and the litigation purpose. The output is delivered only to the requesting party and is used only for the purpose stated at request.
What Servd will not trace
We will not perform skip trace for:
- Employment screening — pre-hire background checks are governed by FCRA §1681b(b) and require specific disclosure and authorization steps that traditional skip trace does not satisfy
- Tenant screening — rental application background checks fall under FCRA §1681b(a)(3)(F) and require the consumer report compliance stack
- Credit decisions — extending credit to a consumer requires a permissible-purpose consumer report from a CRA, not a skip trace
- Locating witnesses to a private dispute outside of filed or imminent litigation — if there is no case, there is no litigation purpose
- Personal inquiries — locating an ex, a former friend, a deadbeat parent outside of an active civil case
- Debt collection contact — collecting on a consumer debt is governed by the FDCPA and requires specific permissible-purpose compliance we do not facilitate
The line is bright. If the activity falls on the consumer-protection side of the line, we don't do it.
What you get when we run a trace
A skip trace report from Servd includes:
- A primary current address with confidence score
- Up to 2 alternative addresses with confidence scores
- Phone numbers associated with the subject (if available)
- An employer reference, if discoverable through litigation-purpose channels
- Date of last verified update on each data point
We do not include credit data, credit scores, criminal history, or consumer-report identifiers in a litigation skip trace. Those are different products under different regulatory regimes that Servd does not offer.
What this costs
Servd nationwide: $80 flat. Skip + serve combo workflow at the same flat rate — when an address bounces, the trace runs automatically and dispatch follows. One ticket, one fee.