We start by searching through the data from hundreds of agencies that hold unclaimed assets. We focus on assets with a value worth recovering and then cross-reference many different sources of information to try and locate the true owner. This is a global task and not very easy. Many people have common names, have changed their names, have relocated, have a limited social network presence, etc..
Also, companies that report unclaimed accounts have often misspelled the names and addresses of former employees. Most of the reporting companies are US based, and the old software that documented your account ownership was not able to handle characters from other alphabets.
Here are some examples:
German: umlauts (ä, ö, ü), ess-zett (ß)
French: Accented letters: â ç è é ê î ô û
There are MANY other examples of international letters, addresses, and phone numbers not matching the formats used in the US for data collection, and this is why many accounts become lost. Our experience with performing thousands of searches helps us locate YOU - the owner.