Finding a Person's Address in Israel: What You Can Check Yourself, What Is Closed, and How to Do It Lawfully

You need someone's address. Perhaps to file a claim against them, send them a cease and desist letter or collect a debt. Perhaps it is a witness you need, an heir, or an old friend you lost touch with. Israel has no open address book, and the Population Registry is closed. But there are quite a few lawful ways to reach an address, and some of them you can do yourself, today.

Why do you need the address? That determines the route

Before you start, it is worth asking why you need the address. The answer determines which tools are open to you:

• Filing a claim or sending a cease and desist letter: you need a reliable address for service to be valid.
• Collecting a debt through the Execution Office: there are official tools available to you as a creditor.
• Locating a witness or an heir: usually in coordination with a lawyer or an estate administrator.
• Renewing personal contact: the routes here are more limited, and rightly so.

What you can check yourself

Phone directories

The phone directories of the telecom companies, and online directory sites, include names, phone numbers and addresses of people who agreed to publish them. This is the first place to check. The information is not always up to date, and many people do not appear in it.

Open web search

Search for the full name, in Hebrew and in English, and in several spellings. Add words such as a city, profession or workplace. Sometimes the address appears in an article, a building committee notice, an advertisement or a business website.

Social networks

Personal and professional profiles often show the city of residence, the workplace and photos that identify an area. Even if the exact address does not appear, the workplace may be enough, for example to send a letter.

If the person runs a business

Businesses publish an address: on their website, in business directories, on maps and on invoices. A company extract from the Israeli Registrar of Companies shows the company's registered office address.

Professional registries

Licensed professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, doctors and engineers, appear in public registries that often show a work address.

Judgments and decisions

If the person was a party to legal proceedings, the judgment sometimes states the city they live in. That can narrow the search.

What is closed, and why

• The Population Registry: closed to private parties, including investigators. Only the person themselves, and bodies the law permits, can obtain information from it.
• Telecom companies: will not release a subscriber's address, nor the location of their phone.
• Banks and health funds: will not release information about customers.
• "Databases" sold online: some of them are based on information leaked from official databases. Using them may be an offense, and the information in them is usually old.

The official tools, when there are legal proceedings

At the Execution Office

A creditor who has opened a file can, in certain cases, request the debtor's address as registered in the Population Registry, through the Execution Office. This is a lawful way to obtain the registered address, but only within the file.

In court

When the defendant cannot be located after reasonable efforts, you can ask the court to approve substituted service, for example to another address, to their lawyer or in another manner the court determines. For the court to approve it, you need to show that you genuinely tried. A documented report on the tracing attempts helps a great deal.

In estates

An estate administrator and the lawyer assisting them can act through the courts to locate heirs, and the inheritance procedure itself includes a publication that allows unknown heirs to come forward.

The problem with the registered address

Many people in Israel do not live at the address registered on their ID card. They moved and did not update it, they rent an apartment, or they are registered at their parents' home. People trying to evade claims or debts sometimes leave an old address on purpose.

This is especially important when serving legal documents. Service at an address where the person does not live may be invalid, and may lead to a decision, or a judgment given in their absence, being set aside. So when something important depends on the address, it is worth verifying on the ground that the person actually lives there: the name on the mailbox, neighbors, a car that is regularly parked there.

When you should not search

If a person has deliberately cut off contact with you, and you have no legal proceedings against them, it is worth asking whether it is right to look for them. Some people hide their address to protect themselves, for example from a violent partner or from harassment.

We do not locate people for anyone who may harm them, and we do not track spouses or partners. If someone is threatening or harassing you, the right address is the police.

When you need a private investigator

When the simple checks did not help. When the person changes addresses deliberately, has moved abroad, or you have very few details about them. And when the address needs to stand up in court, not just be "probably right".

A licensed private investigator combines open sources, public registries and field work, and verifies that the person actually lives at the address found. At the end you receive a documented report that can be presented to the court and, where needed, service of the documents themselves with an affidavit of service. If all you have is a phone number, read our guide "Who called me?".

The information in this section is general and is not legal advice. Every case is assessed on its own facts.

In case of any discrepancy, the Hebrew version prevails.