BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Technology Reporter

If your kids are heading out for trick-or-treating this Halloween, you probably know where the

best candy is, but do you know who lives in every house along the route?

If there’s a convicted sex offender nearby, you’d want to know before your kids knock on that door.

The U.S. Department of Justice makes that information easy to find through a free online tool: the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, or NSOPW.gov.

The website is named after Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old North Dakota college student who was abducted and murdered in 2003 by a registered sex offender. Her case led to new laws and the creation of this nationwide database that pulls together information from every state, U.S. territory, and many tribal jurisdictions.

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