Every day, numerous individuals that require, or would like to do a background check start out by punching the words "free online background check" into a search engine. And they may get some results that promise to deliver exactly what they searched for. Some may even use the terms "anything on anyone" as an enticement. I hate to rain on anybody's parade, but after I explain what goes into a thorough background check, you'll realize just just how much you're being promised some thing for nothing. Anybody that's been around the school of hard knocks knows that there merely are no free lunches. In the event you truly wish to conduct a free background check, in the sense that you don't wish to invest any money on the information you obtain, it may even be feasible. You will find numerous resources from which you are able to glean info to compile a free background check.As you might have guessed, a "free online background check" is one where you do the legwork. If you have much more time than money, it may be just the solution you require. You will find myriad sources that are accessible to you that will yield useful information on your subject. A good starting point is a search on the web. This will bring up most info that's accessible on the web on open websites, meaning that no login or membership is required. The drawback is that a common name will occasionally yield hundreds or even thousands of results. Even with other identifying info, it can take a considerable amount of time to sort via the information to figure out what is helpful. Chances are that the info returned will in most instances not be directly helpful in your pursuit of a totally free background check. It is likely to be things like addresses and phone numbers. However, it may also yield clues as to former employers, organizations that the individual belonged to, along with other affiliations. With that info, it becomes feasible to move on to the next step of contacting those entities to inquire about the subject. Additionally, it will alert you to any media attention to the person's activities, which could be extremely useful info.
Some websites, especially social networking sites, have a setting that makes it to ensure that search engines do not discover a person's page. What this means is that it's a great idea to not stop with just a fundamental web search via a search engine. Go to particular social networking sites, like facebook and myspace, and conduct a search there. Other services such as yahoo and hotmail are also starting to offer networking services and also the subject might have a public profile there. Professional networking websites, such as linkedin, are also definitely worth searching. These types of searches will once once more not necessarily tell you if the subject has a criminal record. However, a persons associations and affiliations can tell you a great deal about them, as can knowing who their friends are. Other sites to check are phone listings, both on the web and in phone books. These can help build an address history by giving current contact info, and possibly confirming or even supplying previous addresses. The reason an address history is so important will turn out to be apparent in a discussion of county courthouse records.
A "free background check" is only made possible by the reality that most county courthouse records are public. However, it must be mentioned that the possibility exists that regardless of this public status, there might be an administrative fee to access them. Only after you have built an address history of a subject can the actual search for criminal records begin. In short, this will need a trip to every courthouse in counties where the subject lived. Various states have differing rules as to how easily accessible records are, and what info is included within the public records. The differences mainly revolve around how arrests and criminal proceedings that do not result in convictions are handled. Some states do not allow these to remain on record although others do. Regardless of which info is included in public records, there might be requirements on you prior to access to the information is granted. Usually, you must have a legitimate reason and must be able to explain this reason before access is granted. If this appears like a roadblock, then maybe the factors for obtaining the info within the first location should be questioned. Needless to say, a county courthouse records search could involve a considerable quantity of time and traveling expenses if the subject has moved around a lot. Already, you may start to see that the notion of obtaining a "free background check" using this technique is extremely a lot wishful thinking. Even in the event you get away with out paying for any info, your time and effort as well as the money you invest to get to where you can find the information is likely going to be considerable.
It ought to be pretty obvious by now that even in an age of seemingly limitless readily accessible info, this does not necessarily include background information. Some thing else to note is that it's no simpler for anyone else to collect the information than what you would need to do. To make records available for a computer search, all the paper records must first be digitized. There merely is no shortcut to doing this. Every and every page should be run through a scanner. After scanning, it's just an image to the computer so it is not search-able. It should then be processed with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to make it text that can be searched. This must be done at every one of the over two thousand county courthouses around the nation. Performing it just once won't suffice either. Every single day new records are added as new crimes are prosecuted... an innocent person exonerated...an old case solved...or as records are expunged or sealed. Most states have taken the initiative to digitize their own records, and to make new records digital. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that this information is available to background check businesses, even for a price. As you are able to imagine, all this happens at a tremendous price. In short, someone offering you a "free background check" is offering you a totally free lunch, and as you already know, there just are no free lunches.
You may then make the next logical step and ask why these services offer a free background check in the initial location. Simply put, this practice is similar to what is known in the retail industry as a loss leader. A retail outlet will sometimes offer a product at or below price to entice shoppers into their store who they hope will purchase other items. Essentially, the online services are hoping to do the same thing. However, the similarity ends at the point where they've gotten you to click on the link. In a store, there's a tangible product you can pick up and look at and know what you are getting. In the event you like it, you are able to pay for it and leave the store and your time will not have been completely wasted. For the factors outlined earlier, it should be obvious that the product being offered by an online service, a totally free background check, is just not going to happen. It costs them far too a lot to give away. As a parallel, have you ever seen a freebie worth more than a couple of dollars? If you conduct a search they'll provide you some thing, for example a name and address and tell you that some records were discovered. In the event you have ever conducted a totally free vehicle history records search, you'll know exactly what I mean. Then they will provide to sell you the records they found for a price, possibly along with a bunch of other "products." Although you might then be inclined to pay for the information since you would have expected to pay for it anyway, it is likely extremely much inside your interest to avoid these services entirely. After all, if a salesperson lied to you to get you into a store, how inclined are you going to be to purchase from them?
