If you are hiring a new employee (even a household employee, like a part-time house cleaner or a babysitter), you might want to do a background check. Even if you are not hiring someone, you might want to perform a background check on someone for other reasons, or you might want to make sure what a potential employer or landlord will see about you is accurate.
When performing a background check as a potential employer, landlord, credit provider, or insurance provider, you must use a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA). A CRA must follow certain standards for data protection and dispute resolution. If you reject someone based on information that was not obtained from a CRA, you could end up facing a lawsuit or fine.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) maintains a list of CRAs. It is divided into categories such as Credit Reporting, Employment Screening, and Tenant Screening. You do not have to get one from each category; you only need to select the categories you feel are relevant to the application.
If you are not required to use a CRA (for example, you are checking out a romantic partner or wanting to check up on a potential roommate), you can use some free resources to gather information. PeekYou combs social media sites for information people have made available. Background check company Been Verified has an app that will allow you to make one free check per month. Finally, you can look at the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website. Finally, you can conduct a simple Google search, but you should be careful to make sure any information that comes up is actually about the person you are checking and not someone with the same name.
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