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Welcome to the fourth entry in my 鈥淯ltimate Guide鈥� series here on The Simple Dollar. If you want to hop back to the first three, here are some quick links:
Ultimate Guide to
Ultimate Guide to
Ultimate Guide to

This fourth entry is about background checks, a topic that I鈥檝e touched on quite a few times on The Simple Dollar but never really dug into.

Why background checks?听Background checks are an absolutely vital part of the process of finding a roommate or a boarder or hiring someone.听If you鈥檙e looking for someone to rent out a room in your home or you鈥檙e thinking about hiring someone to do some work on your property, you need to have a sense of who this person is and what their background is. It鈥檚 a simple matter of protecting your own safety.

The level of background check you do is really up to you. Many of the steps you can take are things you can do on your own for free, but a professional service can often do a deeper job. Let鈥檚 dig into what you can do on your own first.

Before You Start鈥�
Before you start checking on someone鈥檚 background, you need to obtain some information from the person you鈥檙e searching. For some situations, like choosing a roommate, there are reasonable limits on what you can ask or what you can expect them to provide 鈥� info like a current address and current employment is reasonable, but a Social Security number is not.

I would suggest that having at least a person鈥檚 full name, their place of employment, and their current address should be the minimum information I would want before engaging in an arrangement with them.

Shared Information
The first thing to do is to browse through information that people have shared about themselves online, which is often a surprising amount. There are several tools you can use very easily to find this shared information.

听is an obvious first step. Just type in their name and see what comes up. Of course, you always need to apply some common sense to the results because there are often multiple people with the same name. This is where current places of employment and residency can be important.

Another place I often check is听. Individuals with a professional history often list their entire professional record and educational record there, which can help to verify what info you find from other sources.

Another good site for the aggregation of public information is听. It peels information from a lot of different public sites and attempts to put them all together for you in one swoop.

Generally, these sites only include info that people choose to share about themselves online, but you can usually find out quite a bit. Just be sure that the person you look up is actually the same person you鈥檙e checking up on.

Legal Information
You鈥檙e also going to want to examine the legal history of people. Have they been involved with run-ins with the law in the past?

One key place to start is the听, which keeps track of where convicted sex offenders currently live and what crimes they鈥檝e committed.

Another useful tool is your state鈥檚 court records, which varies from state to state. You can start this journey by visiting the听听and use that site to find your own state鈥檚 court system website.

These tools should help you find out about a person鈥檚 legal past.

Hiring a Background Check Service
Some people may just prefer to have a professional do this kind of work. In that case, there are background check services that will use many of the tools above and other ones to find information about a person as per your request.

First of all, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can only use authorized credit reporting services if you鈥檙e doing this type of check, and it must be authorized by the person that you鈥檙e checking. If you鈥檙e doing this with an unauthorized service and then use that information to reject the person you鈥檙e checking, you can wind up in hot water.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau听.

Generally, you should only request this type of search if you鈥檙e entering into a formal business arrangement with someone where significant money will change hands 鈥� a landlord or an employer. If you make such a request of a potential roommate, they likely will not sign off on such a thing and won鈥檛 provide the needed information听even if听they鈥檙e completely on the up-and-up because of the amount of trust required by them.

As for paid background checking services, they generally provide a听, usually with a bunch of false positives, and if you want to screen all of those, you鈥檙e moving beyond the realm of a background check and into the realm of private investigation, which can be very expensive and is somewhat outside the realm of what鈥檚 necessary when checking out a prospective tenant or roommate.

Which Service Should You Use?
It really comes down to the kind of information you want.

For the most part, the free court checks described above will find legal information about a person and won鈥檛 cost you a dime. I would consider those free searches along with references (which I would check) to be adequate information about a roommate.

If you鈥檙e bringing in a tenant or hiring an employee, I would want to also do a credit check, which you would need authorization for. Here鈥檚 an听, but I would work with a lawyer to make sure that you鈥檙e on firm legal ground before asking for such information.

Naturally, sketchy people will be able to avoid many of these checks, but that鈥檚 true no matter how deep you go. These are simple steps to keep you safer, but nothing keeps you perfectly safe.

Also, you may sometimes find information about people that you find surprising or shocking, but it doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean that they鈥檙e not the right match for the type of relationship you鈥檙e seeking with them. There鈥檚 also the concern that you might not be finding information about them, but about someone with the same name or a similar name. Save hard judgments for hard facts.

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