What Information Do I Need to Run a Background Check on Someone?

It is fairly straightforward to check the background of a love interest, a new neighbor, or a prospective tenant or employee in the digital age. A Google search can net interesting and important results. Similarly, working with a third-party service like CheckPeople.com can take you far if you want to screen someone you’ve just met. This article discusses the main preliminary information required as well as a few less common but equally important personal details.

Basic Information

The main information you need to run a background check includes the person’s name, current address, social security number, and birth date. This last identifier is critical when it comes to searching for criminal history. You will need to ascertain where the person has lived to perform a thorough criminal history search, making current and past addresses indispensable.

Marital status is also essential, particularly when dealing with a female. You need to know any last names they’ve used in the past. This is important for criminal and general record checks alike.

Often, public records are indexed only by name. Less frequently, the date of birth is included as well. Social security numbers are used to index private databases.

Phone numbers, driver’s license numbers, and names of relatives are also useful. If you’re conducting a job interview, ask the person when their birthday is, where they went to school, or where they’re from. Make a copy of their driver’s license to go along with their resume.

If you can’t ask such direct questions for whatever reason, you could try an approach known as the erroneous conclusion. You could say, “I bet you were born in March.” They could confirm or respond, “No, I was born on July 17^th.”

Search Address History

Confirm your data once you’ve gathered as much as possible. You will find out about current and past addresses through an Address History report, which credit bureaus can issue. This could reveal other names the person went by or name variations. If the information provided about or by the person doesn’t yield any matches, this should be a warning to you.

Simple data such as lists of associates, roommates, or relatives can take you far in your search for pertinent information. An address search showing past or present residents with different last names but of the same age should raise another red flag. You need to keep investigating if the same last name with different first names appears.

An address history report will also retrieve aliases or maiden names, address history with phone numbers, roommates or relatives living at the same address, age, date of birth, neighbors’ names, and periods of residence.

Other Sources

A search of the National Sex Offender website of the Justice Department is recommended if you feel uneasy about a prospective partner. Selective internet use and person to person fact checks remain the best free resources to confirm personal data. Don’t be afraid to comb social media. Check PeekYou out for a social media profile collection. The website Snoop Station can direct you to databases containing general information, court records, and marital status.

The Lowdown on Paid Background Check Services

To ensure due diligence is carried out before you let someone new into your business or personal life, a paid screening service is a worthwhile investment. The best providers will report employment history, social network profiles, and sex offender registry data. You’ll get a comprehensive overview of someone’s financial and criminal history. These screenings normally provide instant results.

Checking references and verifying resume data is the best free option. As personal references can’t be relied on 100% of the time, we recommend checking business ones as well. Ask job candidates about promotions, work-related tasks and responsibilities, and employment dates.

A good starting point for state-specific and local criminal history records is the National Center for State Courts. It’s possible to view court records online.

Be Smart

Investing money and time into checking someone’s background can be a hard decision to make. It’s more reasonable to decide in favor of it. If not, we risk letting an unscrupulous employee, a con artist, or a psychopath into our workplace or our home.