Since public records are accessible for free review by public, many people are searching them from time to time, whenever such need occurs. The most frequent motive for them doing so must be natural human wish to avoid facing the unwanted circumstances or dealing with unwanted people. Especially this is the case with criminal records, for no criminal or felon may be hoped to tell you he is on the record. Of course, not all people with a past criminal history are dangerous, but knowing who you are dealing with never hurts, right?
Be it criminal related or other type of public record you are searching for, the search itself is normally not difficult to run. If you know where to search, finding what you want just using Google won't be an issue. If you are a novice in the Internet, then there's a whole wealth of both free and paid websites offering assistance and online tools for searching public records. As with everything, the quality and the reliability of the data they provide differs, even with the paid sites spending lots on a regular basis to keep their records database complete and up to date.
Searching public records, be it criminal, court, civil, divorce, sex offender or any other type, may reveal a lot of things, starting from someone you know as a nice and helpful neighbor being a convicted sex offender to minor details of absolutely no importance, like the brand of cigarettes he smokes, or the perfume she likes to use.
But even if it would be funny to question people's right to search for the information on the Internet, gathering personal or business information contained in public records and using it on some instances may constitute a serious law offence, if done in an improper manner.
Let's take criminal records, for example. Practically everyone who ever applied for a job or for a license must have been the subject of a criminal record search. But did they get a consent from you to run the search? Only as long as individual or a body have some form of written agreement signed by the person for running a background check on him/her against criminal records databases, the search of the sort for employment/licensing purposes will be legal. Otherwise the screening might end up with the investigators facing a criminal charge.
Be it criminal related or other type of public record you are searching for, the search itself is normally not difficult to run. If you know where to search, finding what you want just using Google won't be an issue. If you are a novice in the Internet, then there's a whole wealth of both free and paid websites offering assistance and online tools for searching public records. As with everything, the quality and the reliability of the data they provide differs, even with the paid sites spending lots on a regular basis to keep their records database complete and up to date.
Searching public records, be it criminal, court, civil, divorce, sex offender or any other type, may reveal a lot of things, starting from someone you know as a nice and helpful neighbor being a convicted sex offender to minor details of absolutely no importance, like the brand of cigarettes he smokes, or the perfume she likes to use.
But even if it would be funny to question people's right to search for the information on the Internet, gathering personal or business information contained in public records and using it on some instances may constitute a serious law offence, if done in an improper manner.
Let's take criminal records, for example. Practically everyone who ever applied for a job or for a license must have been the subject of a criminal record search. But did they get a consent from you to run the search? Only as long as individual or a body have some form of written agreement signed by the person for running a background check on him/her against criminal records databases, the search of the sort for employment/licensing purposes will be legal. Otherwise the screening might end up with the investigators facing a criminal charge.