Background checks can reveal damaging info about you, and may even cause you to miss a great opportunity for a job. The worst part is that some of this information may not be entirely correct. Take the case of my friend, for instance. When a background check is conducted on his name, he appears as if he is a criminal. This is because he has the same name as criminal in California.
Why It’s Important to Do a Background Check on Yourself
Not caring about what might come up when a credit or criminal check is done against your name is a big mistake and it can potentially prevent you from getting your dream job, getting a loan approval or renting an apartment. Below are some of the reasons why it is in your best interest to conduct a background check on yourself.
- There could be a mistake regarding your credit report, especially in the case of an identity theft. In fact, identity theft is the leading consumer complaint, which is why you need to pull all the stops to ensure that you are not a victim.
- In the event that you have never faced any criminal conviction, you could want to know the sort of information that shows up before you apply for a job. A background check on yourself also helps you to ensure that if a criminal record against you was expunged, it does not show up anymore.
- A background check might help you know and remove a picture of you plus a comment that you made several years ago that could be embarrassing.
These things will come up once a background check is done against your name and will not help your chances of getting a loan approved or landing your dream job. The good news is that there are things you can do to remove or correct this potentially damaging info.
How You Can Run Background Check on Yourself
When it comes to running a background check on you, there are basically two approaches. They are:
- Using a Professional Service
This is the easiest way to conduct a background check on yourself. Surely you will pay some money for this approach. However, it will also save you much time and the data dug up will be located conveniently in one report. Take advantage of the background search of professional companies to comb through troves of databases and public records instantly. It is easy. All you need to do is to fill out the required information, press a button and everything else will be taken care of. Some of the recommended services are Spokeo.com, Intelius.com, InstantCheckMate.com and CheckThem.com among others.
- Free online checks
If you have some time in your hands, you can go about doing a check on yourself by yourself. Here are the steps:
- Do a simple search via a top search engine such as Google. It may reveal some false things about you or information you wouldn’t want to be found in public domain. But be ready to search for this information on multiple pages, based upon your popularity. Also, such a check does not reveal much about your credit or criminal background, and you may not be able to know if you are a victim of identity theft.
- In order to know whether or not someone has stolen your identity and used it for criminal purposes, try to do a search on court records. The vast majority of these records tend to be public. However, this also comes with a challenge. Since court records are at the state level, you will have to comb through every state to ensure that no one has used your identity maliciously.
- Credit reports are available to all consumers freely once a year from the 3 main credit reporting agencies which are experian.com, transunion.com and Equifax.com. By doing a check with the agencies above, you will be able to know whether your identity has been used to take undue credit.
Doing a background check on yourself is not something that you should be ignoring. It could be that there is damning information about you and you don’t know it. Also, expunged criminal record against you could still be showing and this might really hurt your job chances. Using a professional service is the best way to do a check on yourself.
