These online reports anyone can get kinda creep me out, but mostly because what my mother did.

When my dad got remarried 15+ years after the divorce, my mother found out because my sister had to open her fat mouth.

My mother paid to get a full on report run on my dad's new wife. Listings of property, how much was owed on them, the tax payments, I mean just about everything on her, and then confronted ME about the information she found and tried to put a bad spin on it.

I lost a lot of respect for my mother that day, and don't think she can gain it back.

redcliffe: Yet another example of how the USA is the arsehole of the world. It'll be funny when the USA is the somalia of the west.

Sez the guy flying a plane built in the USA. BTW, get your teeth cleaned.

Mock26: If you are not willing to do the time.... What? Oh, wait. Never mind.

If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about...

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: Did you actually read TFA?

Either your sarcasm meter is broken or my snark is off...

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: The thing is, these problems don't affect the people selling or using the bad info, so there's little incentive for them to commit the extra work and cost in fixing the problem.

This. And the main reason so many employers do background checks is for liability reasons -- this is all driven by the courts, not by employment as such. It's now so easy to do a background check that not doing one can be construed as a failure of due diligence, and therefore negligent.

So businesses pay for the background to cover their insurance liability. The End. If the insurance companies and civil courts don't care if the reports are accurate, then employers won't care either. This isn't about not hiring criminals. It's about not getting sued because of hiring criminals.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: I've embarrassed myself much worse than this in the past, and surely will again.

If I had $1 for every time that has happened to me I would be worth THOUSANDS!!!

When I threatened to drop my car insurance and sue them for using my ex wife's info against me, it's amazing how fast their tune changed... And no, I didn't get a refund for the over charging me... Which is why I dropped them in the end, after I found better insurance.

But that's only 1 small piece of the pie. When your potential landlord looks at a history and sees your son's 3 felony arrests on YOUR record and refuses to let you move in, does he have to tell you why? Nope. Just that he refused to let you move in, and you're still without a place to stay... Lather, Rinse, repeat...

This will not get "fixed" until it happens to some "lawmaker" or their close relative, then they will write a knee jerk reaction of a bill and claim it's "For the people's protection" even though all it will do is provide new loopholes that won't fix anything...

And yes, I work in a job where any future problems with my history WILL be held against me... lol

If her unemployment benefits had been cut off after 6 months this never would have happened. I don't know why liberals keep trying to help people, when all they ever do is make things worse.

apoptotic: Oh when I get a criminal record check I know it's mine, because I know what I've been convicted of, and I have to go to the police station for fingerprint verification every time anyone wants a copy of the report.

This is what bugs me.

If I want a copy of my own criminal record, I need to go get fingerprinted, pay a lot of money, and then it's illegal for me to show it to a potential employer (at least in California).

However, any business can pay a few bucks and get it all. But, those background check companies won't sell someone their own data.