Making informed decisions and minimizing your risk involves having all available intelligence.
Whether it’s a potential business partner, employee, contractor, associate, or even romantic interest, you must uncover any red flags relating to that person before it’s too late.
The free tools below can help you to reduce the threat to your livelihood, financial well-being, and personal safety.
Tool #1: http://www.dirtsearch.org
Dirtsearch claims to be a “One Stop Free Online & Public Records Searching” site. It gives you social networking information from LinkedIn and other sites, data retrieved from phone directories, deep web search results, and available public records (including criminal history information). It also offers a quick photo search with the results displayed on the first page of the “quick search results.”
By the way, it’s perfectly legal and ethical to collect public records when doing a background check. However, keep in mind that not all public record information is available from any single site, some of it may not be valid (so double check everything), and a “criminal” charge may be something harmless like streaking at midnight on Halloween, or some other victimless crime.
Tool #2: http://www.cvgadget.com
Cvgadget is helpful because it organizes Internet search results under the following categories: Google searches; Google images; Google documents; Twitter and other social networking sites; blogs; and Google news.
Tool #3: http://www.peekyou.com
Peekyou is a public records search engine, but verify everything because you’ll undoubtedly get some erroneous information in the results, such as people linked to the subject, and former addresses. Be advised that Peekyou directs you to public records search firms like Peoplesmart, which then makes you offers such as the Comprehensive Background Report for $29.95, which includes the following, “when available”: contact information and address history; nationwide criminal check and offenses (caution—these basic checks are notoriously inaccurate and can easily exclude criminal histories because it’s too time consuming to check every state and local database); bankruptcies, liens, and judgments; and more.
As well as to help you locate someone, the tools listed above can help you avoid tragedy and remain unscathed in your personal and professional dealings.
Other, more sophisticated background check and security investigations options exist, including $300+ public records scouring services, and $2000–$10,000+ for professional investigators to examine all sorts of unique avenues, including past personal and professional contacts. I offer several valuable, unconventional security investigations appraisals, which are excellent supplements to those listed above.
An aside, It’s possible that your reputation may be suffering due to unfavorable or even defamatory information about you on the Internet. To repair your reputation, for a fee, services like http://defendmyname.com/ and http://www.reputation.com/ will seek out and even remove any disparaging information about you on-line.
Copyright © 2013 Scott Petullo