How To Do A Background Check On Yourself With Instant Checkmate

How To: Running A Background Check On Yourself

If someone pulled your background check online, what would they see? Does your report show you to be a model citizen, experienced employee, and responsible social media user? Or does it paint a picture of someone others should stay away from?

As background checking friends, dates, and acquaintances becomes more common, it’s important to know what people see when they dive into your public records.

Here’s how you can can do a background check on yourself.

1. Write Down Your Past Addresses

This step is particularly important if you have a common name like John Smith or Mary Johnson. Remember all the cities where you have previously lived and write them down for quick reference.

2. Enter Your Name, State, and Age Into The Search Box

The more details you enter into the search box, the more refined your results will be when you background check yourself. Enter your full name, the state where you currently live, and your age.

3. Find Your Report

In some cases, you’ll only see your report in the results page. But more likely, you’ll see a handful of results, each representing a person who matches some of your details.

4. Examine Every Part of The Report

Now that you’ve found the right report, examine it closely section by section.

Personal

The personal section lists your basic information, such as your name, age, possible photos, education, and job experience. If you don’t want certain entries in the job experience or education sections to appear, it’s easy to remove them. You can even remove photos if they’re innaccurate (or you just find them unflattering).

Contact

The contact section might list several email address and phone numbers you’ve had throughout your life. You can edit these to keep them up to date.

Location

This may include current and past addresses. If you have recently moved, your current address might not appear.

Criminal Records

The criminal records section searches for hundreds of millions of records from local, state, and federal databases in all 50 states. This can include everything from major felonies to minor speeding tickets.

Instant Checkmate categorizes criminal records into three categories: likely criminal records, possible criminal records, and unlikely criminal records. The difference between the categories is the number of data points that correspond between the criminal record and the person. It cross-checks five data points total:

• First name
• Last name
• Middle initial
• Date of birth
• State

A “likely” criminal record is one where either four or five of the data points match. A “possible” criminal record means that three out of five data points match. An “unlikely” record means there is a match for fewer than three data points.

Social

If you’re on the job hunt or regularly work with clients, a clean social media presence is essential. The social media section of your report might show all of the social medias you’ve created over the years.

Survey the social media accounts to see if there’s anything you are uncomfortable with other people seeing. Did you have an old Twitter account that you used to troll people during your more immature years? Did you forget that you used to be active on a Pokémon forum? Is there perhaps an old account on a dating social media network that you forgot to delete?

Remember: when people research you, they might get a faulty impression based solely on information they see online. After you check your your social media accounts, you can go to those sites to clean up your digital footprint.

5. Background Check Yourself Further With A Premium Report

When you sign up for an Instant Checkmate membership, you’re entitled to an unlimited number of standard Instant Checkmate reports. However, you have the option of upgrading any Standard Report to a Premium Report for an additional fee. Premium Reports contain all of the information in a Standard Report, plus a whole host of other information.

A Premium Report might contain the following information:

• Civil judgments
• Corporate affiliations
• UCC filings
• Properties owned
• Email addresses
• Accident info (Florida)
• Tax liens
• Professional licenses
• Foreclosures
• Neighbors
• Business associates

Premium Reports cost an additional fee because they contain more hard-to-get and sensitive information, such as personal financial data. Not everybody is going to view premium data about you, but it’s helpful to see this data anyway, just so you know everything that is connected to your name.

6. Turn On Notifications

Instant Checkmate background check reports are constantly being updated with new information. You have a right to know if anything new is added. For a small, one-time fee, you can receive notifications on an unlimited number reports.

When you turn on notifications for your own background check report, you’ll receive an email alert every time more data is included in the report. This keeps you constantly up to speed about how your background check report makes you appear to others online.

Know How Others See You By Background Checking Yourself

Your neighbors, your friends, and even potential dates might pull your background check in order to know more about you. Be sure that that you leave a good impression when they do.

By running a background check on yourself first, you can help ensure that people get the right idea about what kind of person you are.