If you want to know how to find someone’s background information, start with three free federal tools and your state’s public records: PACER for federal court cases, the national sex offender registry at nsopw.gov, and the vital records office in the state where a birth, death, or marriage happened. County websites cover property deeds and local court filings. Commercial services bundle a lot of this into one report for a fee. One line matters before you begin: gathering information out of personal curiosity is treated very differently under federal law than pulling a report to decide whether to hire, rent to, or extend credit to someone.
What Public Records Actually Cover
Government agencies at every level hold records that are generally open to the public. The categories people search most often are:
- Vital records — birth, death, and marriage certificates, held by state vital records offices in the state where the event occurred.
- Court records — criminal case histories, civil lawsuits, and bankruptcy filings. Bankruptcy filings are explicitly public by federal law, with only narrow exceptions.1United States Courts. Bankruptcy Case Records and Credit Reporting
- Property records — deeds, mortgages, and tax assessments, usually maintained at the county level.
- Professional licenses — state licensing boards hold records for doctors, lawyers, contractors, real estate agents, and similar regulated professions.
- Business filings — secretary of state offices hold records of business formations, registered agents, and annual reports.
Accessibility varies. Some states make court records freely searchable online; others require a visit to the clerk’s office or a written request with a fee.
Free Federal Tools You Can Use Yourself
PACER for Federal Court Cases
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records system lets anyone with a free account search federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy court cases.2United States Courts. Find a Case (PACER) Access costs $0.10 per page with a $3 cap per document.3PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). PACER Pricing: How Fees Work Fees totaling $30 or less in a calendar quarter are waived, so light users effectively search for free. You are charged for every search whether or not it returns results, which is a reason to narrow your terms before you run one.
The National Sex Offender Public Website
The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website at nsopw.gov is a free federal tool that aggregates registry data from every state, territory, and participating tribe. It runs as a partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and state and tribal governments, and it allows searches by name, location, or other identifiers at no cost. For anyone checking a potential roommate, caregiver, or neighbor, it is one of the most directly useful free resources available.
Your Own FBI Record
You can request your own FBI criminal background record through the Identity History Summary Check. The process costs $18, requires fingerprints submitted either electronically at a participating U.S. Post Office or by mailed fingerprint card, and returns results by mail or electronically. This is useful for reviewing your own file before an employer or licensing board sees it. The FBI does not offer this service to the public for checking other people. Fee waivers are available by contacting the FBI directly before submitting.
State Vital Records
Birth certificates, death records, and marriage certificates are held by the vital records office in the state where the event took place. You can find the correct office through usa.gov, which routes you to each state’s ordering process. Most states allow ordering online, by mail, or in person, and fees typically run from about $10 to $35 per certified copy. Access is usually limited to the person named on the record, immediate family members, or authorized legal representatives.
Federal Agency Records Through FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act gives any person the right to request records from federal agencies. It has been in effect since 1967 and applies to every executive branch agency, military department, and independent regulatory agency.4FOIA.gov. Freedom of Information Act – Frequently Asked Questions More than 100 covered agencies each process their own requests, so you need to identify which agency holds the records and submit to that agency directly.5FOIA.gov. Freedom of Information Act FOIA covers federal records only. It does not reach state or local agencies, so it will not produce state vital records, state court filings, or county property records.
Paid Online Background Check Services
Commercial services pull data from public records, address histories, and sometimes social media into a single report. You enter a name and location, and the service handles the multi-jurisdiction legwork. That is genuinely useful for a fast overview, and it comes with real limitations.
Accuracy is the biggest one. These services are aggregators, not investigators. They match records to people using name and location, so common-name confusion is a persistent problem. A search on “John Smith” can pull records from the wrong person entirely. Records can also be outdated, incomplete, or missing where a county or state has not digitized files or does not share data with commercial databases.
Pricing varies. Basic single-report searches from consumer-facing services generally run $20 to $50. More comprehensive checks covering multiple jurisdictions, professional license verification, and federal records can cost $75 to $200. Some services sell monthly subscriptions for unlimited searches. Individual component searches, like a single-county criminal check or a bankruptcy lookup, can be as little as $5 to $15.
One distinction matters legally: consumer-facing background services marketed for personal use are not the same as consumer reporting agencies regulated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Using a cheap personal search service to make an employment or tenant decision is a fast way to create liability. More on that below.
Open Online Sources
Free tools can fill gaps that formal background checks miss, especially for recent activity or informal associations. Start with a search engine. Searching a full name in quotes with a city or employer narrows results quickly. Adding a middle initial or professional title cuts through common-name noise.
Social media profiles show what someone has chosen to make public: employment history, education, location, mutual connections, opinions. LinkedIn is particularly useful for verifying professional claims. Privacy settings vary, and many profiles are restricted; what you find is only what the person has published.
News archives from major outlets and local papers can surface lawsuits, business ventures, community involvement, or past incidents. Many local newspaper archives are free or available through public library databases.
The catch with open sources is verification. You may find five profiles for the same name with no reliable way to confirm which is your subject. Cross-referencing location, workplace, and photo helps. Treat anything from these sources as a lead to verify, not an established fact.
What You Will Not Find
Some records are restricted or unavailable, and assuming otherwise leads to bad decisions.
Sealed and expunged criminal records are the biggest blind spot. Once a court seals or expunges a record, standard background searches cannot reach it. Sealed records may still surface during FBI-level checks for security clearances, law enforcement roles, or work with vulnerable populations, but a typical employer or landlord search will not turn them up.
Juvenile records carry similar protections. All states require some degree of confidentiality for juvenile proceedings, though the rules vary. Some states only seal juvenile records when the person reaches 18 or 21, and over 30 states allow schools to access juvenile police and court records under certain exceptions. Harder to find is not the same as invisible.
Motor vehicle records are restricted under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which bars state DMV offices from releasing personal information except for a limited set of approved purposes such as vehicle safety, law enforcement functions, or verifying information the individual submitted.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2721 – Prohibition on Release and Use of Certain Personal Information From State Motor Vehicle Records Curiosity does not qualify.
The FBI’s National Crime Information Center database is restricted to criminal justice agencies and is not available to the public. Its information reaches non-government entities only where a specific federal or state statute authorizes disclosure.
When Your Search Becomes a Consumer Report
Gathering background information for personal reasons is legal in most circumstances. The moment you use that information to decide on someone’s employment, credit, insurance, housing, or government benefits, federal law changes the rules. The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs how consumer reports can be obtained and used.7Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Reporting Act
A “consumer report” under the FCRA is any communication from a consumer reporting agency that bears on someone’s creditworthiness, character, reputation, or lifestyle, when used for an eligible decision. The law limits who can obtain these reports to people with a “permissible purpose,” which includes credit decisions, employment screening, insurance underwriting, tenant screening, and government licensing that requires evaluating financial responsibility.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports Obtaining a consumer report without a permissible purpose through false pretenses is a federal crime punishable by a fine of up to $5,000, imprisonment of up to one year, or both.
Employment Screening Rules
Employment has the strictest requirements. Before an employer can obtain a consumer report on an applicant or current employee, the employer must provide a clear written disclosure, in a standalone document, that a report may be obtained. The applicant must then authorize the report in writing.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports Burying the disclosure inside a general application violates the standalone requirement.
If the employer decides to take adverse action based on the report, a two-step notice process applies. Before the action, the employer must give the applicant a copy of the report and a summary of rights under the FCRA. After the action, the employer must send a separate notice identifying the consumer reporting agency, stating that the agency did not make the decision, and informing the person of their right to dispute inaccurate information and get a free copy of the report within 60 days.9Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
Criminal History in Hiring
Even with a compliant background check, employers face additional constraints when criminal history is involved. EEOC enforcement guidance directs employers to consider three factors before disqualifying an applicant based on a criminal record: the seriousness of the offense, how much time has passed since the offense or completion of the sentence, and the nature of the job.10U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act A blanket policy of rejecting every applicant with any conviction can violate Title VII’s prohibition on disparate-impact discrimination.
On top of that, 37 states plus the District of Columbia and over 150 cities and counties have adopted “ban the box” or fair chance hiring laws that restrict when in the application process an employer can ask about criminal history. The federal Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act prohibits federal agencies and their contractors from asking about criminal history before making a conditional offer, with exceptions for positions requiring security clearances, sensitive national security roles, and law enforcement.11U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Fair Chance to Compete Act
Penalties for Getting It Wrong
The FCRA creates two tiers of civil liability. Willful violations expose the offender to actual damages, punitive damages set by the court, and attorney’s fees. Negligent violations carry actual damages and attorney’s fees but no punitive damages. Knowingly obtaining consumer report information under false pretenses is a federal crime with penalties of up to $5,000 in fines and up to one year in prison. These penalties can reach both the person who improperly obtained the report and, in some cases, the agency that furnished it without proper verification.