How to do a background check

over 10 years ago
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The Love Messenger (relationshipalchemy)

20 posts

Knowledge is power. It helps us to make informed decisions, and avoid costly mistakes. When it comes to relationships, this is especially important. We want to know that the person we are getting involved with is honest, genuine and not hiding anything.

Fortunately, there are some basic free searches that you can do online which can be remarkably revealing. This is not stalking, this is taking responsibility for your own safety and emotional wellbeing. EVERYONE can be found online. Here are five basic searches that you can use to check someone out.

1) Google their name. This often reveals their Facebook profile. It will also show list of people by that name, along with age, location and family members who live with them. This info is not always bang up to date, so if your honey says he is divorced and records show him still sharing a home with his wife it does not mean he is lying, it just means apply caution.

Occasionally, just googling a name can also reveal criminal activity and prosecutions. If you are dating someone who was prosecuted for beating up his last girlfriend then its better that you know this before he reveals his darker side to you.

2) If they have given you a phone number, google it. This can reveal sites where they have posted that number online. This may be innocent, they may just be selling their old car in the classifieds – or they may be on Craigslist looking for other kinds of ‘activity’. You can also do a ‘reverse search’ for a small fee. This can reveal where the number is registered and in whose name.

3) If you found them on a dating site, google their username. They may have removed their profile now that they have met you, but forgotten to mention that they have 6 more profiles, using the same handle, on different sites.

4) Do an image search. Go to Google images, upload their picture and find out where that picture is being used. This can also indicate how old the picture is and if it was uploaded to a site many years ago.

5) Basic searches do not reveal everything and there are certain searches that can only be carried out by someone with a license to do so, however there are sites such as Pipl.com that may reveal further info. When using these sites, run the search a few times, use name variations / alternative spellings. If the person you are checking out has given names of family members, search those too, this will help to confirm that the search is revealing info about the correct person.

If your search fails to reveal anything it could be that they have given you a fake name, been incarcerated for a long time or been living ‘off the grid’ (which is HIGHLY unlikely).

Whoever you may WANT this person to be – do yourself a favour and find out who they really are before you get involved.

over 10 years ago
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Charlotte (clmoonhawk)

277 posts

Great ideas for any time you are embarking on a new relationship, online or otherwise. However, as Fiona has stated, free information will only get you so far.

True background checks can be run for as little as $13 up to hundreds. Now many of these require birth dates, social security numbers or driver’s license number; some let you search by name and location. Here is a list of the top ten sites to do a national background check.

http://www.top10bestbackgroundcheck.com/

It is always best to know what you are potentially getting into.