Conducting a person's background check on the Internet

Whether you are dating or looking to hire someone to take care of your kids, what you do not know about a person's background can surprise you.
If you are going to check someone's background you have two options, do it yourself, or hire someone. If you are going to do it yourself, here's what you need to know.
Karen Fleming has never looked up a potential date before, but says the idea certainly has its appeal.

"I do think it is a good idea because in today's day and age you just don't know," said Karen Fleming of Houston. We asked Fleming to run a background check on a person she recently met. To do that, we gave Fleming a password for Court Records, one of the many Internet background search engines that Whoble uses.

After logging in, Fleming had to select what she wants to know, there are several different categories, but we wanted to check out a person's criminal background. The search engine asks for the person's name, and the state you want to check. Within minutes, with just a name to go by, Fleming found the person in question had a record for sexual assault.

"It told me that he had a sexual offense and he pleaded guilty for it and that he was also charged with theft" she said. "Both were a little bit unnerving."

The Court Records does not detail the facts of the cases. To find the specifics you'll need to file an open records request with your county clerk's office then pay a dollar to actually get the report, but the information Fleming did find is all she needs to know.

"Given what I just found out, I probably would not want to see this individual," Fleming said.

As mentioned in the above story, there are a few places to investigate depending on your needs, the four links are our recommendations.