To learn more about this topic, check out the link to related info: BCI check
In the US, public records constitute a huge reservoir of free data, but one which has seemed quite remote and not easy to access for most people in the past. Why? Because these billions of records used to be obtainable only at county courthouses and state and federal agencies. That’s in the past, when you had to physically hoof it over to your local courthouse and search in person for the records you wanted, whether they have been real estate records, litigation records, company records, or whatever. What a headache.
The Internet has completely changed this situation. Now you absolutely can sit at your office or home computer and get an access to public records stored anyplace - at just about any courthouse or company. Now, I’m not trying to say that all public records are presently obtainable online. But a great deal of those are, and those that aren’t can often be accessed with a phone call to the Recorder’s Agency or County Clerk.
Nonetheless, before you get too excited, take a look at the specific kinds of info we’re speaking about.
See some extra information about public records search: FBI NICS check
Below you can see a few of the sorts of official records you have a right to view free of charge :
At The State Level…
-Chapter Records
-Federal Tax Liens
-Felony Records
-Incarceration Records
-Fictitious or Assumed Names
-Limited Liability Company Records
-Limited Partnership Records
-Trademark, Trade Name
-State Tax Liens
-Uniform Industrial Code Filings
-Workers’ Compensation Records
-Vessel Records
-Sales Tax Registrations
-Vehicle & Ownership Records
-Death Records
-Sexual Offender Records
-Marriage Records
-Divorce Records
-Birth Records
-Driver Records
-State Investigated Accident Reports
-Some Kinds Of Occupational Licenses
Public Records Available At The County Level…
-Real Estate and Tax Assessor Records
-County Court Records (both civil and legal)
-Tax Liens (also obtainable at State level)
-Uniform Industrial Code records (also obtainable at State level)
-Voter Registrations (accessibility varies)
-Important Records (also obtainable at State level)
Available At The Federal Level…
-EDGAR Company Filings
-Federal Court Records
-Chapter Records
-Military Records
Besides, an enormous amount of demographic/financial/regulatory data is available via all Federal agency websites
Basics of Public Records
It is crucial to understand that there is a difference between public records and publicly-obtainable information. The term “public records” pertains primarily to records maintained by government offices and which are freely available to the public, like real estate records and chapter records. Alternatively, for example, your phone book has “publicly-accessible” information, that is the data people have chosen to allow to be publicly-accessed. If you’d like your address and phone number to remain non-public, you can refuse to let it be revealed in a phone book. However, with public record data, you really haven’t got an alternative - the federal government makes it public, period.
Similarly, notice that some data is always private, like medical records and credit information. You can not go onto a government web site and find out if somebody has certain medical or psychiatric problems, and you can’t get a duplicate of their credit report with out their written consent. To do so violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which Uncle Sam, actually, takes very seriously. Even if you find a web-based info dealer who promises to provide you with anyone’s private data, you should be smart enough to pass. Bear in mind how much trouble Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of Hewlett-Packard, got herself into a number of years ago by hiring a hotshot personal eye to look into boardroom leaks, which involved investigating the personal lives of HP’s board members? You do not need that kind of trouble.
So it is crucial to understand the difference between private and non-private data, and there’s also one other issue to pay attention to: jurisdictions (counties and states) are usually not uniform in their laws concerning access to records. For example, in some states you possibly can access people’s driving records with relative ease (Colorado); in others you can’t (California). Some states regard felony records as public (Texas); others don’t (Massachusetts). You have to adhere to the laws of the jurisdiction where you’re accessing the records.
Public Records Access
As stated before, many jurisdictions have not yet computerized their public records - in particular, the smaller rural counties. So you can not access their records on-line, but you can at least get their phone numbers on-line and call them. Oftentimes county clerks will run searches for you when you wait on the phone. One good source of county courthouse phone numbers is backgroundcheckgateway.com/statelist. Of course, you can possibly simply put the county’s identify into Google and get the phone number, too.
Incidentally, there may be a small search fee, and/or a small copying price, but these will likely be modest - public document data is free unless you hire an expert doc retriever to visit the company or courthouse to access it for you. If you wish to look into this possibility, go to brbpub.com.
The following are very short directions for accessing public records by broad classes:
Business Records Access
Business records are largely concentrated in the Secretary of State’s office. For example you would possibly need to know if a given company is an affiliated office or the date of incorporation, or who the officers and directors are. Or you would possibly need data on a limited liability company, a partnership, or a trade name, or on sales tax registrations.
For Security Exchange Commission and other financial data, or for data pertaining to bankruptcies, patents and copyrights, you have to search at the federal level.
For data pertaining to mortgages, UCC’s, tax liens, and real estate, you must concentrate on the county or local (city) level - most often, the county level.
Court Records Access
Felony records access is a big challenge within the United States (although it is easier here than nearly anyplace else in the world.)
On the one hand, governments want to provide you with felony document data so you can avoid hiring or doing business with criminals; on the other hand, they do not wish to provide you with felony document data because then you won’t hire or do business with ex-convicts, who then will be motivated to commit more crimes in order to survive.
So it seems that they compromise by making the data not easy to get (or more likely, paperwork dictates that the method can not be streamlined and made fairly efficient). So we find there isn’t any single nationwide repository of felony records within the U.S. except the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, which is available only to police organizations. Felony document data is maintained on a strictly piecemeal, jurisdictional basis. Thus in case your subject resides in Colorado, you can run a statewide felony records search there, and he/she could come up clean - but in fact, be a convicted felon in Indiana. Unless you also check Indiana, you may never know this.
Recording Office File Access
Your county or city recording agency has full data on almost each piece of real estate within the county - sale costs, mortgages, liens, property descriptions, improvements, and so forth - and that is all public info. Recording office information is now widely on the Internet. A good source is netronline.com. Incidentally, for all the latest news about your county or any county of interest, try visiting naco.org.
Oftentimes, the fastest and easiest technique to search the Web is to discover a web site portal which deals with your particular matter of interest.