BeenVerified Review

Detailed Reviews

During ancient times, troubled people will seek guidance and enlightenment from elders and scholars. Today our “Online Search” has replaced such individuals who were responsible for providing information and advice. People, places, shopping, food, clothing, accessories, entertainment; perhaps everything is on Search Engines. Or maybe not! There are sensitive information that search engines cannot access, thus the need for commercial background check services. BeenVerified retrieves information from public records and presents a detailed report to the user.

Pros

• Multiple BeenVerified report search option in addition to their classic background checks. These include criminal records, marriage records, reverse address lookup, and so on.
• Physical record service if the information the user is seeking is not available online. They get access to the physical records maintained by government agencies.
• They offer transparent and upfront service; remind users on limitation set by FCRA, on lack of 100% accurate data among other warnings and suggestion.

Cons

• Inaccurate or unavailable information in some cases can downgrade the reliability of their service.
• The premium data is accessible only after paying for it, making it an undesirable feature for many users.

Introduction

BeenVerified started its operation in 2007. Their goal is providing the citizens of the USA with easy access to public information.

Everyone has a right to access public records, theoretically. In real life, it is often a challenging task; one has to access multiple websites, fill forms, visit courts, and state agencies to assemble information.

It becomes a frantic process and is also a waste of time and money. BeenVerified performs the hectic legwork, and the system enables the user to access the records within a few seconds.

They offer major search for people, phone, property, email, and social media. Their system interface is neat, straightforward, and user-friendly.

The dashboard is engaging with primary tabs of recent reports, my report, unclaimed money, neighborhood watch, dark web scan, monitoring, and my account.

They have subscribers across 50 states in the USA, and more than 100 000 people have utilized their background check service.

In our daily lives, we often engage in activities that we are clueless about the fact that they collect and store our data.

For example, while signing up for a magazine’s subscription, purchasing a new sim card, creating a new social media account, or leasing a storeroom.

These activities reveal information about you, and it is available in the public records. The data source is private as well as public entities.

Government agencies hold records of births and deaths, marriage and divorce, court records, mortgage deeds, voters registration, and so on.

The public records also have data from private companies such as insurance firms, banks, credit card companies, warranty agreements, or your social media company.

That is why popular search engines such as Google cannot reveal all the information about an individual. Their search algorithm can only retrieve data from websites that allow public access.

On the other hand, background check services have a broader scope of accessing information that comes with a fee or password.

Both private individuals and government agencies will opt for a background check in cases of legal disputes, employment screening, credit lending, child adoption, relationships (marriage, dating, or divorce), etc.

BeenVerified creates a database by receiving data from government, though they also might not have access to all the public information.

Every state in the United States practices varying degree of ease to access public records. Some provide immediate access, while others may limit the reach.

The Freedom to Information Act (FOIA) guides the process, and they may accept or reject the requests to access the records.

The right to information also brings along responsibility; the data acquired should not be used to cause harm to anyone.

The background check services like BeenVerified, however, have restrictions imposed by the FCRA.

Restrictions by FCRA

The FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) is a regulatory body that governs the use of background check information.

FCRA laws do not recognize BeenVerified as a consumer reporting agency (CRA). As such, the use of information from their background checks should be in limited ways.

BeenVerified can be used for personal use only, and one should not use their records for any professional intention. Failure to meet their terms and conditions can lead to penalties.

As a general background check, it can be used to search for essential information about yourself or someone else, from the public records.

The restrictions include using the information for employment screening. It also includes hiring domestic workers, such as house help and nannies.

An employer usually performs a background check for a potential employee. CRA and not BeenVerified should conduct such an assessment.

Secondly, tenant inspection should not be carried out using their information, including residential and commercial property.

A personals educational background provided by them should not be used to make scholarship or admission decisions.

Assessing a person’s creditworthiness by credit lending institutions and Insurance is restricted. Parties involved in a transaction, buyer, or seller, cannot use the data to gauge their contract.

Despite the limitation imposed by FCRA, BeenVerified can be used to search and contact long lost friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, or past relationship partners.

Their search function can be used to check public records on yourself. One can also inform them of the accuracy of the detail in their report.

Moreover, if preferred one can opt-out, it leads to removing of all the information regarding a person from their database.

Perfect Data source?

An individual can compile some necessary information on a person for free by using search engines and social media networks. It cannot be exclusive as it will lack public records.

BeenVerified gets its information from multiple public records as well as private companies. These include criminal records, property records, magazines subscriptions, social media accounts, etc.

They attempt to deliver such public record information in a straightforward, affordable, and accurate manner for the end-users.

Billions of data points provide personal information, contact information, criminal records, property deeds, and much more.

Despite having access to vast data, they cannot reveal some sensitive information to protect the individual’s identity.

It can be the full date of birth or their social security numbers, their credit cards details, among others.

Their database is updated frequently, and one can set up an “alertme” feature. It reports any change in the information to the user.

BeenVerified is transparent, and it reveals that their data isn’t perfect due to the imperfection of public data.

The fact is some states do not maintain digital records; thus, such information can be missing from their database too.

To err is human, and the records can have some misleading information which also reflects in their system.

However, preventive measures are taken by BeenVerified as they provide room to report any inaccurate information from their reports.

Users are encouraged to inform them in case of any inaccurate data under every section of the reports.

The various types of BeenVerified searches

People search is among the most popular types BeenVerified has to offer. One needs to use the person’s legal name and the system generate a report which includes a heap of information.

It includes an overview, known associate, criminal & civil, bankruptcies, professional, social media and website, and premium data.

Their system provides ways to minimize the search range by giving age, middle initial, and address of the person. It’s to narrow down the results as several individuals share similar names.

Phone search uses a particular phone number to identify the owner of the card. The increase in technology has brought forward escalation in threats from telemarketers and robocalls.

Their reverse phone lookup feature identifies the unknown cellphone and landline numbers. Their records will also include unpublished and unlisted numbers.

The reverse phone search protects one against telemarketers calls, robocalls and phone scams. The scammers use neighbor spoofing practice to lure people into picking up the call.

If any unknown number is revealed to be a scammer, then the user is advised to flag that number.

The phone search report also has the provision to perform a background check. It means a people search will retrieve in-depth details of the owner of the number.

The reverse email lookup service works similarly as the phone lookup. One searches for the unfamiliar email address, and the system reveals the identity of the email address’s owner.

The property search yields a detailed report of the ownership and other records. The owner's background check is also possible to get more information on the proprietor.

The report has sections of overview, possible owners, county assessor records, deeds, related properties, and neighborhood safety.

The system also shows the property’s market and assessed value with the property taxes. Their neighborhood safety reveals sex offenders near the vicinity.

They also offer reverse address lookup, which can be useful while purchasing or shifting house.

Their social media search engine requires one to submit the username of the person one is searching. They have availed 50+ social network sites to choose from to narrow down the search.

The FOIA oversees the release of public records. The government maintains records for individuals as well as corporations and government entities.

In our case, we usually refer to an individual’s public record. BeenVerified provides background checks, criminal and arrests records for people residing in the US.

There are other kinds of searches that they provide. These include white pages lookup, bankruptcy report, lien search, voter records, relative finder, death records, phone directory, felony record, DUI records, judicial records, and so on.

Unclaimed money

Apart from carrying out background checks along with various searches, BeenVerified allows one to check for unclaimed money.

If you make an extra payment to government or business, they owe you money. In some cases, you may change your address, and it may be difficult to contact you then such amount is transferred to the state.

The state protects such funds, and if the owner fails to collect the amount within a year, then it is labeled as unclaimed property.

Inheritance, stocks, mutual funds, unpaid wages, overpaid bills, bank accounts, pensions, tax refunds, and others, if not declared by the owner move to the state authority.

These funds don’t belong to the government; hence, the rightful owner can claim it.

To identify if you have unclaimed money, use BeenVerified search engine. Input your full name, maiden name if need be and your state.

Once you establish that you have such funds, you have to file a claim with the state government. The system provides a link to access the official state website where one can process to file a claim.

There is no national system to claim such funds, and it is carried out by state governments revenue department.

One has to be careful while processing such funds as you may have to provide your name and social security number. People can become victims of scams through unofficial calls and unauthorized sites.

Neighborhood watch

Being aware of your surrounding is one way to ensure the security of your family. Parents with young kids may want to scan the neighborhood before moving to the new house.

BeenVerified provides neighborhood watch and criminal records to make sure that there no sex offenders or criminally convicted people around your potential house.

The criminal histories are a part of public record, but it is hard t find the complete history of an individual. It is so as there are different jurisdictions and also not all arrests lead to charges and convictions.

It is hard to access complete criminal history as the individual may have changed state. Criminal and civil records are also a part of the background reports.

You can use neighborhood watch to check for sex offenders around your school, home, or work. The search displays convicted offenders within a radius of 5 miles.

They display the offenders with photos and personal information such as name, age, weight, height, address, among other data.

The jurisdiction sets the rule of how much information of a sex offender should be public. A registered sex offender is asked to re-register their new address every time he/she moves.

It may not be the case, and as a result, some sex offenders may miss out in the database. It produces inaccurate or incomplete information for the users.

Dark web scan

The dark web is one that is not reachable via search engines as it needs specialized softwares to operate. It is where criminal activities such as online drug market and selling of database take place.

Criminals sell credit cards, social security numbers, usernames & passwords, and personal information of many people.

The dark web scan is possible by examining the leaked data from the public database of popular websites of the dark web.

The dark web is only 3% of the internet, yet it poses a significant danger to personal information security. 

BeenVerified currently only scans for email addresses on the dark web. The system then informs the user if there were any breaches regarding their information.

Searching the entire dark web is not possible, that is why BeenVerified suggests one to turn on monitoring feature.

As their “no result” status of scan doesn’t mean that your information is safe and holds no chances of getting compromised.

Monitoring

Once you search for some records or run a background check on BeenVerified, you can stay updated on the changes by enabling the monitoring toggle.

It can be done through the dashboard or under each report. We know that with time, people change their residency, workplace, and contact information.

One has to keep track of changes in criminal and civil reports of people that concern you. The reporting of any monitoring update is via email. A list of all the monitored reports is accessible in their system.

It is a useful feature which ensures that the user is aware of any new development in the searches he/she made using BeenVerified.

Conclusion

BeenVerified is an online database that sources its information from public records as well as private companies.

They aim to provide service that will enable people to understand and use public data in their daily lives. They have apps working on iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Android.

Their search engine browses through their database and produces an in-depth report, and it can be a background check or one of their numerous types of searches.

The BeenVerified users save on toil and money as they dodge the visits to several government agencies to scoop out the desired public records.

We all know information is power; we may need to find out more about someone that influences our life. Being aware of facts assures security and enables one to make practical decisions.

Precaution is always better than cure; identify threats and create ways to eliminate them. The danger can be in disguise of online date, new neighbor, telemarketers, and scammers or even the dark web.

BeenVerified assists you to safeguard yourself. One can also generate a background check of oneself to identify any inaccurate information.

Their system interface is attractive and easy to use. BeenVerified offers fast and reliable information on any particular individual who resides in the USA.

Their distinctive features such as unclaimed money, neighborhood watch, dark web scan, reverse phone, and address lookup keep users hooked.

Their customer support team is also worth mentioning as they try to deliver timely solutions to their members.

They offer an opt-out option which removes the person’s information from their database.

Their service can face an issue of inaccurate and missing data. It is because the public records lack the appropriate data may be due to delays in updating the government agencies online database.

BeenVerified is an appropriate tool to be used by people who need to use the information for personal use. They do not permit usage of their data for professional purpose.

It is ideal for people who are an online seller, active on online dating, or looking up for numerous contact information. Thus, it is recommendable to users who need to conduct multiple background checks for personal use due to its monthly subscription fees.