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The companies that actually write your background check

An employer does not look up your record. It buys a report from one of the companies below, each of which holds its own database assembled from its own bulk purchases of court data.

That is why a record cleared at one agency can still be live at another, and why a dispute has to go to each of them separately.

What they all have in common

Every company on this page is a Consumer Reporting Agency

Which means the Fair Credit Reporting Act applies to all of them, in all 50 states, and gives you rights that do not depend on having a court order.

FCRA § 609

See your file

You may demand a full disclosure of everything a consumer reporting agency holds on you. It is free once every 12 months, and free any time you have been denied employment or housing because of a report. Almost nobody exercises this, which is why most people never find out what their background check actually says.

FCRA § 611

Dispute what's wrong

On a written dispute the agency must reinvestigate and resolve within 30 days. If an item is inaccurate, incomplete, or cannot be verified, it must be deleted. A certified copy of an expungement or sealing order is the strongest possible attachment.

FCRA § 607(b)

Maximum possible accuracy

An agency must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, and must have procedures preventing the reporting of records that have been expunged, sealed, or otherwise legally restricted from public access.

FCRA § 605

The seven-year limit

Most non-conviction information — arrests that led nowhere, dismissed charges — may not be reported after seven years. If a stale arrest is still on your report, that is disputable on its own without any court order.

FCRA § 604(b) & § 615

Notice and a chance to respond

An employer must give you a standalone written disclosure before pulling a report, and must send you a pre-adverse-action notice with a copy of the report and a summary of your rights before rejecting you because of it. You are entitled to respond before the decision becomes final.

Employment screening

These produce the report an employer actually reads. Your employer does not run the check — one of these does, from its own cached database.

  • Checkr

    High-volume employment screening built around API integrations, heavily used by gig platforms, delivery, rideshare, staffing and hourly hiring.

    If you were deactivated or rejected by a gig platform, Checkr almost certainly produced the report. Its scale means database-cached county records are common, which is exactly where stale and expunged entries survive.

  • Sterling

    One of the largest global screening firms, used across enterprise hiring, healthcare and financial services.

    Long-established, which means a deep historical database. Sterling has been the subject of FCRA litigation over reporting accuracy.

  • HireRight

    Enterprise employment screening across transportation, healthcare, manufacturing and professional services.

    Widely used for DOT and commercial-driver screening, where accuracy rules are stricter and an error is more costly.

  • First Advantage

    Global background screening and identity verification, including criminal, employment and education verification.

    Merged with Sterling's business lines in recent years, so a single dispute may need to reach multiple legacy databases.

  • Accurate Background

    Employment screening across criminal records, verifications and drug testing.

  • Cisive

    Screening focused on regulated industries — healthcare, financial services, transportation.

  • GoodHire

    Small-and-medium-business employment screening, often the default for a first corporate hire.

  • Equifax Workforce Solutions (The Work Number)

    In CA registry

    The largest commercial database of payroll and employment records in the US, sold to lenders, employers and government agencies.

    The Work Number holds your income and employment history at a level of detail most people do not realise exists. It is FCRA-regulated, so you can demand the file and dispute what is wrong.

  • IntelliCorp

    Criminal-record and verification screening, part of the Verisk group of businesses.

  • Info Cubic

    Domestic and international employment screening.

  • ADP Screening and Selection Services

    Employment screening bundled with ADP payroll and HR services.

  • Certn

    Technology-led screening across North America and internationally.

  • Shareable for Hires (Experian)

    Experian's small-business employment screening product.

Tenant screening

Housing screening. Eviction filings are reported here regardless of outcome — dismissed cases, cases you won, and cases where you were not the defendant — which makes this the most error-prone category in the whole system.

  • CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions

    Tenant screening reports combining criminal records, eviction filings and credit data for landlords.

    Eviction-filing data is reported even when the case was dismissed or you won, which is one of the most common and most damaging inaccuracies in housing.

  • RealPage

    Tenant screening and rental-market analytics used by large property managers.

    A denial from a large apartment operator very often traces back here.

  • AppFolio Screening

    Tenant screening bundled into property-management software used by mid-size landlords.

Credit bureau

The bureaus also operate employment and tenant data products, and appear in the California registry as FCRA-regulated entities under several corporate names.

  • Equifax Information Services

    In CA registry

    Consumer credit reporting, and a supplier of identity and record data into screening products.

  • Experian Information Solutions

    In CA registry

    Consumer credit reporting plus tenant and employment data products.

  • TransUnion

    In CA registry

    Consumer credit reporting, tenant screening through SmartMove, and criminal-record data products.

    TransUnion appears in the California registry under several corporate entities, which means a complete dispute may need to address more than one.

Upstream data supplier

Upstream suppliers that feed records into several downstream reports. Correcting a record here can stop it propagating.

  • LexisNexis Risk Solutions

    Identity, address-history, insurance-claims and public-record data sold to insurers, lenders, employers and law enforcement.

    A major upstream supplier. Correcting a record here can stop it propagating into several downstream reports.

Cross-referenced

Registered data brokers that told California they are FCRA-regulated

These entities appear in the California Data Broker Registry and disclosed on their own filing that they or a subsidiary are regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In other words: they are data brokers and consumer reporting agencies at the same time, which means you have both removal rights and dispute rights against them.

Ask all of them at once

Requesting your file from one agency at a time takes months. We file them in parallel, read what comes back, flag every item that is disputable under a specific section of the FCRA, and then file the disputes and track the 30-day clocks.

Fair Chance — $9.99/moOne-time audit — $39
Or do it yourself

It is free and entirely doable — a file-disclosure request is a letter. We wrote out the whole method, including what to look for when the reports arrive.