Online DIY background check services offer varying degrees of information, varying fees and even varying accuracy in their reports. The research team at Defense Divas® has done the leg work for you. 


After testing the 10 most popular online background check providers, we’ve narrowed our recommendations to the top 3 background service providers online that meet our personal safety standards. We’ve summarized the reasons why. Let’s breakdown the background check and empower your dating safety game.

JUL 25, 2019

Breaking Down the Background Check how to select  service for personal safety

“Don't be stingy with your personal safety. Do the background check. You're worth it!”


Breaking Down the Background Check

If you are dating in today’s culture, it’s essential that you spend the time to select a background check company and do your best spy work before meeting anyone for a date. Background checks are literally the push of a button and seconds away in today’s highly connected cyber world. But, with so many online background check companies, it’s hard to know which one to choose.

⭐THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ONLINE BACKGROUND CHECKS⭐

  • Online background check providers gather all of their information from public records. Theoretically, you can get all of this information yourself. But would you know to search the Los Angeles court records for John Doe’s prior convictions if you met him while living in Cleveland? Probably not. And who has the time to spend hours and hours researching before a date? That’s where online background check companies enter the scene. Through their digital connections to over 6,000 databases- these companies can compile all of this information for you into an easy-to-read report.
  • Online background checks cost between $20-$40 for a monthly subscription and include a certain # of free background checks with the subscription. That number ranges anywhere between 100 background checks per month to unlimited. Most offer additional benefit add-ons for a very minimal up-charge. This is not the time to be cheap! Your safety is worth far more than $20 and if you participate in online dating sites, a monthly subscription really pays off exponentially in the value it brings to your personal safety.
  • Online background checks do not include information about a person’s credit history, but they do offer a wealth of information about a person’s:
  • Aliases (all other names used in the past including maiden name)
  • Associated friends and relatives
  • Social media accounts
  • Sex offender registry info
  • History of phone numbers, addresses, email accounts and social media accounts
  • Misdemeanor and felony criminal convictions
  • Employment history
  • Bankruptcies and other court judgments
  • Evictions
  • Marriage and death certificate information
roommate safety do a background check college safety
  • Accuracy should be your #1 priority; not price. The goal is to find out if your date on Saturday night is a shady character. Your goal is to discover if the new roommate you’ve been assigned in the dorms has a criminal background. It’s a waste of money if you purchase a background check and the information is not accurate.


SITE

Overall

ACCURACY

SCOPE

TIMELINESS

PeopleFinders

4.5/5

A+

A+

A

Intelius

4.5/5

A+

A

A+

Spokeo

4.0/5

A

A+

A


⭐TOP 3 ONLINE BACKGROUND CHECK PROVIDERS⭐

In researching online background check companies, Defense Divas® looked at three important criteria for grading their overall quality to your personal safety.


🎯 ACCURACY: As stated above, it doesn’t matter what you pay for a background check if the info you receive is not accurate. This is not the time to be frugal. Your personal safety is priceless! The following three online background checks produced very accurate info for the test checks we ran in this project.


🎯 SCOPE: All three of our top selections for best online background check company had something extra that really brings value to your safety game. They performed excellent social media searches, covering up to 20+ different social media platforms. (Some we had never even heard of!)


🎯 TIMELINESS: Each background check company mines their own data, but that doesn’t tell you when they did it or how far into the past, they went to gather information on the person. It’s important to use a background check company that has current information, so that you get the most accurate results. It’s equally important that the results go back as far as possible so that you get a complete picture of this individual. We love these three companies because they each produced results all the way back to my college dorm address- and that was 30 years ago!

defense divas picks for best background checks for personal security online dating safety bullseye

⭐NOTEWORTHY DIFFERENCES IN BACKGROUND CHECK PROVIDERS⭐

🎯 ACCURACY

Both Intelius and Spokeo got a slightly lower ranking because, for example, when I typed in my current (married) name, the main search result they came up with was my maiden name. They had my married name listed as an alias and the information in the reports themselves was very accurate, but I found that odd.

🎯 SCOPE

All three of the background check companies performed social media data searches, but we found that the information gathered from both PeopleFinders and Spokeo contained the most in-depth results. They searched social media platforms that we had never even heard of and that is a very useful tool for uncovering information that is not revealed on the big 5 social media giants.

🎯 TIMELINESS

We found that across the board, Intelius had the most current information as well as going back into our past many, many years. The two slight drawbacks to Intelius were:

  • The information was not organized chronologically.
  • You don’t have an option to download the report. The other services offer this as an additional feature for a minimal add-on fee.

As you can see from the quick synopsis chart above, each performed well overall but also had areas where it excelled.

do a background check on yourself for identity security

“Don't forget to do a background check on yourself.”


⭐BACKGROUND CHECK YOURSELF⭐

In closing, we encourage you to run a background check on yourself! It’s important to your personal safety that you know how much of your own private information is available for others to find in the public domain and on the internet.


Doing so will give you an opportunity to do some ID clean-up and delete those old social profiles, emails and close those vulnerabilities to identity theft that may leave you exposed.


You’ve taken an amazing step towards empowering your personal and dating safety by choosing a background check company. Now, are you ready to step up your self-defense game? At Defense Divas®, we offer a diva-fantastic selection of self-defense products for women, including bulletproof gear, pepper sprays, stun guns and TASER® devices, concealed carry purses and more.


Copyright©2019 All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Defense Divas®.


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