Now you can go online and submit a request for a background check on the Internet have the results displayed on the screen or e-mailed to you within seconds.
This has resulted in a dramatic increase in business productivity by reducing the overhead time associated with the waiting period.
Some privacy advocates may be alarmed by the fact that by making instant employment background checks accessible to anybody online is a violation of our rights to privacy.
After all, in the old days, only people in government or business would have had access to run these background checks.
Now, a neighbor can perform a background search on a neighbor.
A spouse or a lover can perform a background search on his or her significant other.
Any person, whether with motives benign or evil, can perform such a search.
What privacy advocates must realize is that the information contained in a background check is nothing more than what is already publicly available.
Yes it is true.
The information contained in a background check is, and has always been available publicly.
Your birth records, your marriage and divorce records, your real estate transaction records, your driving records, your criminal records, and your bankruptcy records are already public information that anyone can go to your local courthouse to search on.
If you do not believe this, go down to your local courthouse and see for yourself.
Anyone can search this information.
It never has been nor will it ever be, private.
The one thing that does not show up on a background check is your credit report.
That is something whose privacy is protected by law.
That's why a credit report must be run separately from a background check.