Getting a criminal background check on someone is a fabulous tool for you to have access to.
It gives you the ability to check out your neighbors for possible threats to your family, and to pre-screen employees and see if there is anything they are not telling you.
But for a lot of people free online criminal checks are a source of much frustration.
The pattern goes like this - you go to a website which offers free online criminal background checks, and you enter a name just like it asks you.
The site spits out a list of people that name could refer to, but to get any more information you need to register.
You can try site after site after site but the reality is that every one of them will follow the same pattern.
So why are you wasting your time trying to find for free what you know you can get for an incredibly nominal amount.
Let's do a little exercise.
Suppose you try this at 10 different sites.
Each one takes five minutes from finding it to finding that you need to pay a fee to move forward.
You've just used around an hour of your time.
How much is an hour of your time worth? I'm guessing in most cases it will be at least as much as 'unlimited access' to these sites would set you back.
Let's do another exercise.
Suppose you hire someone with a string of petty burglary and theft from employer charges.
They take just $5 from your till per day.
If they get away with it for a week you have lost $35.
A month you have lost $155, a year $365.
Now what if they take more? You could be losing thousands a year across several dishonest employees picking at the till and have no idea.
So is it a scam? Are free online background checks a lie? Quite simply no they are not.
You can get free checks, that is exactly what membership to these sites offers you - FREE UNLIMITED criminal background checks.
You just have to pay a site membership fee to get it.