There are a huge number of apps dedicated to background checks. Practically anyone with a little money and a desire to learn about someone can find out a wealth of personal information in just a few minutes.
Most of the time this unavoidable situation doesn’t affect how people live. But there are times when the ease of access for this information can be crippling. Certain details, like arrests, criminal charges, and other run-ins with the law that have since been expunged can come back to haunt good people who have taken great pains to clean up their records in the eyes of the law, and live their lives right.
A crucial question for our current society is just how much effort are we willing to take to protect the privacy of those with sensitive information on their background checks.
More databases than privacy tools
Scores of companies all over the nation use the vast stores of data out there to make a buck, by making this range of information easily accessible to the public by making the databases efficiently searchable.
These info-finding tools are everywhere, and importantly, there aren’t nearly as many privacy tools out there to protect the rights of people who have these vulnerabilities, and want to protect their reputations from being tarnished by minor mistakes in the past.
Technology and transparency
The transparency our digital age provides is a truly wonderful thing, with benefits throughout our society, such as providing a check on government, and business. Still, there are consequences for promoting a culture of openness. When it’s applied to individuals, particularly those with sensitive information on their records, people can get hurt. Jobs, apartment rentals, and personal relationships can be harmed when old entries on public records are endlessly available.
These companies, with their massive databases, have become incredibly powerful, with not a lot of checks on their power. Most people are able to easy take care of cleaning up their records at the necessary office where the legal records are held, but this doesn’t always guarantee that the private companies who access these records regularly update their records to reflect those changes. This isn’t a transparency issue—it’s a justice issue.
The future of privacy
As our lives become easier to monitor, and records continue to become easier and easier to keep and search, it will continue to become more necessary to ensure that privacy technology keeps pace with the technology encroaches on our technology.
RecordFixer is leading the way in this fight, making it so that private record companies can be more compliant, and help prevent excessive collateral consequences from harming your future. If we all work together in demand more privacy, then we can innovative more tech-based solutions that actually promote privacy and protect those with the greatest vulnerabilities.
