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Publicly Available Information, What You Need To Know

More public record information is kept about you online and it is available to more people than ever before. This information is also used by more people, more often and affects you more than ever. You should have a basic understanding of Publicly Available Information. The first step is to define the terms and describe the various types of publicly available information.

• Public Records
  A public record is a record of an incident or action filed or recorded with a government agency for the purpose of notifying others - the "public" - about the matter. For example, the deed to your house recorded at the county recorder's office is a public record - it is a legal requirement that you record with the county recorder. Anyone requiring details about your property may review or copy the documents. You want this information to be public to notify people that you are the legal owner and to protect your public interest in the property. This is also why it is important to be sure that the information is correct and up-to-date.

While public records, including criminal public records, are filed, recorded and stored by government agencies initially, it is important to note that much of this information is subsequently obtained by private companies and used to assemble various background and criminal history reports. These instant background check reports are bought by others and can affect your ability to get a job, loan-or date.

• Public Information
  This is information you furnish to facilitate public and private communication. An example of this would be your telephone number listing in the phone book.
• Restricted Information
  Some information is not available unless the requester has prior approval or the requestor qualifies based on the intended use of the record content. A good example of restricted information is your driving record or motor vehicle report. These reports are stored at an agency in every state, typically the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Literally millions of these records are reported every year to hundreds of thousands of different entities, namely insurers (for purposes of underwriting) and employers (for purposes of employment screening). And yet these records are certainly not "public records" and there are significant federal and state penalties for unauthorized access to these records.

• Personal Information
  "Personal Information" in this context has typically been defined as any information a person might consider private and confidential in nature such as Social Security Number, Date of Birth or address. That's somewhat broad, and the key factor of whether information is "personal information" has come to hinge on the issue of whether the information identifies an individual. For example, Federal Law (under the Driver Privacy Protection Act) defines personal information as:
  
  "...information that identifies an individual, including an individual's photograph, social security number, driver identification number, name, address (but not the 5-digit zip code), telephone number, and medical or disability information, but does not include information on vehicular accidents, driving violations, and driver's status."

And even then, not all "personal information" is equally personal. A subset of personal information is "highly restricted personal information" and this information is defined as:


"...an individual's photograph or image, social security number, medical or disability information."

In general, most personal information will remain private to a limited extent unless it is disclosed to some outside entity that could make it public. Personal information may be found in public records, public information, and restricted information.

Conclusion

Public Records, Public Information and Restricted Information are often confused and blended together by the general public. Moreover, it should be noted that information may move from one category to another. For example, access to Driving Records has not always been nearly so restricted. In 1989, a deranged "fan" in California obtained the driving record of an actress, obtained the address from the record, went to the address and murdered the actress. This led to much greater restrictions on driving records.

But many people are still irritated to find "personal information," even "highly restricted personal information" in public records and information. While much of this information is given willingly, it is still a good idea to check what public record information about you is available to the general public, should someone choose to run an instant background check or criminal records search about you.

Publicly Available Personal Information –
Where Does it Come From and How Does it Get there?

It can be unnerving to discover the amount of information that is publicly available on yourself.

Where does the information come from?
In general, the information comes from two sources:

• Governmental Agencies
• Private Companies

Government agencies include those at the federal, state, county and municipal levels. The actual information is maintained in a variety of ways. While many state agencies and highly populated county agencies are computerized, a number of them still use microfiche, microfilm, and paper to store files and indexes.

Of course, private companies often obtain government agency and/or public criminal records and use the information to create or augment another database for their business purposes. An example of this is the major credit reporting companies acquiring bankruptcy records to supplement their credit reports. By law, private companies may buy public records in bulk from government agencies that are computerized. If the information is not computerized, some private companies send staff to the agencies and gather the information by using a copy machine or typing into a laptop computer. This information can then be sold in its entirety, on a search-by-search basis or combined with other data to increase the value or scope of the database.

How does the information get there?
There are two ways:

• You have volunteered the information
• Statutory—provided the information because the law (or a regulation) required it.

Many people unknowingly volunteer personal information that later ends up in a private database. They will provide their address or date of birth on a product warranty card, their telephone number for the phone directory and even their estimated annual income on a magazine subscription form. This information is often gathered and sold to other private companies-who may provide it to still other companies-and very soon the information is no longer private in any sense of the word.

On the other hand, there are times when you cannot avoid providing personal information. Your address on a property deed or your date of birth on a driver's license are examples of information you are required to provide. If you are applying for a job, you may not want the employer to know your age (and to avoid charges of age discrimination, many employers don't want to initially know either). However, if the employer orders a driving record on you, your date of birth will be shown on the driving record-which was obtained from your driver's license. You may also believe your race, height, weight and eye color are private information, but if you are convicted or even arrested for a crime, this information may well be collected, put in a criminal records check database and sold to a private company.

What Can you Do?
If you do not want your personal information in the public domain, be wary of volunteering private information if it is not required. In cases where your information is public, whether voluntary or not, you should know what it is and correct it if it is incorrect and possibly damaging.

We acknowledge and thank BRB Publications for their assistance on this topic. For additional information on Personal Information and Public Records, The Sourcebook to Public Record Information (currently in its 8th Edition) is recommended. www.brbpub.com

What Should I do about Incorrect Public Information?

There are two factors that determine the effort, time and expense you should expend if you have discovered incorrect public record information.

• The type of information that is incorrect, and
• The type of error that has caused the information to be incorrect.

Types of Public Information
To review, the strict definition of public records is —

“Public records and criminal history reports maintained by government agencies that are open without restriction to public inspection, either by statute or by tradition.”

And the effort you should expend to get information corrected depends on the degree to which the incorrect information will affect you - e.g., your ability to get a job or a loan. Much of the information in the public domain is demographic in nature: your phone number, your address and previous addresses. This type of information is notoriously inaccurate. Because of this and the fact that the information is not derogatory, it will not typically hurt you.

Other information, while not derogatory on its face, can negatively affect you depending on your situation. For example a hunting and fishing license is not a negative or derogatory piece of information. However, if you are applying for a job at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and discover that you are erroneously listed as having a hunting license, you may choose to contact the state and have them correct their files. (47 states currently maintain a central repository of fishing and/or hunting license records and 30 states permit access in some capacity by the public.)

Civil records and judgments may not be derogatory on their face, but your circumstances, and the nature of the record may necessitate you taking the action to get the information corrected. Civil records and judgments can particularly affect eligibility for positions that involve fiduciary responsibility.

However, some of the most potentially damaging - and frequently erroneous - public information is infraction, misdemeanor, felony, incarceration and sexual offender records that are obtained from government agencies across the country and stored in public criminal record databases. This information is widely used, is always derogatory and you should address inaccuracies. How you address the inaccuracies depends on the nature of the inaccuracy. There are three main ways you can be hurt:

Three General Types of Errors

1. The info does not pertain to you. The criminal history report may be accurate - in regard to someone else with your name and date of birth - but it is reported when someone inquires upon you. This is an identification error.
2. Some or all of the criminal history report pertains to you but is inaccurate.
3. The criminal records search may pertain to you, it may be accurate, but the error is that it should have never been reported. These circumstances may include juvenile records, arrest information older than 7 years that should not be reported or sealed or expunged records.

For errors 2 and 3 you should contact the original governmental source of the public criminal records - e.g., the county or state court or agency from which the information was obtained. These governmental bodies may report the information to multiple sources. You want to go upstream and stop the problem at its source.

For error-type one, you may contact the source, but you need to take another step: you need to go to the entity that provided the report to the employer or entity that used the criminal background investigation. What do you say? You should say something like "XYZ Employer requested a criminal check on me and you mistakenly sent them a report on someone else - who they now think is me and it is preventing me from getting a job." At this point, they may order a court record on you or take other action - but make sure they take some action including (after they have done their fact finding) informing XYZ Employer that the public criminal record they reported was in error.

In fact, you should follow up your call with a certified letter or other means by which you can prove you contacted them. That letter should reference that it is a follow up to your telephone conversation of XX-XX-20XX. You should also make sure the reporting agency doesn't just turn around and report the same error next week to ABC Employer in a different criminal records background check. Save the documentation you receive from the entity after the issue is resolved.