Researching Public Information

To learn more about this topic, check out the link to related info: N.C.I.C

In the United States, public records constitute an enormous reservoir of free data, however, one which has appeared quite remote and not easy to be found for most individuals lately. Why? Because these billions of pieces of information used to be available only at county courthouses and state and federal agencies. That’s in the past, when you had to physically hoof it over to your local courthouse and search personally for the data you wanted, whether they were real estate data, litigation data, corporate data, or whatever. What a headache.

The Internet has changed this situation. Now you may sit at your office or home pc and get an access to public data saved anyplace – at nearly any courthouse or agency. Now, I’m not trying to say that all public records are presently available online. However, a great many of those are, and those that aren’t can typically be accessed with a telephone call to the Recorder’s Agency or County Clerk.

Nonetheless, before you get too excited, check out the particular kinds of data we’re talking about.

See some extra information about public records search: GA Check

Below you can see a few of the sorts of official data you have a right to view free of charge :

At The State Level…

-Chapter Data
-Federal Tax Liens
-Prison Data
-Incarceration Data
-Fictitious or Assumed Names
-Limited Liability Company Data
-Limited Partnership Data
-Trademark, Trade Name
-State Tax Liens
-Uniform Commercial Code Filings
-Employees’ Compensation Data
-Vessel Data
-Sales Tax Registrations
-Vehicle & Ownership Data
-Death Records
-Sexual Offender Data
-Marriage Data
-Divorce Data
-Birth Data
-Driver Data
-State Investigated Accident Records
-Some Kinds Of Occupational Licenses

Public Data Accessible At The County Level…

-Real Estate and Tax Assessor Data
-County Court Records (both civil and criminal)
-Tax Liens (also available at State level)
-Uniform Commercial Code data (also available at State level)
-Voter Registrations (accessibility varies)
-Very important Data (also available at State level)

Accessible At The Federal Level…

-EDGAR Company Filings
-Federal Court Data
-Chapter Data
-Military Data

In addition, an unlimited quantity of demographic/economic/regulatory information is available via all Federal office web sites

Fundamentals of Public Data

It’s essential to realize that there is a difference between public records and publicly-available information. The concept of “public records” pertains primarily to records maintained by government offices and which can be freely available to the general public, like real estate data and chapter records. On the other hand, for example, your telephone book has “publicly-accessible” information, that is the data individuals have chosen to permit to be publicly-accessed. If you’d like your address and telephone number to remain private, you’ll be able to refuse to let it be published in a telephone book. But, with public record info, you actually do not have an alternative – the federal government makes it public, period.

Similarly, know that some data is always non-public, like medical data and credit information. You can not go onto a government website and find out if somebody has certain medical or psychiatric issues, and you can’t get a copy of their credit report with out their written consent. To do so violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which Uncle Sam, actually, takes very seriously. Even when you find a web-based info dealer who promises to grant you any person’s non-public data, you should be wise enough to pass. Remember how much trouble Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of Hewlett-Packard, got herself into a couple of years ago by hiring a hotshot personal eye to look into boardroom leaks, which involved investigating the personal lives of HP’s board members? You don’t need that kind of trouble.

So it is essential to understand the difference between private and non-private data, and there is also one other issue to pay attention to: jurisdictions (counties and states) usually are not uniform in their laws concerning access to records. For instance, in some states you possibly can access individuals’s driving data with relative ease (Colorado); in others you can’t (California). Some states regard legal data as public (Texas); others do not (Massachusetts). You must adhere to the laws of the jurisdiction where you are accessing the records.

Public Data Access

As stated before, many jurisdictions haven’t yet computerized their public data – in particular, the smaller rural counties. So you can not access their data online, however, you’ll be able to at least get their telephone numbers online and call them. Oftentimes county clerks will run searches for you whilst you wait on the phone. One good source of county courthouse telephone numbers is backgroundcheckgateway.com/statelist. Certainly, you can probably simply put the county’s name into Google and get the telephone number, too.

Incidentally, there may be a small search fee, and/or a small copying price, however, these will be modest – public record data is free unless you employ a professional document retriever to go to the agency or courthouse to access it for you. If you wish to look into this opportunity, visit brbpub.com.

The following are brief directions for accessing public data by broad categories:

Business Data Access

Business data are largely concentrated in the Secretary of State’s office. For instance you may must know if a given firm is an affiliated office or the date of incorporation, or who the officers and directors are. Or you may need data on a limited liability firm, a partnership, or a commercial name, or on gross sales tax registrations.

For Security Exchange Commission and different financial information, or for data pertaining to bankruptcies, patents and copyrights, you could search on the federal level.

For data pertaining to mortgages, UCC’s, tax liens, and real estate, you must focus on the county or local (city) level – most frequently, the county level.

Court Data Access

Prison data access is a real problem within the United States (although it is easier here than nearly anyplace else in the world.)

On the one hand, governments want to provide you with legal record data so you’ll be able to avoid hiring or doing business with criminals; then again, they do not want to provide you with legal record data because then you will not employ or do business with ex-convicts, who then will probably be motivated to commit more crimes in order to survive.

So it appears that they compromise by making the information hard to get (or more likely, bureaucracy dictates that the method can not be streamlined and made moderately efficient). So we discover there is no single nationwide repository of legal data within the U.S. except the FBI’s Nationwide Crime Info Center, which is available only to police organizations. Prison record data is maintained on a strictly piecemeal, jurisdictional basis. Thus in case your subject resides in Colorado, you’ll be able to run a statewide legal data search there, and he/she might come up clean – however, in actual fact, be a convicted felon in Indiana. Unless you also examine Indiana, you’ll never know this.

Recording Office Document Access

Your county or city recording office has complete data on almost each piece of real estate within the county – sale costs, mortgages, liens, property descriptions, improvements, etc – and that is all public info. Recording office data is now broadly obtainable on the Internet. A great source is netronline.com. Incidentally, for all the newest pieces of information about your county or any county of interest, try visiting naco.org.

Oftentimes, the fastest and easiest approach to search the Internet is to find a website portal which deals with your specific subject of interest.