By: Mark Miclette

Background checks don’t have to be limited to the employment world or for renting an apartment. In fact, background checks can be an easy, proactive method to protect yourself, your family, and your life from those who would take advantage of your situation.

Many situations that involve one person taking advantage of another’s vulnerability don’t happen randomly. They more often happen because someone is already close and knows personal information. To prevent this sort of problem from occurring in the first place, prevention is the key.

Background searches can be performed by any regular person, and can be used to find out the following via available public records that anyone can look at:

• The location of registered sex offenders living nearby or in the same neighborhood.
• Whether an acquaintance has ever been arrested.
• If known associates and friends have an unknown criminal background.
• Whether certain persons should be kept away from your children.
• What your own background check looks like to others who review it.
• What contact information and phone numbers exist if people don’t want to provide them voluntarily.
• Whether an acquaintance isn’t quite honest about their background.
• Whether a new date has any questionable issues in his or her history.
• See if a babysitter or care provider is a safe driver or has a problem background with tickets and safety violations.
• Find out about people who are met online before they are trusted with any personal information.
• Whether a person has any kind of restraining order against him or her with other previous relationships.

One of the best benefits about background checks is that a person can do so quickly via the Internet, it’s entirely discrete and private, and there’s no risk of retaliation for finding out information unless the review is actually disclosed by a reviewer. In other words, a person reviewing acquaintances proactively stays a step ahead of others who may not necessarily share the same altruistic interests in a mutual friendship or relationship. Why find out about a problem person the hard way? Learn about your acquaintances ahead of time.