Broker profile
Background-Check.com
- No opt-out exists
- Not on CA register
A genuine operator, which on this list makes it unusual. Background-Check.com runs its own search, its own accounts and its own billing under SearchSystems LLC of Santa Barbara, California, and it advertises more than 800 million criminal records updated weekly, sold at $19.95 a search with no subscription. What it does not have is any way for the people in those records to get out. There is no opt-out page, no deletion page and no removal instruction anywhere on the site, and the only footer link that mentions California's privacy law sends you to the state Attorney General instead of to a form.
Background-Check.com overview
At a glance
- Data published
- Moderate
- Re-listing frequency
- Recurring
- Complaint record
- Not established
- Opt-out friction
- Severe
- Operator opacity
- Mostly disclosed
- Prior data incidents
- None documented
Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.
Complaint record is not established for this broker, so it is left out of the gauge rather than averaged in as a number nobody researched. The figure above is the average of the other five dimensions.
What each dimension means
- Data published: how much and how sensitive the personal data they put out.
- Re-listing frequency: how quickly you reappear after opting out.
- Complaint record: volume and pattern of complaints across BBB, Trustpilot, and Sitejabber; no findable review presence counts against the broker.
- Opt-out friction: how hard the removal process is to complete.
- Operator opacity: how hidden the operating company and its principals are.
- Prior data incidents: history of breaches or leaks of the data they hold.
- What it sells
Nationwide criminal record searches
- Operating entity
SearchSystems LLC · Santa Barbara, CA
- Price
$19.95 per search · no subscription
- Records claimed
800 million+ · updated weekly
- Can you find yourself?
No · every search needs a paid account
- Public listing pages
None · no sitemap, nothing indexable
- Opt-out page
None
- Deletion page
None
- Removal in the privacy policy
Not mentioned once
- CA data broker registry
Not registered
- FCRA covered?
No · the site disclaims it on every page
Background
Background
Almost everything on this list turns out to be a shopfront in front of somebody else's database. This one is not. Type a name into Background-Check.com and nothing redirects, nothing carries an affiliate code and no other company's logo appears. The search posts to the site's own address and stops at a login, because searching requires an account and a payment.
- Operating entity
SearchSystems LLC
- Address
360 Mountain Dr Santa Barbara, CA 93103
- In business since
1997 · per the site's own banner
- Search requires
First name, last name and date of birth
- Search returns
A login page until an account is paid for
- BBB listing
The company presents itself as long established and credentialled. The banner reads Trusted since 1997, the footer claims founding membership of NAPBS, the professional body for employment background screeners, and a Better Business Bureau badge sits beside a Santa Barbara address at 360 Mountain Dr. A phone number and a support address are published. None of that is hidden, and it is the reason this site reads as more serious than its neighbours.
Set against that is a banner on every page stating that this is Non-FCRA Background Data for educational and personal use only, and that the information must not be used for employment, tenant, credit or insurance decisions. Those are the decisions the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs, and the protections that come with them are the ones a person subject to a background check relies on: notice, a copy of the report, and a route to dispute what is wrong in it. By disclaiming the Act, the site sells criminal history without any of them attaching.
The search form asks for a first name, a last name and a date of birth, with the date of birth required rather than optional, and offers a nationwide search area. So the buyer needs to know a birthday, which narrows who is realistically being looked up. It is not a stranger fishing. It is usually someone who already knows you.
Nothing about you is visible from outside, and that is not reassurance. There are no public profile pages here, no sitemap and no robots file, so nothing about you can be found by searching the web. The record is still there. It is simply behind a card payment rather than in front of one, which means you cannot check whether you are in it and you will never know when someone buys it.
Data Published
Data types
Taken from the site's own navigation, which lists what a buyer can purchase. This is what the company advertises rather than what a report was confirmed to contain, because the search sits behind a paid account.
Nationwide criminal records, with a coverage map
Federal criminal records
Civil records and court records
Wants and warrants
Tenant and eviction history
Bankruptcies, liens and judgments
Terrorism watch list checks
Workers compensation claims
Education and employment history
Professional licence verification
Social security number trace
Driving history
Credit report
Asset search
Drug screening
Workers compensation, drug screening and credit are the ones to notice. They are not public records in the way a court docket is, and they sit oddly beside a banner saying the data must not be used for employment decisions. Those are the products an employer buys.
Contact
Contacts & links
- Operating entity
SearchSystems LLC
- Address
360 Mountain Dr Santa Barbara, CA 93103
- Phone
1-888-717-3223 · Mon to Fri, 8am to 5pm PT
- Support email
- Contact form
- Privacy policy
- Opt-out form
Does not exist
Key links
The contact form has no privacy option. It makes you choose a department before it will send, and the five choices are sales, technical support, billing and refunds, account help, and other or general inquiry. Every one of them assumes you are a customer. Someone asking to be taken out of the records has to file it under other.
If you write to them, put it in writing twice. Send the request through the form and again to support@background-check.com, state plainly that you are asking for deletion of your personal information rather than help with an account, and keep the date you sent it. With no published process and no stated response time, the record of having asked is the only thing you will hold.
Reputation
Trust signals
A Better Business Bureau profile exists, and the site advertises an A+ rating from it in its own header. We have not read it, and we have not established a complaint record from any other platform, so the score beside this section records an absence of research rather than a finding.
FAQ
Q & A
How do I remove my information from Background-Check.com?
There is no process. The site has no opt-out page, no deletion page and no removal instruction anywhere on it. We checked the obvious addresses directly and /ccpa, /opt-out, /optout, /remove and /do-not-sell all return a not-found page. The privacy policy does not use the words opt out, removal, deletion or suppression at any point. What is left is the contact form and the support email, neither of which is built for the request.
The footer has a CCPA link. Does that not work?
It works, but it does not do what the label suggests. The link goes to oag.ca.gov, the California Attorney General's explainer on the state privacy law. It is a page about your rights in general, published by the state, with no connection to this company and no way to file anything with them. Clicking it takes you off the site and no closer to a removal.
Can I look myself up to see what they hold?
Not without paying. Every search stops at a login, and an account costs $19.95 per search. There are no free preview pages and nothing about anyone is published openly, so you cannot confirm whether you appear in the database at all without becoming a customer of it.
Is Background-Check.com a data broker?
By any ordinary meaning of the phrase, yes. It holds records about people who are not its customers and sells them to strangers for a fee. It does not appear on California's data-broker register, which we checked against the published registry, and we make no claim here about whether it is required to be on it.
Is a report from here a background check I can rely on?
The company says not. Every page carries a banner stating the data is non-FCRA and for educational and personal use only, and that it must not be used for employment, tenant, credit or insurance decisions. That disclaimer cuts both ways. It limits what a buyer may lawfully do with the report, and it strips the protections that the Fair Credit Reporting Act would otherwise give the person the report is about, including the right to see it and to dispute an error in it.
Who runs it?
The footer names SearchSystems LLC at 360 Mountain Dr, Santa Barbara, California, with a published phone number and support address. That is more than most sites in this directory disclose. No officer is named and no state of incorporation is given.
Take yourself off data broker sites
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August 25, 2026 · Walked in a browser. Policy and contact pages read in full, removal paths probed directly, and registration status checked against California's 549-row data-broker registry CSV.