criminal record lookup - How To Access Government Records Freely

Government records are useful to just about any person in the country. First, you can use them to extract information about yourself that could be required when you apply for a job like. These include your Social Security number or your birth certificate. They could also be useful to check up on another person's background through criminal record lookup, court dockets, bankruptcy records, and many others.

For this reason, government records are made freely available to any individual. All these people have to do is to file a request with the appropriate government agency in possession of the necessary data. Once the request has been approved, he or she will then receive the information that he or she has asked for.

How to Make Sure Your Request Is Not Denied

Even though these records are freely available, there are still some things to consider when you apply for release of these information. If you are asking for information about yourself and your family, then you will not expect to run into any possible problems with the federal or state government agency that holds the data.

However, if you are seeking information on someone outside your family, then you have to expect some barriers along the way.

First, when you are requesting for records pertaining to a certain individual, you must be able to prove in your request that you are not going to use the information for invading a person's privacy. You should be able to present a valid purpose together with your request for information.

Valid reasons would include the following:

* Background check prior to employment
* Confirmation of possible lost person contact
* Issues of security, like information on people of suspicious nature
* Bankruptcy records for a potential business partner

These are just some of the valid reasons for requesting government records on a person. The bottom line is to have a legal and ethical purpose for digging up a person's information.

Where to Find Government Records

One way to find government-held records is to approach the government agency directly. At most times, the information held by the agency can be obtained free of charge from you.

However, you may run through bureaucratic red tape along the way, which may delay you. This may prove to be difficult because some people who request for government information are businesspersons who are in urgent need of employees.

Another way to dig up government records on a certain individual is to use the Internet. The World Wide Web is home to hundreds of websites that offer their services of searching for government-held information on an individual's behalf. All you need to do to find these sites is to search for them using the search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

There are two types of Internet-based record searching. The most prevalent is the paid searching service. These are companies that have been able to establish systems of extracting government records, and they offer these services for a fee.

The second type is the free record search. It is the opposite of the paid services, because you don't have to pay a fee in order to use their services.