By: Matt | Last updated February 25, 2019 
Background check services come in several types, depending on their use. While there are some specialized companies that offer this service for employment purposes (for screening candidates), most of the budget-friendly background check services you can find online are tailored for personal purposes. So then you might wonder why would you ever need to use a background check service.
What can a background check service do for you?
Online background check services such as Instant Checkmate, TruthFinder, Verispy, BeenVerified, PeopleLooker and many others such as these, offer reports that contain a large amount of information on pretty much anyone in the United States. In order to find all these information they gather, analyze and browse various sources, from social media profiles, email addresses, phone numbers, criminal records and other public records.
While it is true that all this information is available to anyone willing to track it down and use it, not everybody has the time, discipline and patience to find, peruse and compile all the data.
Typical information found in background check reports
There are so many scenarios in our life when we would benefit from knowing more about the people we come in contact with, from coworkers to our dates, neighbors, babysitters and so on. A background check service can offer you information on:
- Nearby sex offenders in your area
- Neighbors
- Parents of your children’s friends
- Former classmates
- Friends
- Coworkers
- Online sellers
- Social media friends
- Potential dates and more
You can even do a search on yourself just to find out how much information on you is publicly available.
A background check report can contain information such as:
- Phone numbers
- Addresses (current and past)
- Emails
- Social media profiles
- Date of birth
- Citizenship
- Military and driving records
- Arrest records
- Possible relatives
- Civil judgments
- Properties
- Tax liens
- Business associates
- Voter registration and other
See some tips on how to choose a background check service.
Is Instant Checkmate a good background check service?
Instant Checkmate is a public records search service with an experience of more than 10 years in the industry. It is affordable, user-friendly and accurate, which is pretty much everything you need in a background check service. Instant Checkmate claims it has 1.3 billion searches so far and the number is constantly growing.
Instant Checkmate offers both standard and premium reports and the latter are more comprehensive but they will cost you an additional fee.
What can you use this service for?
Instant Checkmate can be used for everything we’ve mentioned above: to find information on yourself, famous people, online buyers and sellers, people from your social media account, potential dates, neighbors, former classmates, friends and even family members. You can also find out who are the sex offenders in your area (if there are any).
Instant Checkmate is great for personal use and it allows you to search information on anyone in the United States. However, it can’t be used for employment screening, screening household workers (gardeners, nannies, etc.), tenant screening or when making decisions about the eligibility or someone looking to get a credit or make an insurance.
There are several options to choose from with this service: people search, email search, location search and reverse phone lookup.
The information in the reports is accurate and up to date, which is a big deal, as we’ve tested a lot of background check services that were way off and outdated when it came to addresses, valid phone numbers and so on.
How much does Instant Checkmate cost?
While there is no option to buy just a single report, Instant Checkmate offers a 5 day trial period for just $1. A one-month subscription will cost you around $35 and a 3-month membership is a bit over $83. For these subscriptions you get unlimited standard reports for the period of time you paid for.
Mobile support
A nice addition offered by Instant Checkmate is their mobile app: Instant Checkmate Background Check. Unfortunately though, at the time of writing this article, the app was only compatible with Android devices. The app has 11 MB and works on mobile devices running Android 4.4 or newer.
Overall, we consider Instant Checkmate an affordable background check service that provides accurate data and is very user-friendly. If they would also develop an iOS app and they would include the option to buy single reports, this service would become too good to pass up.
