Popular public records resources

Popular public records resources and related items of interest.



Have you been Googling people's names to get some background info on them? The results probably weren't very promising. Search engines are great for a lot of things, but pulling together a coherent picture of a specific person from scattered public records isn't really one of them. That's what the sites below are better at.

A few things worth keeping in mind before diving in. You can't legally look up someone else's credit report or credit score without their authorization. And personal background check services like the ones linked elsewhere on this blog are not permitted for professional use — hiring, tenant screening, and similar purposes require FCRA-compliant services. For personal research, though, there's quite a bit available, and more of it is free than it used to be.

2025 update: Many dead or otherwise outdated links that used to appear throughout this post have been removed. What's below has been cleaned up and updated with resources that are actually working as of now.

People Search

Some common reasons people use background search sites: checking out someone you met on a dating app, looking up a neighbor, finding a current address for someone you've lost touch with, checking for marriage or divorce records, or verifying who the parents of your child's friends are. Checking for sex offenders in your area is also a common one, and most states have their own publicly searchable registry for that.

For paid people search, Instant Checkmate and BeenVerified are among the better-known options currently operating. Both offer $1 trials. Neither can legally be used for employment screening or tenant background checks. If you need something FCRA-certified for professional purposes, that requires a different category of service entirely.

Reverse Email Searches

This has gotten more useful since it was first covered here. A few options now exist that don't require a credit card or account at all.

EmailSherlock is free and requires no signup. Paste in an email address and it returns whatever public information is linked to it, including social profiles and spam history. Results vary depending on how active the address has been online. ThatsThem is another free option that searches across public records and can return a name, location, and phone number linked to an email address. For professional email addresses specifically, Mailmeteor's free reverse email tool works well and also requires no account.

As with most of these tools, results are thinner for personal addresses (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) where the owner hasn't tied the address to any public profiles or accounts.

Check Vehicle History Here

A few tips when looking up VINs:

  • You may be able to scan a VIN barcode with Google Lens or another app rather than typing it manually.
  • For a free starting point, NICB's VINCheck is run by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and will tell you whether a vehicle has been reported stolen or declared a salvage by participating insurers. It's genuinely free with no strings attached, though limited to five lookups per day per IP address.
  • The NHTSA recall lookup is another government-backed free tool worth running on any used car. It checks whether a vehicle has any open safety recalls by VIN.
  • VinCheck.info provides free access to title records, theft history, recall data, and market value estimates. It pulls from NMVTIS-related reporting and other trusted sources. Good for a broader free check before deciding whether a paid report is worth it.
  • For a more comprehensive paid report, Carfax and AutoCheck are the names most people know, but VinAudit is a lower-cost NMVTIS-approved alternative worth considering.
  • The eBay Motors free AutoCheck offer mentioned in the earlier version of this post appears to have changed. It's worth checking eBay Motors listings directly to see whether a free report is still offered on a specific vehicle.

How to Find a Company's EIN

An EIN (Employer Identification Number) is a federal tax ID assigned to businesses by the IRS. If it's a company you work for, you can simply ask HR or check your W-2. For companies you don't work for, it depends on whether they're a non-profit. Non-profit EINs are public record and searchable through the IRS's own Tax Exempt Organization Search tool at no cost.

For other businesses, feinsearch.com (the site previously linked here) has moved to einsearch.com and is still operating. It remains one of the more established EIN lookup databases, though most searches beyond a basic free preview require a paid account. EINTaxID.com offers a partial free lookup as well, with over 4 million EINs available without payment.

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