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With so much information about people available online, it is amazing what you can find with a simple background check. But the question is: Are these checks ruining personal privacy by making it so that pretty much everything is public knowledge?
Many people think so. Recently there has been a lot of outcry about how employers are making use of information from social networks such as Facebook, as well as public records such as court records, driving records and so on to screen potential employees. Also, there have been concerns that we have too much information easily accessible online.
But first, the question you should ask yourself is this: What is private information really?
When it comes to public records, there is really very little about it that is private. Public records are generally records that are created by public institutions such as courts, licensing boards, and so on – and so having them publicly available shouldn’t be that big a deal – right?
The problem is that sometimes some of these public records may have information that many people would rather be kept private, such as home addresses, contact details and so on. Still, there is very little that is truly ‘sensitive’ in most public records.
On the other hand, social networks may contain a lot more information that is sensitive and decidedly personal. People use social networks to communicate with their friends, and so some of that communication may be very personal and very private.
That being said, most social networks give people a large amount of control over their privacy – so if you do not want others to see what you have posted on Facebook or any other social network it is up to you to control your privacy settings and also be careful about who you accept as a friend.
When it comes to background checks that pull information from social networks, the fact of the matter is that these checks cannot access information that is set to be private. So for all intents and purposes, the only reason why someone would be able to access your ‘personal’ information is if you allowed them to do so.
The one argument that people have about this is that by default most social networks allow everyone to see all information that is posted and users need to actually change their privacy settings to bar others from viewing their content. Still, it is certainly possible to do so.
While it may be true that personal privacy is no longer as easy to safeguard as it was – if you are careful you can still protect your personal information to a very large degree and make sure that it isn’t available by a simple background check.