Also, I'm vaguely horrified at the notion that background checks might become standard even for 'sharing economy' gigs. Ah, well, you see, your pot charge disqualifies you from picking up my laundry.
I wouldn't.
So, it's not something I think about. What's the threat model? They're going to case your house and rob you at some point in the future?
In an ideal world, that sounds plausible. Let's keep child molesters away from child care! Who can disagree with that?
But in practice, it means that all offenders are permanent second class citizens barred from non-marginal employment opportunities.
It's extremely pernicious, and you don't have to exaggerate anything to reach slippery slopes. Because there is no discretion in the system, anyone remotely tagged by law enforcement can be screwed by this.
Recently here in Canada it turns out that non-offense data was turning up in background checks. So, some guy was in the process of becoming a nurse, iirc, but was not allowed to graduate - because his neighbour five years ago was a drug dealer. That's it. The background check revealed that he was asked some questions and that's that. Four years of tuition down the drain.
If you can never find a way to reasonably support yourself, regardless of how much you've turned your life around, then we've created a self fulfilling prophesy in terms of recidivism rates.
Keep in mind we're talking about the sharing economy, which almost by definition are going to be bottom of the barrel 'gigs' to begin with.
Does it matter if person folding your laundry got into a drunken fight when they were 19? Not really.
no real relevance to what you posted, but it made me want to rant.
I'm not saying the fear is unwarranted, but do you know where your employer is inputting your SSN and where they keep it? How safe do you think your personal data is?
I built an employment application 'web app' for a job not too long ago. It was terrible, and against all my objections, we ended up asking for the applicants SSN. It certainly wasn't secure by any stretch of the imagination, and I cringe a little every time I see an application come in. I'm sure this sort of thing happens daily.
Anyway, I went ahead and put my SSN in to Checkr. It came up with an address I've never lived at, next to 3 addresses I actually have lived at. Not sure what that's about.
Regardless of whether I think it's safe or not, the reality is that I can sue my employer if there is something malicious. My employer is also naturally incentivized to make sure nothing happens to my identity (because if they did I'd leave the company, and he/she would lose a resource).
The point I'm trying to make isn't that you should go ahead and put your SSN in to random websites, but you need to realize your SSN goes a lot of places. Within the last hour I happened to find my parents' names, signatures, DoB, address, and SSNs in public documents from a county website. Keep track of your credit and watch for identity theft. Knowing that you are careful won't help as much as you think. Who knows who will end up using Checkr?
I dont see any backend language or framework. what does this mean?
For example, the default Express app contains `X-Powered-By: Express` in the response header. Ruby on Rails is usually sniffed by its predictable cookie signature.
You gain nothing from broadcasting your back-end stack to the world.
Be careful. Be thoughtful.
The site looks nice and clean. After running a report on myself, I noticed it said for a minute or so that my ssn was incorrect before it changed to stating it was cleared.
Also, while the national check for me came back clear (as expected), I was curious if that was literally all the report said. I would love to see more detailed reporting underlying the results. Obviously if it doesn't say anything more than "clear" or "no results" or something, then this probably wouldn't be useful.
Pricing-wise, I think it is somewhat fair and were I a bigger company with an HR group, you would be a solid candidate as a vendor.
This is a light version of a background check (since we have to pay for it). Our pricing page references packages with extensive screenings and results.
I will happily email daniel for deleting the personal data. While that works well for a HN comment thread, I still think it shouldn't require interaction on your part.
Dealing with country-specific services is as good as aggregating relevant databases directly.
I'd pay good money for a single API that covered most of the western world, and seamlessly integrated external services (e.g. Equifax in the UK)
Take for instance the credit scoring system. There is no such thing as Expedia or privately maintained credit scoring system outside the UK. In France, the Bank of France maintains files which are only available to financial institutions holding a licence.
Another example, in the UK, the sex offenders register is only available through the police, in other countries, there have been citizen initiatives to create such database for specific areas.
This kind of service is more realistic in the US as their SSN is the main ID for background check.
That being said, I'm into it. Those arguing about it's usefulness seem either oblivious to, or annoyed by, the vast number of background checks that are run in this country every day.
"This application will be able to read and write all user data. This includes the following: Private email addresses Profile information Followers"
