Types of Background Checks: Which Ones Require a CRA
Nearly every guide to background check types sorts them by record class – criminal, credit, education, driving, civil. That is how the products are sold; it is not how the law classifies them. Federal law defines a background check by the decision it is used to make, so the identical county criminal docket entry is one legal object inside a hiring file and a different one inside a litigation file. This page classifies each named type by four questions: what decision it serves, whether that decision makes it a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, what the statute then compels of whoever uses it, and who may lawfully perform it. For several of the most-searched types the answer to the last is not us: we are not a consumer reporting agency, we do not provide consumer reports for those decisions, and the right path is a compliant CRA. It is general information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
Background check types are usually listed by record – criminal, credit, education, driving, license. The law does not classify them that way. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681a(d)(1) a report becomes a consumer report because of the eligibility decision it serves, not because of what is in it. So the real question about any type is: is there an eligibility decision at the end of it? If the answer is hiring, tenancy, credit, insurance, or a government license conditioned on financial responsibility, it is a consumer report, it must come from a consumer reporting agency, and 1681b(b) then compels a stand-alone written disclosure, written authorization, a certification from the employer, and delivery of the report before any adverse action. If the answer is litigation, counterparty diligence, fraud, or confirming identity, none of that applies and no CRA is required. We are not a CRA and do not provide consumer reports for covered decisions – we decline them and point you to one. This is general information, not legal advice.
Watch: Which Type Do You Actually Have?
The decision at the end sets the rules.
Watch Overview
What Makes a Report a Consumer Report
The definition every type list leaves out.
Start with the sentence that does the work. Congress defined the regulated object once, and it defined it by purpose rather than content:
“The term ‘consumer report’ means any written, oral, or other communication of any information by a consumer reporting agency bearing on a consumer’s credit worthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living which is used or expected to be used or collected in whole or in part for the purpose of serving as a factor in establishing the consumer’s eligibility for – (A) credit or insurance to be used primarily for personal, family, or household purposes; (B) employment purposes; or (C) any other purpose authorized under section 1681b of this title.”
15 U.S.C. 1681a(d)(1)Read what that sentence does not say. It does not name criminal records, credit files, driving abstracts, degrees, or license numbers. Every one of those can appear in a consumer report and none of them makes a report one. The trigger is the phrase “a factor in establishing the consumer’s eligibility”, and what follows is a short enumeration: consumer credit or insurance, employment purposes, and anything else authorized by section 1681b.
Two phrases in that definition are traps for anyone classifying a request. The first is “expected to be used” – coverage does not wait for the decision to happen, it attaches when the information is collected with that use in mind, so a researcher who knows the client is hiring cannot escape the statute by calling the output something else. The second is “employment purposes”, defined at 1681a(h) far more broadly than hiring: a report used “for the purpose of evaluating a consumer for employment, promotion, reassignment or retention as an employee.” Promotions, reassignments and retention reviews of existing staff all sit inside it.
One further definition closes the loop. A consumer reporting agency is, in the words of 1681a(f), “any person which, for monetary fees, dues, or on a cooperative nonprofit basis, regularly engages in whole or in part in the practice of assembling or evaluating consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to third parties.” That is a test about a pattern of conduct, which is why the boundary cannot be drawn by a notice at the foot of a page. It is drawn by what an organization actually does and who it does it for.
A related creature lives one subsection away and is routinely mistaken for this one: the investigative consumer report at 1681a(e), where information about character, general reputation, personal characteristics or mode of living is obtained “through personal interviews with neighbors, friends, or associates.” That is a subset of consumer reports with extra duties attached, not an alternative to them, and the word “investigative” in it does not mean non-FCRA research.
The Records Vary; the Rules Follow the Use
Same paper, two different legal objects.
Two questions get tangled together here: what records a background check draws on, and what the result is used for. The records are varied – county, state and federal criminal dockets, identity and address history, civil suits and judgments, entity filings, license records. But the rule that governs a check is set by its use, not its records, and whether a particular use is FCRA-covered is a legal question for your counsel.
Follow one document through both lanes and the point becomes concrete. A single county misdemeanor disposition is pulled from the same clerk’s index either way. Placed in a hiring file, it is part of a consumer report: it may only be furnished by a consumer reporting agency, the applicant must have received a stand-alone written disclosure and given written authorization before it was ordered, and if it contributes to a rejection the applicant must receive a copy of the report and a summary of rights before the rejection is final. Placed in a litigation file to establish that an opposing party was in a particular county on a particular date, it is a public court record being read for a non-eligibility purpose, and none of those duties exist. Nothing about the document changed. The decision at the end of it did.
That is why “what does a background check show” and “which type do I need” are genuinely different questions with different answers. If you want to know how deep a given record class reaches, or how the reporting limits work over time, how far back a background check reaches handles the lookback question directly, and how arrests are treated versus convictions handles the single most misunderstood record class. This page stays on classification: which type you have, and what follows from that.
A Type-by-Type Classification
Decision, coverage, duty, and who may perform it.
| Named type | The decision it serves | Consumer report? | Who may perform it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-employment screen | Hire, promote, reassign, retain | Yes – “employment purposes,” 1681a(d)(1)(B) | A CRA. Not us. |
| Tenant screening | Grant or refuse a lease | Yes – reached through 1681b(a)(3)(F)(i) | A CRA. Not us. |
| Credit check | Extend, review or collect an account | Yes – 1681b(a)(3)(A) | A CRA. Not us. |
| Insurance underwriting check | Underwrite a personal policy | Yes – 1681b(a)(3)(C) | A CRA. Not us. |
| Government license or benefit check | Grant a license the law conditions on financial responsibility | Yes – 1681b(a)(3)(D) | A CRA. Not us. |
| Litigation due diligence | No eligibility decision – a factual question in a case | No Our lane | Lawful public-records research. |
| Counterparty and entity review | Whether to transact with a business or its principals | No – the subject is commercial, not a consumer | Lawful public-records research. |
| Fraud investigation | Establishing what happened, not scoring a person | No Our lane | Lawful public-records research. |
| Identity confirmation and locate | Is this the right person, and where can they be reached | No | Lawful public-records research. |
| Self-check | Seeing your own file before someone else does | Your own file – request it from the agency holding it | You, directly. |
Ten named types, and the split is not where a record-class list would put it. Five require a consumer reporting agency and we decline all five. Four are the research we do. The tenth is something you can do yourself, for free, and should before anyone else does it for you.
Notice what the second column did to the taxonomy. Criminal history is not a row, because criminal history is not a type – it is a record class that can appear inside almost any row above and carries completely different duties depending on which row it lands in. The same is true of civil judgments, driving records and criminal record research generally. A list that puts “criminal check” and “tenant screening” side by side as peers has mixed a source with a purpose, and that category error is exactly what leaves people ordering the wrong thing from the wrong provider.
One correction worth making explicitly, because it circulates widely: tenancy is not one of the enumerated permissible purposes. There is no housing item in the list at 1681b(a)(3). Tenant screening is reached through subsection (F)(i) – “a legitimate business need for the information … in connection with a business transaction that is initiated by the consumer,” the consumer’s own rental application being the initiating transaction. It matters because (D), the item people commonly misattribute it to, is about government licensing and benefits, not landlords.
The Procedure Is the Price of the Type
What 1681b(b) attaches once a type is covered.
Guides to background check types call the covered ones “regulated” and stop there. Regulated is an adjective; the statute is a checklist. If your type landed in the top half of the table, three duties attach before anyone may hand you a report, and each is worth reading in the original because each is a place real screening programs come apart.
“A consumer reporting agency may furnish a consumer report for employment purposes only if – (A) the person who obtains such report from the agency certifies to the agency that – (i) the person has complied with paragraph (2) with respect to the consumer report, and the person will comply with paragraph (3) with respect to the consumer report if paragraph (3) becomes applicable; and (ii) information from the consumer report will not be used in violation of any applicable Federal or State equal employment opportunity law or regulation…”
15 U.S.C. 1681b(b)(1)Duty one is a certification, and it runs from the employer to the agency. The agency is forbidden to furnish the report until the user has certified compliance in advance. That single word “only” is why a legitimate CRA will not simply take your money and run a search: it cannot lawfully release the file without the certification, and the certification includes a promise about equal employment opportunity law that the agency is entitled to rely on.
“a person may not procure a consumer report, or cause a consumer report to be procured, for employment purposes with respect to any consumer, unless – (i) a clear and conspicuous disclosure has been made in writing to the consumer at any time before the report is procured or caused to be procured, in a document that consists solely of the disclosure, that a consumer report may be obtained for employment purposes; and (ii) the consumer has authorized in writing … the procurement of the report by that person.”
15 U.S.C. 1681b(b)(2)(A)Duty two is the standalone document, and it is the most-litigated line in the field. “In a document that consists solely of the disclosure” means exactly that: not a paragraph inside the employment application, not a clause in an offer letter, not a checkbox bundled with an arbitration agreement or a liability release. A disclosure that is otherwise perfect fails the moment anything else shares the page with it. Written authorization is separate and additional, and neither is satisfied by an oral yes.
“in using a consumer report for employment purposes, before taking any adverse action based in whole or in part on the report, the person intending to take such adverse action shall provide to the consumer to whom the report relates – (i) a copy of the report; and (ii) a description in writing of the rights of the consumer under this subchapter…”
15 U.S.C. 1681b(b)(3)(A)Duty three runs before the rejection, not after it. The subject receives the report and a written summary of their rights before the adverse action is taken, so an error can be disputed while it can still change the outcome.
The federal guidance written for employers puts duty two in plainer words: the notice “must be in writing and in a stand-alone format,” and “the notice can’t be in an employment application.” That is from the joint Federal Trade Commission and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission publication Background Checks: What Employers Need to Know, the right starting point for anyone whose type landed in the covered half of the table.
We cite these three paragraphs to price the type, not to teach the workflow. Knowing that a covered type costs a certification, a standalone disclosure with written authorization, and a pre-adverse-action delivery is enough to tell you which lane you are in. Working through that process correctly is a separate job, and FCRA compliance for background checks is where it is set out step by step.
The Types We Decline
A taxonomy that omits the exits is incomplete.
Most type guides are published by consumer reporting agencies, which is why they read as menus – every type on the list is a type the publisher sells. We are not a CRA, so five entries in our taxonomy are entries we route away, and treating that as a footnote rather than a category would misdescribe the subject.
Employment screening – hiring, promotion, reassignment and retention reviews – is a consumer report under 1681a(d)(1)(B) and carries the full 1681b(b) machinery, so a compliant agency is the only lawful route; what that involves is set out in pre-employment background screening. We will not run it as research and relabel it. Tenant screening is covered through 1681b(a)(3)(F)(i), with many states layering extra notice and fee rules on top of the federal ones, and belongs with a tenant screening company – tenant screening background checks explains why that route exists. Consumer credit and insurance underwriting are named in the statute directly, and nothing we produce may be used as a factor in either. Licensing decisions the law conditions on financial responsibility fall under 1681b(a)(3)(D), which makes them consumer-report purposes too.
What is left is substantial and it is what we do: establishing facts for litigation, checking who is behind a company before money moves, documenting a fraud matter, and confirming an identity so a record lands on the right person. That work is the subject of our background investigation services, and because people frequently arrive asking for a “background check” when what they need is a current address, skip tracing versus a background check untangles those two.
A Disclaimer Is Not a Boundary
Why we decline the work rather than just disclaim it.
There is an obvious objection to everything above, and the Federal Trade Commission has already made it. In business guidance published in 2013, discussing its settlements with two background-report app publishers, the agency wrote:
“If a company meets the legal definition of a ‘consumer reporting agency,’ it’s a consumer reporting agency. Including a disclaimer that says, in effect, ‘But we’re not a CRA!’ won’t change that.”
FTC business guidance, January 2013The companies in that matter had put notices on their products saying the reports were not to be used for employment, insurance, credit or similar decisions and were not FCRA-compliant. The FTC’s view was that the notice did not do the work, in part because it sat alongside advertising that encouraged people to use the reports to screen potential employees. On how it decides whether a business has reason to believe its information is being used for covered purposes, the same guidance says that many factors may be relevant but “one approach is to look at what the company says in its own ads.”
We cite that against ourselves deliberately, because it is the correct test and we would rather be measured by it. A line at the foot of a page is not what keeps us outside the consumer-report regime. What keeps us outside it is that we turn the covered work away at intake: when a request describes a hiring, tenancy, credit, insurance or covered licensing decision, we say no and name the kind of provider that can help, rather than taking the job and attaching a notice to the output.
Two limits on who we are and what we will take
We are a skip-tracing and public-records research firm operating under FCRA, GLBA and DPPA constraints. Nobody on this team holds a private investigator’s license, and we do not represent ourselves as private investigators. Where a matter requires licensed investigative activity – surveillance, or interviews conducted under a state licensing regime – that is not work we take. We report facts as the records show them and never render a verdict on someone’s character or fitness; that judgment, where it is even permitted, belongs to the decision-maker.
The second limit is about safety, and on a page like this it is not a formality. “Background check” is the phrase people reach for when they want to know about someone who has moved away or cut contact. We decline requests where the purpose appears to be locating, monitoring or building a file on a person who has separated themselves from the requester, including requests framed around an ex-partner or an estranged relative. That shape of request gets more scrutiny at intake, not less: we ask what lawful decision the information serves and who is entitled to make it, and a purpose that cannot be stated in those terms does not get worked. If you have a protective order, a court matter, or papers to serve, the lawful channel runs through the court, counsel or law enforcement. If you are in danger, contact local law enforcement or a domestic violence advocacy service rather than a research firm.
We do not pretext or impersonate. Sealed and expunged matters, and other restricted records, are not ours to surface or use, and we do not reach into private financial account contents. Access is permissible-purpose only, and none of this is legal advice.
Record Classes That Feed Every Type
Sources, not categories – each one appears in both lanes.
Criminal Court Records
Held county by county, with statewide repositories where a state publishes one and a separate federal system. No single national index exists.
Identity and Address History
Name, date of birth and address trail. Done first in every lane, because a record on the wrong namesake is worse than no record.
Civil Judgments and Liens
Suits, judgments and recorded encumbrances. Central to litigation work; tightly limited in the consumer-report lane.
Entity and Officer Filings
Secretary of state registrations, officers, agents and affiliated companies. A business subject is not a consumer, which changes the analysis.
Licenses and Credentials
State boards publish status, discipline and expiry. Verifying a credential is not the same as scoring a person for a job.
Real Property Records
Deeds, mortgages and transfers at the county recorder. Ownership is a fact of record; what it implies about a person is not.
How We Classify an Incoming Request
Four questions, asked in this order.
Name the Decision
Not what you want to look at – what turns on the answer.
Test It for Eligibility
Does it establish eligibility for credit, insurance, employment or a 1681b purpose?
Route or Accept
Covered goes to a CRA with a named handoff. Uncovered gets scoped.
Confirm Identity First
The right person before any record, in either direction.
What You Get, and What You Will Be Told No About
Tell us the decision your question serves and we will classify it before any work is quoted. If it is covered, you get a straight no with the reason and the kind of provider you need. If it sits outside the consumer-report regime, findings arrive with their source named and an honest confidence note, including what could not be established, and identity is confirmed before any record is attributed. Lawful research since 2004 – the right classification first, then the work or the referral.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main types of background check?
Sorted the way the law sorts them, there are ten common ones: pre-employment screening, tenant screening, credit checks, insurance underwriting checks, government licensing checks, litigation due diligence, counterparty and entity review, fraud investigation, identity confirmation and locate work, and your own self-check. The first five are consumer reports because each serves an eligibility decision named in the statute; the next four are not; the last is your own file, which you can request directly. Criminal, civil, credit and driving records are not types on this list – they are record classes that appear inside several of these types under different rules.
Which types of background check legally require a CRA?
Five: employment screening, tenant screening, consumer credit checks, insurance underwriting checks, and government licensing decisions the law conditions on financial responsibility. Each of those is an eligibility decision named in 15 U.S.C. 1681a(d)(1) or the permissible-purpose list at 1681b(a)(3), which makes the report a consumer report that must be furnished by a consumer reporting agency. We are not a CRA and we decline all five rather than running them as research and attaching a notice to the output.
Why does the use decide the type instead of the records?
Because that is how the statute is written. 15 U.S.C. 1681a(d)(1) defines a consumer report as information used or expected to be used “as a factor in establishing the consumer’s eligibility” for credit, insurance, employment, or another purpose authorized by section 1681b. Nothing there names a record class. The same county criminal disposition is part of a consumer report inside a hiring file and an ordinary public record inside a litigation file, so the right provider depends on the decision at the end, not on what you want to look at.
Can you run a background check for hiring or tenant screening?
No. Those are FCRA-covered decisions, and the report must come from a consumer reporting agency that operates under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, with the consumer protections that requires. We are not a CRA and do not provide consumer reports for those uses. If that is your purpose, we will direct you to a compliant CRA rather than do it ourselves – and we are clear about that boundary. Nothing we produce may be used as a factor in a hiring, tenancy, credit or insurance decision.
What does the FCRA actually require once a type is covered?
Three things, set out at 15 U.S.C. 1681b(b) for employment purposes. The user must certify compliance to the agency before the report is furnished, including that the information will not be used in violation of equal employment opportunity law. A clear and conspicuous written disclosure must be given “in a document that consists solely of the disclosure,” with separate written authorization. And before any adverse action based on the report, the subject must receive a copy of it and a written description of their rights. We cite these to show what a covered type costs, not to walk you through running one.
Isn’t a disclaimer enough to stay outside the FCRA?
No, and the Federal Trade Commission has said so directly. In business guidance published in 2013 it wrote that if a company meets the legal definition of a consumer reporting agency, it is one, and “including a disclaimer that says, in effect, ‘But we’re not a CRA!’ won’t change that.” The agency also noted that one way it assesses whether a business has reason to believe its reports are used for covered purposes is to look at what the company says in its own advertising. That is why we decline covered requests at intake rather than accepting them with a notice attached.
Are you private investigators?
No. We are a skip-tracing and public-records research firm working under FCRA, GLBA and DPPA constraints, and nobody on this team holds a private investigator’s license. We do not represent ourselves as investigators in the licensed sense and we do not take work a state reserves to licensees. What we do is research and document what lawful records show, under a purpose the law permits.
What if the person I want checked has cut contact with me?
That request gets more scrutiny at intake, not less. We decline work where the purpose appears to be locating, monitoring or building a file on someone who has separated themselves from the requester, including checks framed around an ex-partner or an estranged relative. People are entitled to their distance. If there is a court matter, a protective order, or papers to serve, the lawful route runs through the court, your attorney, or law enforcement. If you are in danger, contact local law enforcement or a domestic violence advocacy service.
Find Out Which Type You Actually Have
Before you order anything, name the decision. If it is a hire, a lease, credit, insurance or a licensing call, you need a consumer reporting agency and we will tell you so. If it is litigation, counterparty diligence, a fraud matter or confirming who you are dealing with, tell us what needs establishing and your lawful, permissible purpose; a first read typically comes back within 24 hours. Contact us to have your request classified.
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