What Radaris Results Actually Mean Once You Read Them as Evidence
A profile puts a deed transcription, a phone number bought from a data compiler, and a computer’s guess about who someone’s relatives are into the same list, in the same typeface, with nothing to tell them apart. Almost every mistake people make with these results comes from that one design choice. This page grades the blocks for you: what each one is built out of, what it is strong enough to support, and where it stops.
The short version
A result is a compilation, not a finding. Radaris publishes its own position on this: its site-wide notice states that all data offered is derived from public sources, that it “does not verify or evaluate each piece of data,” and that it makes no warranties about it. Blocks come in three grades. Some lines are transcribed from a document somebody filed, some were bought from a commercial compiler, and some were computed by software from overlaps between records. A category heading is a menu item, not a finding. The Help Center says the product includes a court records category whether or not your subject has anything in it. The vendor’s own instruction is to go one step further. Its Terms of Service require that before any adverse action “the Data must be re-verified by an additional, independent source” – which is the whole of our job, described by the site itself.
Grading a profile in seventy seconds
The same three questions we ask of every line before it goes into a report: who filed it, when, and what would it take to be wrong.
Three grades of claim, one flat list
Three grades of claim, one flat list
The layout is the problem. Grade one and grade three look identical on screen.
Ask where a line came from and the answers fall into three very different piles. Grade one is a transcription of something a person filed with an institution – a deed recorded at a county register, a marriage license, a case caption in a civil index. Somebody signed a document, an office accepted it, and the compiler copied what the office published. Grade two is a record purchased or received from a commercial supplier – the phone, mailing and demographic data that circulates in the marketing and identity-data trade. Grade three was never filed by anyone at all: it is an output, computed from the way the other two grades overlap. Relatives, associated names, and neighbor lists are all grade three.
You do not have to take that taxonomy from us, because the site’s own Help Center describes the first two grades in a sentence. Asked where its information comes from, it answers, verbatim: “Radaris compiles its information from publicly available sources and from third-party data suppliers. The most common sources of these data are federal, state and government agencies. Those sources can include; property transactions, voter registration, postal address change requests and more. Additionally, phone companies, retail stores, media companies, contests, and sweepstakes frequently share information publicly.” Read that list again slowly. Property transactions and postal change-of-address filings are things a person signed. Contests and sweepstakes entries are things a person typed into a form to win a prize, with no verification of any kind attached and no penalty for typing something inaccurate.
That single sentence is doing more work than any review on the first page of Google. It tells you that the address on a profile might have come out of a recorded deed, or it might have come out of a sweepstake entry, and the profile will not tell you which. Grading is left entirely to the reader, and the reader is normally given no cue that grading is required.
The line between what a government office published and what a marketing file contains is worth holding on to for the rest of the page, because it decides everything that follows. Our primer on how public records are created, held and released covers what actually earns the name.
What each block is actually asserting
Same page, same font, wildly different evidentiary weight.
Names and aliases. An alias line is a set of name strings that turned up in the compiled material attached to the same identity. It is not a record of a legal name change and it does not distinguish between a maiden name, a middle name used as a first, a clerk’s typo, an anglicized spelling, and a genuinely different person whose file was drawn in. It supports one inference only: search under these spellings too. It supports no inference at all about someone concealing an identity, which is the inference people most often draw from it.
Age and date of birth. Frequently the strongest discriminator on the page and the most under-used. An age that is off by a decade from what you know is worth more than three matching initials, because age is the field a wrong-person merge most often gets wrong in a way you can actually notice.
The address list. Treat it as an unordered set unless every entry carries a date. Position in the list is a rendering decision, not a chronology, and “current” as a label reflects what the compiler most recently received rather than where somebody sleeps tonight. An address list is a good instrument for one job – telling you which counties to go and look in – and a poor instrument for the job people use it for, which is deciding where to send a process server.
Phone numbers. A number in a block asserts association, not subscription. It does not tell you the line is live, that the person answers it, or that it is registered in their name. Whether a number is dead, ported, prepaid or registered to somebody else is a separate question with its own answer, and it is not answerable from the profile.
Possible relatives and neighbors. Pure grade three. The heading says “possible”, and that word is load-bearing. These names are the output of association, and association is generated by shared addresses, shared surnames and shared record fields – all of which a landlord, a roommate, an adult child at a parent’s mailing address, or an unrelated namesake can produce. There is also a wrinkle most readers never notice: the Help Center states that when a searcher signs in with Facebook or Google, “your search results will expand to include your friends and associates from each social network.” Under those conditions, part of what you are reading reflects your own connections rather than the subject’s.
Property and court entries. These sit at the top of the grade scale, because behind each one there is a document with a book and page or a case number, held by an office you can call. That is exactly why they are worth pulling rather than reading: the profile gives you the pointer, and the custodian gives you the instrument.
Emails, online profiles and mentions. The Help Center describes profile data as compiled “from many open sources available across the internet including social media, publications, and online mentions.” A mention is an appearance of a string on a page. It is the weakest thing on the profile and the easiest to confuse with a finding.
Note what this page is not doing. It is not an error-rate study; how often each field is wrong, and in which direction, is a separate question that our guide to accuracy across online people-search sites already answers at length, and we are not going to repeat it here. This page is about what a line means when it is right.
The category list is a menu, not a finding
The most expensive misreading in the whole category, and the vendor documents it plainly.
Before you pay, you are shown the categories a report can contain. It is natural to read that list as a description of your subject. It is not. The Help Center states the position in as many words: “Prior to buying a report, we list all data categories that will be included when you buy a report. However, not every category will have a record. The report must be run and completed to determine its contents.” Then it gives the example itself: “We include a court records category, but if your subject does not have a criminal record, that category will be empty.”
So a heading is a product feature, not a claim about a person. Seeing “criminal records” on the pre-purchase list tells you nothing whatsoever about whether the subject has any. And the mirror image matters more: an empty category is not a clearance. It means nothing matching was found in the material that compiler holds – a set that is not the same as the set of records that exist. County criminal indexes are not uniformly available for bulk licensing, sealed and expunged matters are not published to anyone, and a case filed under a name variant sits outside the search you ran.
The paid report is described by the vendor’s own blog FAQ as containing “all public record data” in the categories it lists, and as excluding certain things outright: “Radaris Background Checks do not include confidential financial information, any health information, or social security numbers.” That exclusion is worth reading carefully rather than sceptically. It marks the boundary of the whole consumer product class. Nobody in this category is selling account balances or medical history, and any service that implies otherwise is describing something you should not buy.
If a category matters to your decision, the answer is not a bigger report – it is the underlying index at the office that keeps it. Our walkthrough of free public-records searching covers which custodians publish searchable indexes and which require a request in person or in writing.
From block to evidentiary weight
What each thing on the screen can carry, and the weight that snaps it.
| What you are looking at | What it actually is | What it cannot carry on its own |
|---|---|---|
| A source-verified locate | Each element traced to the office that holds it, with the pull date attachedOur output | Nothing we could not name a source for stays in the report |
| Deed or property entry | Transcription of a document recorded with a county office | Occupancy – ownership and residence are different facts |
| Court or case entry | An index line pointing at a filing | An outcome; an index entry is not a judgment or a conviction |
| Compiler-supplied phone or email | Commercial data attached to an identity by a supplier | Proof the line is live or that it belongs to your subject |
| Possible relatives, associated names | Software output computed from overlapping fields | A family relationship, a marriage, or a shared household |
| An empty category | Nothing matched in the material that compiler holds | Any conclusion at all about what exists elsewhere |
The column that matters is the third one. A profile is a fast, cheap, wide net that tells you where to look; converting a lead into something you can serve, file or rely on is a different discipline with a different cost, and that conversion is the whole of what professional skip tracing sells. Anyone telling you the two are the same thing is selling one of them.
Why the legal wrapper changes the reading
The same address means different things depending on the duty attached to it.
Consumer reporting agencies operate under an accuracy duty. When one prepares a consumer report it must “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report relates” – that is the text of 15 U.S.C. 1681e(b). A people-search compilation is not produced under that duty, and Radaris says so itself, at the head of its Terms of Service: “You understand that Radaris is not a ‘Consumer Reporting Agency’ (as that term is defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (‘FCRA’)), and you agree that you will not use the Sites or Data for any purpose enumerated by the FCRA.” That is not a disclaimer to skim past. It is a statement about what you are holding. The same Terms say it again, more bluntly, under their DISCLAIMERS heading: neither Radaris nor its data providers, it reads, “can or does represent or warrant that the Sites or Data will be complete or accurate,” and then two words settle it – “This data is provided ‘as is’.” Put “as is” beside a statutory duty of maximum possible accuracy and you are looking at opposite ends of one scale, in the vendor’s own wording rather than ours.
A second consequence is one almost nobody spots. A consumer reporting agency is barred from putting stale adverse items into a consumer report at all: under 15 U.S.C. 1681c(a), bankruptcies drop out after ten years and civil suits, civil judgments, arrest records, paid tax liens, accounts placed for collection and other adverse items after seven. Those clocks are duties on regulated reports. They are not a general expiry date on information, so an old item can sit in a non-regulated compilation long after a screening report would have dropped it – and its presence there tells you about the age of the compilation, not about the standing of the matter.
The uses that are off the table are set out in the same Terms of Service, which forbid using the data as a factor in “(a) establishing an individual’s eligibility for personal credit or insurance or assessing risks associated with existing credit obligations, (b) evaluating an individual for employment purposes, (c) for determination of an individual’s eligibility for a license or other benefit that depends on an applicant’s financial responsibility or status, or (d) in connection with any other personal business transaction with an individual.” Those track the permissible-purpose scheme at 15 U.S.C. 1681b(a)(3). And the terms go one step further than most readers expect: “Before taking any Adverse Action based on this Data, the Data must be re-verified by an additional, independent source.”
Take that instruction at face value and the profile finds its proper place – as the index, never the authority. That distinction is the whole difference between the two things people ask us to compare, which we set out in detail in skip tracing versus people search.
Six misreadings we get called about
Each one is a grade-three line being asked to do a grade-one job.
The top address was treated as current
A server was sent to the first line on the list, nailed the door of a house sold two years earlier, and the affidavit had to be withdrawn. The list was never in date order; nothing on the page said it was.
A “possible relative” was contacted as family
The name was a previous tenant at the same unit. The call landed on a stranger, told them something about a person they had never met, and cost the client the one approach they were going to get.
An empty court category was read as a clean record
Nothing matched, so the file was closed as clear. The matter had been filed in a county whose index the compiler did not hold, under a spelling nobody had searched.
An alias list was read as an assumed identity
Four “also known as” entries looked damning in a demand letter. Three were clerical variants of one surname and the fourth was a married name. Nothing had been assumed by anybody.
A profile was used to decide a tenancy
An applicant was turned down on what a consumer site showed. That is a covered use, it needs a consumer reporting agency, and the site’s own terms rule it out in the paragraph nobody opened.
An online mention was treated as a record
A name and a city on a club roster went into a demand letter as a residence. A mention is the appearance of a string on a page – the weakest thing on the profile, and the one that most resembles a finding.
How we turn a profile into something you can use
Four steps, and the first one is throwing away the ranking you were given.
Demote everything to a lead
We take the profile apart into individual assertions, drop the ordering, and mark each element with its grade. Nothing keeps the authority the layout gave it.
Go to the custodian, not the copy
Where a line points at a filed document, we pull it from the office that holds it – the recorder, the clerk, the assessor – so we are reading the instrument rather than somebody’s transcription of it.
Test each association against something independent
An association only survives if a second, unrelated source agrees. That is the same standard the site’s own terms set for anyone acting on the data, and it is where most grade-three lines quietly fall over.
Report with the source and the date on every element
You get the address, where it came from, when we pulled it, and what it will and will not support. If something is a lead rather than a confirmation, it is labeled as one.
What we are, and where we stop
The boundaries are part of the product. Read them before you order, not after.
We are a skip-tracing and public-records research firm, not licensed private investigators, and we do not hold ourselves out as such or take work that requires a license – no surveillance, no following anyone, no pretext. We do not call a subject or a third party pretending to be someone else to draw information out of them, and we will not do it at a client’s request; a fact obtained that way is worth nothing to a court and exposes everyone who touched it. We do not access private financial contents. There is no bank balance, no account statement, no credit file, no medical record, no live phone location and no cell-site data in anything we deliver, and any firm implying otherwise is describing something you should not buy.
We are not a consumer reporting agency, and what we produce is not a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. That governs what you may do with it. Our work must not be used as a factor in deciding whether someone gets credit or insurance, whether they are hired, kept or promoted, whether they qualify for a government license or benefit that turns on financial standing, whether they are approved for a tenancy, or in any other eligibility determination the FCRA covers. Those decisions require a consumer reporting agency operating under the accuracy duty and the permissible-purpose rules cited above, and we are not one. If your question is a screening question, hire a screening company.
Every file starts with the purpose. We ask what the locate is for and who you are in the matter, and we take a written statement of purpose before any research begins – collection of a debt you are owed, service of process, an estate or heir matter, an insurance claim, litigation you are a party to, reconnecting with family who are not avoiding you. If a purpose does not hold up, we do not take the work; that gate is why our clients can say where their information came from.
Safety decline. We do not accept work whose purpose is to reach a person who moved to get away from the requester. If a subject has a protective order against you, if the file has the shape of a former partner searching for a former partner, if the request is framed around surprising or confronting someone, or if the answers to our purpose questions do not hold together, we stop the file and refund it – and we do not refer it on to somebody else. Nothing on this page is written to help anyone defeat an address that was deliberately made private, which is why it explains how to read what a compiler already publishes and does not explain how to find what a person has withheld. If you are the person being looked for, we are not the right instrument: contact your local law enforcement agency, the court that issued or could issue your order, or a domestic-violence victim-services advocate, who can advise on address-confidentiality options in your state.
If the profile you are reading is your own, the question is a different one entirely – what a compiler is publishing about you and how to have it taken down – and our guide to auditing what people-search sites show about you deals with that end of it. This page is general information and it is not legal advice. We describe how records and federal statutes work in general terms; whether a particular use is lawful in your situation is a question for your attorney, and the statutes are linked above so you can read them yourself.
Who needs a profile graded rather than read
Six people whose next step costs real money if a grade-three line is wrong.
Servers with one attempt left
An address that fails burns the attempt and weakens the affidavit that follows.
Creditors already holding judgment
Post-judgment steps built on an unverified association tend to get unwound.
Anyone tracing an heir
A “possible relative” is a hypothesis; a probate court wants the document.
Adjusters working a claim file
Contacting the wrong party on a claim is expensive and very hard to undo.
Paralegals building an exhibit
Every element in it needs a source somebody can name in open court.
Relatives making first contact
One wrong letter to a stranger ends an approach you only get to make once.
Sourced and dated, or you pay nothing
Every element we hand back names the office it came from and the day we pulled it, so you can grade our work the same way this page taught you to grade a profile. If we cannot produce a current address we are willing to stand behind on those terms, there is no charge. We would rather return nothing than return a line you would have to guess about.
Questions readers ask us about these results
What does a Radaris result actually prove?
On its own, nothing beyond the fact that a compiler holds those items under that identity. The site’s own footer states that its data is derived from public sources, that it does not verify or evaluate each piece of data, and that it makes no guarantees about it. That is an accurate description of a compilation. It proves where to look next, which is genuinely valuable, and it is not the same as proving where someone lives.
Why does a profile list people I have never heard of as possible relatives?
Because that block is computed rather than filed. Association is generated from overlaps between records – a shared address, a shared surname, a shared field – and previous tenants, roommates, landlords and unrelated namesakes all produce those overlaps. The word “possible” in the heading is the site telling you the grade. Treat every name there as a question, never as a relationship.
Does an empty criminal or court category mean a clean record?
No, and this is the costliest misreading in the category. The Help Center says the product includes a court records category regardless of whether the subject has anything in it. An empty category means nothing matched in the material that compiler holds – which is not the set of all records that exist. Sealed matters are published to nobody, several county indexes are not licensed for bulk use, and a filing under a name variant sits outside the search you ran.
Are the addresses listed newest first?
Do not assume it. Unless each entry carries a date you can read, treat the list as an unordered set of places associated with the identity at some point. Where a list is labeled “current”, that reflects what the compiler most recently received rather than a confirmed residence. If you are about to spend money on the strength of one line, that line needs a date and a source before it is worth the spend.
Can I use one of these profiles to screen a tenant, an employee or a babysitter?
No. Those are covered uses under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and they require a consumer reporting agency. Radaris states in its Terms of Service that it is not one, and expressly forbids using the data as a factor in credit or insurance eligibility, employment evaluation, license determinations that turn on financial responsibility, or other personal business transactions. Neither we nor a people-search site can lawfully answer a screening question; a screening company can.
What does the paid report add over the free profile?
By the vendor’s own account, more categories rather than a different grade of evidence: its blog FAQ describes free profiles as carrying basic contact, family and work information, with the premium report adding possible criminal history, marriage and divorce records and property records where they exist. It also states that reports do not include confidential financial information, health information or Social Security numbers. Paying widens the net; it does not convert a computed association into a filed record.
The profile is about me and half of it is wrong. What does that mean?
Usually that your identity has attracted material belonging to someone else, or that old commercial data never aged out – the seven- and ten-year clocks that limit stale adverse items in regulated consumer reports are duties on those reports, not a general expiry date on information. Correction and removal are handled through the site’s own privacy controls rather than through us; we do not edit anyone’s profile and we do not take work aimed at the person searching for you.
How quickly can you turn a profile into a verified address?
Most locates come back within 24 hours once we have your written statement of purpose and whatever identifiers you already hold. Files needing a record from an office that only answers in writing take longer, and we tell you that at the start rather than at the end. If the verified answer is that we cannot stand behind an address, you hear that instead of a plausible-looking line, and you are not charged for it.
Stop grading it yourself. Send us the profile.
Send the name, whatever the profile gave you, and what the address is for. We will tell you which lines are worth anything, pull the underlying records, and come back with an address that carries its source and its date – or tell you plainly that it cannot be had. Not sure your matter fits? Ask us before you order and we will say so either way.
Order a graded locate
