Free Public Records Searches May End Up Costing Time and Money
Whether investigating a party or witness in anticipation of trial, attempting to verify an individual’s identity, or simply conducting exploratory research before initiating a legal action, public records serve an absolutely vital role.
As the name suggests, “public records” are indeed accessible to the public. But does that mean that it’s the most prudent course of action to obtain the records sought by using only those resources freely available?
Quite often, public records obtained through the open web may have attendant flaws that could end up costing money in the long run, eating up more of your valuable time, or both.
To be more specific, there are five prominent flaws with relying on free sources for your public records inquiries.
• They may be incomplete – Although some free websites can boast the provision of some public records information on an individual, very few, if any, can offer a comprehensive public records search that captures data from multiple sources. In other words, you may not be seeing the whole picture in your investigation.
• Free resources are not centralized – All other concerns aside, it may be possible to access all available public records databases using free search platforms. However, it is virtually impossible to retrieve all available records using only one free platform. In fact, given how many different public records databases are in existence, it may not even be possible to limit the number of platforms to less than five.
• There is little guarantee of accuracy – Even if one were to miraculously conduct a comprehensive free public records search in a relatively short time, how would he or she know whether what was found is even accurate?
• Too many false positives and false negatives – Many search engine capabilities are evaluated by the rate at which they return “false positives” and “false negatives.”
False positives are those search results returned by the search engine that are not relevant to what the user was searching for. False negatives are instances where a search engine fails to return data relevant to the user’s search, despite this information being available. Besides the obvious loss of time and information, anyone with any experience with high false positive and negative rates can attest to the headaches that they cause. So why put yourself through that?
• The information may be out of date – Whereas primary sources of public records are typically updated routinely, outdated information is another problem that afflicts free secondary public records search platforms.
The issue goes beyond simply not having the most up-to-date records about an individual – as critical a flaw as this is. Instead, many free services will list outdated information alongside current data, and fail to distinguish between the two. This is understandably quite confusing, and often forces the user to undertake additional searches on other platforms to verify which entry is the most current.
With public records searches being the pursuit of cold, hard facts about an individual, the accuracy and exhaustiveness of these searches are paramount. With that understanding, it’s plain to see why free online public records resources, which are typically lacking in accuracy, exhaustiveness, or both, are best avoided. For your free sample search and demo to public records on the most reliable online legal research and investigative platform, visit here.
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