How do those search engines work? Do they crawl thousands of civil databases and then store that information on their own server, and if so, do they provide access to outdated information? For several weeks now I have been helping a friend get a misdemeanor conviction expunged. Yesterday she opened the mailbox and got the good news that our efforts had paid off. It’s been wiped clean. The first thing I did was immediately try to pull it up from the Ventura County, CA database. Sure enough, it was gone—no record of it anywhere. Time to break out the expensive beer and do a happy dance. But then I had a foul thought. What about KnowX and all those other zillions of online database searches—could it potentially show up on one of those?
I imagine there are some that do crawl but that would seem a bit much. I mean why store data on the off chance someone may want it later on?
I would also check going in person to see if you can get the file manually.
A while back I had a temp job at a bond agency and we had an excellent program, that allowed us access to a lot of data. An inital search took a long time, depending on what you asked for. But you have the option of saving your data. Which our office did. So the next time you searched you would not have to search those files as thouroughly.
Yeah, you must be right. But that just begs the question—how do they work? When I read “Intellius is now searching 10[sup]100[/sup] phone and address records in the State of California,” how is it doing it? Why can’t I do this myself? Or can I?
You can do your own searches, but you have to pay for it.
For instance, the program we had did around 30 common searches on clients.
These scan public records from databases.
The bond agency pays for this. And like everything else in life, there are levels.
You can go back so many years, you can do so many databases, so many what are called trees.
A tree would be my mother. So perhaps I’m clean but you search my mum and see stuff on her record that directly or indirectly effects her.
The more you search the more you pay. We had a program that allowed us to do unlimited searches but it only went back to 1990. Any more than we paid extra for that search.
There is no “special” data bases but merely public records and sold records. Sold records are like the telephone directory. If you have an unlisted number or unpublished your excluded automatically. But if you have a publish number the telephone company sells your information. (You can also ask the phone company to not do this if you have a published number)
Sometimes mistakes happen and this is why when you do research for geneology you can’t rely on computers.
Here’s a for instance…A phone company has a database and they print the white pages. They accidently put your unlisted number in. You get the white pages and see it and complain. The phone company apologizes and pulls your number from the database. Now if anyone scans the database they won’t find your number. BUT anyone with a phone book will still get it, 'cause the phone company isn’t going to physically recall all the phone books. (This assumes no one purchases the database, but you get the idea.)
So when you research it helps to actually look at the physical data 'cause errors creep in. I noticed when I researched things from the Chicago Tribune, I go into their index and nothing comes up. But I know it’s there. So I go grab the entire paper from the day I know, what I’m trying to find, happened, and look it up. And lo and behold, it’s there. But it hasn’t been put into the search index.
Many governments will charge you to access info online, but it’s free if you go in and ask for it.
Finally records may not be removed but simply sealed. I’ve gotten records from courts that when I requested them (in person) I was told, I can’t have it, the judge ordered it sealed.
So your record might be marked “expunged” and if someone physically requests it they clerk would say “Sorry you can’t access that.” If I know it’s there and I can’t get it, I know something’s up. I don’t know what, but I know it was something.
But if I didn’t know to look for it, I wouldn’t know it existed.
In the OP case new inquires would be gone but anyone having an old copy of such would still have them.