Resolution of Disputed Information in Public Records

The FCRA provides for reinvestigation of the disputed information submitted to the credit reporting agency in the event you as a consumer challenge it, either as a result of an adverse action taken by an employer or as a result of the your analysis of the information you obtained. The dispute resolution process in the FCRA has been tailored for credit information submitted to the credit bureaus. Again, industry practices vary from company to company in how disputed information in public records is handled.

However, consistent with our commitment to the spirit of the FCRA and the general principles of privacy protection, we will assist you in having erroneous information about you corrected in the public records and identify the substance of the disputed information in the records until the erroneous information has been corrected by the applicable government agency. There are four basic types of disputes that are likely to arise in your criminal history background check:

• The offense record applies to the you, but contains errors (for example, incorrect sentence, disposition, or charges). In this case, if the you provide us legal documentation related to the case, we will notate the record with the disputed information and will assist you in having the agency correct the records it provides to us. The information we return on this record will be notated with the disputed information, for our Affiliate to consider in its research and preparation of its Consumer Report.
• The offense record has been expunged, but is still in the public records that we received. We receive periodic updates of public records, so there will be an inherent time lag between when the expungement was approved and when we receive the update that deletes the expunged record.
  In the event that an expunged record is returned in a consumer report, we will delete the expunged record as soon as we receive a certified copy of the applicable expungement documentation. If a prospective employer has already received a report that includes an expunged record, we recommend that you obtain a fingerprint-based background check from the applicable state's criminal history repository. We will assist you in locating the applicable state repository. Assuming that the repository's database has been updated to reflect the expungement, the resulting report from the repository will establish a clean record with regards to the expunged offense. In addition to assisting you, we will also work with the agency to ensure that other expunged records also are purged from the data we receive.
• The offense record applies to someone else with the same name, personal identifiers and physical characteristics. Most criminal history databases that we receive do not have Social Security Numbers and the Social Security Numbers in the databases that do have them may not be reliable because they are not carefully verified when the records are created. In addition, more than one person may have the same name and date of birth.
  Usually, your physical characteristics will be sufficiently different to establish unequivocally that you are not the offender. In cases where the offender was incarcerated, it would be sufficient for you to show that you were gainfully employed during the period of incarceration to demonstrate that you are not the offender. Again, the ultimate confirmation that you are not the offender can be provided by a fingerprint-based search conducted by the applicable state repository.
• You are a victim of identify theft. Law enforcement agencies and courts are not required to verify the identity of offenders, so convicted offenders may appear in the public records with someone else's identity. If the physical characteristics are not sufficiently different to establish unequivocally that you are not the offender, the ultimate confirmation that you are not the offender again is provided by a fingerprint-based search conducted by the applicable state repository.
• Please fax copy of your report obtained from us and any documentation mentioned above to 305-405-3181.

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