60% of Background Checks Have Errors — Here's What to Do About It

A 2024 study published in the journal Criminology found that 60% of people had at least one error on their commercial background check. Not a typo. Not a minor discrepancy. A false positive — meaning they were wrongly flagged for a criminal record they did not have, or for a record that was inaccurate in a material way.

If you have been denied a job or an apartment because of wrong information on a background check, federal law gives you the right to fight back. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) imposes specific obligations on background check companies, including a 30-day deadline to investigate and correct disputed information. Violations carry up to $1,000 in statutory damages per incident.

This article explains why the error rate is so high, the types of errors that show up most often, what rights you have under federal law, and how to actually dispute inaccurate records — whether you do it yourself or use a service to handle the volume.

The Error Problem: How Bad Is It?

The background check industry is a $5.1 billion market in the United States. Nearly 2,000 companies compile and sell background screening reports. Nine out of ten employers run background checks. Nine out of ten landlords do the same. The system touches almost every working adult in America.

And the data is shockingly unreliable.

The root cause is structural. Background check companies assemble records from thousands of source databases — county courts, state repositories, federal agencies, and other data brokers. Each source has its own format, its own update cycle, and its own gaps. When a company tries to match an arrest record in one database to a disposition in another, the matching frequently fails.

The result: arrests without outcomes, convictions without context, and records that belong to someone else entirely. And because there is no central authority that audits these databases for accuracy, the errors compound over time.

Five Types of Background Check Errors

Not all errors look the same. Understanding which type you are dealing with changes how you respond.

1. Records That Should Have Been Expunged

You went through the legal process. A judge signed an expungement order. The court sealed or destroyed its record. But the background check company never got the memo. Private companies are not government agencies — they do not receive automatic updates when a record is expunged. They scraped the original public record, and many never go back to check whether anything changed.

2. Wrong Person (Name-Based Matching)

Background check companies match records primarily by name and date of birth. If you share a name with someone who has a criminal record — even approximately — their record can end up on your report. This is especially common for people with common names, for people who share names with family members, and in communities with less name diversity. The FCRA requires "reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy," but name-only matching falls short of that standard routinely.

3. Outdated Charges

A charge was filed. You went to court. The charge was reduced to something less serious, or amended as part of a plea agreement. But the background check still shows the original, more serious charge. This happens because the company scraped the initial court filing and never updated it with the final disposition. The FCRA's seven-year reporting limit applies to some records, but not all — and the limit does not help if the information shown is simply wrong about what the charge was.

4. Missing Dismissals

This is the most common error in the dataset. You were arrested. Charges were filed. The case was dropped or dismissed. But the background check shows the arrest and charge without the outcome. The reason: only 49% of arrests have a matching court disposition on file. The other half are dangling records — arrests with no resolution, which a reader naturally interprets as ongoing or unresolved.

5. Duplicate Entries

A single incident appears multiple times on the report — once from the county court database, once from the state repository, and once from a data broker that bought the record from yet another source. Each entry may have slightly different formatting, making it look like multiple separate incidents. One arrest becomes three entries, and the person reviewing the report sees a pattern that does not exist.

Your Rights Under the FCRA

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.) is a federal law that regulates consumer reporting agencies — the legal term for background check companies. It was enacted in 1970 and has been amended multiple times. It is the primary legal tool for fighting background check errors.

How to Dispute a Background Check Error

The dispute process is straightforward in concept but demanding in execution, especially when multiple companies have the same wrong information.

The Scale Problem: 650+ Companies May Have Your Data

Here is the part that makes self-service disputing genuinely difficult. There are not three or four background check companies. There are nearly 2,000. The CFPB maintains a public list of consumer reporting companies that runs to hundreds of entries. Beyond the regulated CRAs, there are people-search sites, mugshot aggregators, and general data brokers that also hold and sell arrest data.

Disputing one company at a time — writing an individualized letter, sending it certified, tracking the 30-day window, following up if they do not respond — takes real time. People who have gone through the process estimate 20 to 40 hours to do it thoroughly. And you have to do it for every company that has the wrong information, because they do not share corrections with each other.

This is the specific problem that Record Sweep was built to solve. We maintain a database of 164+ background check companies, people-search sites, and data brokers — each with verified dispute addresses, required documentation formats, and contact information. Record Sweep generates FCRA dispute letters addressed to each one, customized with your specific record information, ready to send. The goal is to turn a 40-hour process into something you can complete in an afternoon.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get a copy of my background check?

If an employer or landlord used a background check to deny you a job or housing, they are legally required to tell you which company produced the report and give you a copy. This is called an "adverse action notice" under the FCRA. You can also request a copy directly from any background check company — under 15 U.S.C. § 1681j, you are entitled to one free report per year from each company, and a free copy any time adverse action is taken based on the report.

How long does a dispute take?

The FCRA gives the company 30 days from the date they receive your dispute to investigate and respond. In practice, some companies resolve disputes in 7 to 14 days. Others push the full 30-day window. If the company requests additional information from you during the investigation, the deadline may extend to 45 days. If they do not respond at all within 30 days, that non-response is itself an FCRA violation.

What if the company does not respond in 30 days?

A company that fails to respond to a dispute within the statutory window has violated the FCRA. You have two options: file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) at consumerfinance.gov, or consult an FCRA attorney about a private lawsuit. Statutory damages of up to $1,000 per violation are available, and FCRA cases that go to court typically result in the company paying the plaintiff's attorney fees. Many FCRA attorneys work on contingency for this reason.

Can I sue for background check errors?

Yes. The FCRA provides a private right of action under 15 U.S.C. § 1681n (willful violations) and § 1681o (negligent violations). For willful violations, you can recover statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per violation, plus actual damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees. For negligent violations, you can recover actual damages and attorney fees. Class action FCRA settlements regularly exceed $1 million. Individual lawsuits have resulted in six-figure verdicts.

Does expungement automatically fix background checks?

No. This is one of the most important things to understand. A court expungement order updates the official government record. It does not automatically reach into the private databases of hundreds of background check companies and delete the copy they already made. After expungement, you still need to dispute the record with each private company individually. The expungement order becomes your strongest piece of evidence in those disputes — but the disputes still need to happen. Read more in our guide on what to do when expungement does not fix your background check.