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What Is Instant Checkmate?

By Kristin Kizer - Nov. 22, 2022
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If you think someone in your life needs to be researched, you might find Instant Checkmate useful. It’s a platform that helps you look into the public records of people in the United States.

Key Takeaways

  • Instant Checkmate is a service platform that helps you do background checks on people.

  • Instant Checkmate cannot be used to make decisions on lending, tenancy, employment, and insurance because it is not a consumer reporting agency.

  • There are several different services offered by Instant Checkmate that help you find people, search criminal records, look up phone numbers, and more.

What Is Instant Checkmate?

Instant Checkmate is a public records search service that helps you find public records on anyone in the United States. They boast that they make it easy to learn about family members, neighbors, friends, coworkers, and anyone else in your life.

Through Instant Checkmate, you can perform a criminal background check. It helps you do a search for any public arrest records. The records include felonies, misdemeanors, and even minor infractions like speeding tickets. Most importantly, you can find out if someone is a felon, a violent criminal, or a sex offender.

Instant Checkmate not only lets you search arrest records, but it also can help you research phone numbers, addresses, demographic data, census data, and other public information that can be difficult to navigate without a platform assisting you.

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Who Is Instant Checkmate For?

Instant Checkmate is a legal way to search public records to find out more about an individual. It is not a consumer reporting agency, and this is an important distinction. Many employers, insurance companies, landlords, and credit companies or lenders use background checks to determine if an individual is a good “risk.”

Instant Checkmate does not qualify as a consumer reporting agency, and using the information you gathered on this website to determine any of these things is illegal.

In general, Instant Checkmate can help you dig up dirt on anyone, but the information you find cannot be used to deny people a job, housing, credit, or insurance. It’s mainly just for gossip and fun. It can be useful in dating situations if you feel someone is being dishonest.

What Are Instant Checkmate’s Services?

Instant Checkmate lists many different services that they offer, these include:

  • Criminal Records. They’ll check National, State, and Local criminal records to come up with criminal records on people in the United States.

  • Sex Offender Database. All criminal records include a map of where registered sex offenders live, so you can get a map for your area or for an area where you’re thinking about living.

  • Reverse Phone Search. Are you constantly getting called by a phone number, and you don’t know who it belongs to? With Instant Checkmate, you can do a reverse phone number search.

  • Inmate Search. Through Federal and State prison records, you can locate an inmate.

  • People Search. There is a people search register that can help you locate lost friends, relatives, etc.

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How Does Instant Checkmate Work?

Instant Checkmate offers a variety of subscription levels that then offer you access to a database of public data. When you enter someone’s name into Instant Checkmate, they’ll search public records to dig up information. This information is available through the Freedom of Information Act, so it is legally available data.

The more information you know about someone, the greater your chances of success are, but there are ways to search for someone if you only know their relative’s name and not their name. The service that comes with Instant Checkmate is unlimited as long as you’re searching within your subscription timeframe.

Pricing of Instant Checkmate

According to the Instant Checkmate website, they currently have two different plan options, person reports and phone reports.

What Is a Person Report?

They say their most popular package is a one-month purchase for $35.12. They offer a deal if you sign up for three months, which works out to $28.09 a month. These packages are called person reports and include unlimited person reports, unlimited location reports, and report monitoring. Person reports include the following:

  • Birth information

  • Photos

  • Phone numbers

  • Social media profiles

  • Email addresses

  • Address history

  • Employment history

  • Business ownership

  • Assets

  • Criminal records

  • Traffic records

  • Court records

  • More

What Is a Phone Report?

A phone report is listed as $5.99 for a month’s membership, which gives you unlimited phone reports. Included in the phone report membership is:

  • Owner’s name

  • Photos

  • Owner’s address

  • Social media profiles

  • Address history

  • Possible associates

  • More

In addition to offering those two types of memberships, you can add downloadable report files, which costs an extra one-time charge of $3.99. You can also subscribe to dark web monitoring for $1.99 monthly, which claims to scour the dark web for your passwords, safeguard your credentials, and more.

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Instant Checkmate Competition

Instant Checkmate obviously has some competition, and they’re not the only background-checking option. These are some companies that offer services like Instant Checkmate.

  • GoodHire. GoodHire is a way to do background checks, but you can legally do them through this company and make hiring decisions based on their results. GoodHire offers many different background checks and screening services.

  • Checkr. Checkr is another company that focuses on background checks for hiring new employees. With Checkr, candidates have transparency in their records, and they can explain situations if need be.

  • TruthFinder. TruthFinder provides background information, criminal history, and reverse phone numbers. TruthFinder is more parallel to Instant Checker because they offer similar services but are not legal to use for hiring, tenancy, firing employees, etc. GoodHire and Checkr can be used for these purposes.

  • Intelius. This is a site that has become well-known for reverse phone number searches but has branched off into other areas as well, including address and name search features.

Instant Checkmate FAQ

  1. What is Instant Checkmate?

    Instant Checkmate searches for data on other people by scanning various public record databases. With Instant Checkmate, you can look at criminal records, phone numbers, addresses, demographic data, census data, and other information.

  2. Can I use Instant Checkmate to verify a background for employment?

    No, Instant Checkmate is not a Consumer Reporting Agency, and you are legally prohibited from using them to verify employment. You also cannot legally use them for screening household workers, tenant screening, assessing professional services, determinating education or scholarship qualifications, and making decisions about credit or insurance eligibility.

  3. Where does Instant Checkmate get the data it uses for background reports?

    Instant Checkmate searches public records and reports that are provided by the state and local governments. Marriages, births, deaths, divorces, criminal records, and other events like this are public records and available to discover for anyone.

    Instant Checkmate offers a way to easily get all of this information from anywhere in the United States without having to spend time doing all of the research yourself.

  4. Is Instant Checkmate legal?

    Yes, the information that Instant Checkmate provides is a part of public record, or it’s being freely published by the individual in question. While this information is available to all, it cannot be used for any purpose.

    There are some decisions that cannot be made based on the information uncovered by Instant Checkmate. This is not a Credit Reporting Agency, so its data is not to be used to determine employment, insurance eligibility, tenancy, and more.

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.

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