However, from what I've noticed of search results over time, these background check (AND identity verification) sites crawl each other and create a kind of feedback loop, as I've been noticing that some of these pages will falsely report parts of her sibling's background among her own, and falsely flag her as having certain ugly events in her past that don't actually belong to her. This is concerning, as her career area cares a lot about employees having a clean background, and employers using these cheap automated options see cheap, inaccurate results. She has a squeaky clean background with a high credit score and impressive educational credentials, while her sibling has had run-ins with the law and bad debts. I'm concerned about how this will affect her future career prospects.
Beyond background checks, identity verification is a big concern as well. You may have noticed some services ask you to confirm certain facts about your past (street names of where you've lived, schools you attended, jobs and cars you've held). When pulling her credit bureau reports, some of these verifications required confirming facts about her sibling rather than her own in order to gain access.
Like I said, these issues have been fixed with all the "official" record-keeping organizations; however, since the fix, I've been noticing increasing issues with the original mistakes propagating to 3rd-party background-check organizations.
These services cause more problems than they solve, and should require consent, oversight, and civil or criminal penalties associated with a failure to meet high quality standards.
Existing law does not proscribe recklessly sharing damaging false information about people?
Also of note, "Malice would also exist if the acts were done with reckless indifference or deliberate blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malice_(law)
First, the process of automating a source is not as simple as 'grab data, send to person that creates the case'.
We have many many layers of precaution and validation both by humans and other automated systems, that helps guarantee accuracy.
On top of this, even public records has reporting rules in the industry. There are dates, specific charges, charge types (Misdemeanor/Felony), and a battery of other rules that the information is processed through in order to ensure we do not report information that we are not allowed.
We always lean to the side of throwing a case to a human. In the circumstance that anything new, unrecognized, or even slightly off happens, we toss the case to a team that processes the information by hand. At that point, we are simply a scraper for information and we cut out the step of having a human order and retrieve results.
We do not go back 40 years. Industry standards dictate that most records older than 7 years are expunged from Employment background checks. And most of our clients don't care about more than 3 years worth, with exceptions like Murder, Federal Crimes, and some obviously heinous things.
We also run a number of other tests, outside of public records to provide full background data. We have integrations with major labs to schedule drug screens, we allow those who are having a background check run on them to fill out an application to provide reasoning and information from their point of view to allow customers to empathize with an employee.
We also have a robust dispute system. The person having a background check run on them receives the report before the client requesting it in order to review the results and dispute anything they find wrong. These cases are always handled by a human, and often involve intensive research, no cost spared, to ensure the accuracy of the report.
There's a plethora of other things I'm missing, but if you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer.
*EDIT
To clarify, there is a lot of information in public records. It isn't unclear or ambiguous at all. Motor Vehicle and Court records are extremely in-depth and spare no detail.
As a private person, we only have access to court documents on a state or county base. Any central database we have access to would be made my scrapers.