Yes — with important limits. Here's exactly what's allowed and what isn't.
People search is legal in the United States because it aggregates information that is already public. What the law regulates is not the search — it's how you use the results.
Court records, property records, professional licenses, voter and business filings, and public social profiles are all lawfully public. Compiling them for personal awareness — reconnecting, verifying a date, checking a seller — is legal.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs decisions about credit, employment, housing, and insurance. A general people-search service is not a Consumer Reporting Agency and its reports may not be used for those decisions. Hiring someone? You must use a licensed CRA with consent and dispute procedures. This is the single most important legal limit.
Using public info to stalk, harass, or threaten is illegal regardless of how you obtained it. Vehicle-owner records are restricted by the Driver's Privacy Protection Act. And distributing stolen breach data is a crime — which is why Recordwell never uses it. See our data sources.
You can search yourself and opt out. State laws (California's CCPA/Delete Act, and others) give residents deletion rights. See how to remove your info.
The «it's all public» answer is getting more nuanced. California's CCPA/CPRA and Delete Act, plus laws in Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut and others, now give residents the right to see and delete their data held by brokers. This doesn't make searching illegal — it strengthens the subject's right to opt out. For a compliant service, honoring those deletion requests quickly is both the law and a trust signal.
The record coverage of a people-search engine, plus an AI layer that reads, verifies, and summarizes the digital footprint.
Addresses, phones, emails, property, and known associates from public and commercial databases.
Social profiles, usernames, and public web mentions matched into a single identity.
Plain-language summary: who they are, what stands out, what to watch.
Sentiment, red-flag detection, and a reputation score for fast, informed decisions.
Start from an email, phone, or username and work back to a verified person.
See your own exposure and get a removal checklist for data brokers.
Scattered public records and online signals — matched to one person and organized into a clear, AI-verified report in about two minutes.
A plain-language read of who they are and what stands out.
Address, phone, and public records matched to one identity.
Social profiles and public mentions across the web.
Red-flag detection and an honest identity-confidence score.
Three steps, about two minutes.
A name, email, phone, or username is enough. Add a city to narrow results.
Recordwell queries 410+ sources, matches records to one person, and drops noise.
A structured report with contacts, footprint, public-record mentions, and a reputation summary.
One search, many answers — for the moments that matter.
Verify your match is real, spot catfish, and meet with peace of mind.
Check a landlord, buyer, seller, or business contact before you commit.
Track down an old friend or classmate from just a name or username.
See your own exposure and clean up what's public. Check yourself →
The coverage you expect, with the honesty most people-search sites don't offer.
We read the raw signals and write a clear, plain-language summary — not an overwhelming list.
Breach and personal details are unlocked only after you verify the email is yours.
Transparent pricing and one-click cancel. No dark-pattern traps.
217 county assessor and appraisal databases — who owns what, from the office that recorded it. Most people-search products carry none of this.
Not a resold broker feed: county property rolls, state licence boards, federal courts and sanctions lists, loaded from the agencies themselves. See the list.
Found your own data? We show you how to get it taken down.
We're new — so instead of invented reviews, here's exactly what Recordwell does, and what it won't do.
Real sources, clearly labeled. Every result shows where it came from, and we separate confirmed records from other people who share the name — no pretending a guess is a match.
You stay in control. Free during beta, no card required, sensitive data unlocked only after you verify it's yours — and a one-click way to remove your own information.
Not a background-check service. Recordwell is not a Consumer Reporting Agency, so results may not be used for hiring, tenant, credit, or other FCRA-covered decisions.
A real picture of someone isn't on page one of a search engine — it's scattered across social profiles, public records, news and breach data. Most are slow, paywalled, or impossible to cross-reference by hand.
Public profiles and usernames matched across platforms into one identity.
Courts, licenses, corporate filings, donations and sanctions screening.
Search results, news mentions and public web references, summarized.
Whether an email shows up in known data breaches and what was exposed.
We read the raw signals and write one clear report — not a data dump.
Sensitive items link back to official first-sources so you can confirm.
Doing this by hand means juggling many tools and hours of cross-referencing — and you'd still miss what AI connects in minutes.
We name every one. Most people-search sites advertise “40+ verified sources” and never say which — because they resell one broker's database. We load the official files ourselves, from the agencies that publish them.
County assessor and appraisal rolls: who owns what, from the offices that record it. Almost none of our competitors carry property data at all.
Nurses, doctors, contractors, lawyers, cosmetologists, childcare workers — state boards across 55 states and territories, loaded from the boards' own files.
CourtListener dockets, SEC EDGAR, FEC donations and employers, FBI Wanted, OpenSanctions, SAM.gov exclusions, LEIE, CMS Open Payments, USASpending awards.
Corporate registries, lobbyist filings and public-employee salary disclosures — 15 payroll datasets plus 36 finance and business sources.
GitHub, GitLab, Reddit, Keybase, Mastodon, Dev.to, Docker Hub, Bitbucket, npm, ORCID, OpenAlex and more.
GDELT global news, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Gravatar, email reputation, and Have I Been Pwned — we report how many breaches an address appears in, never what was in them.
Yes, for personal purposes — this is public directory-style information. Using it to harass someone or for an FCRA-covered decision is not permitted.
No. That requires a licensed Consumer Reporting Agency under the FCRA. General people-search reports can't be used for those decisions.
No. Searches are confidential and the subject is not notified.