Terms of use

What this site publishes

An explanation of the two ordinary routes to obtaining an FBI Identity History Summary — requesting it yourself, or having an FBI-approved channeler submit on your behalf — and of the circumstances that decide which of them is actually available to a given person. Where a figure or a procedure is stated, it is traced to 28 CFR Part 16, Subpart C, which is the regulation that fixes it.

An earlier and much larger library of guides, country pages and browser tools was removed in full and those addresses now return a withdrawal notice. Any copy of that material you still hold — a cached page, a print-out, a search-engine snippet — is no longer published by this site and should not be relied on.

The site also runs an assistant. It answers questions about the process and, when asked directly for a recommendation, may name an onward service; where it does, it says so in the same answer. It cannot look up, submit, or expedite anything.

Accuracy

Requirements in this field change without notice, and a government page can change the day after it is read. Where anything published here and the responsible authority disagree, the authority is right and this site is wrong — check the authority’s own page before you act on anything, and write to us so the error is fixed rather than left standing.

Using and citing this material

You may read, print, link to, quote, and cite what this site publishes, including in academic and professional work, with attribution to FBIBackgroundCheck.org and a link where the medium allows one. Wholesale republication, or reuse that presents this material as your own or as a government publication, is not permitted. Where a page reproduces or paraphrases a government publication, that underlying material carries its own status, which this site does not alter. None of this extends to the withdrawn pages: material this site has taken down is not material it publishes.

Automated bulk retrieval that degrades the service for readers is not permitted. Ordinary crawling within the published robots.txt is welcome.

External links

This site links out to government publications and official registers. Those sites are not under our control, and their availability, content, and policies are their own. A link is a citation, not an endorsement.

Liability

This material is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the publisher of this site is not liable for any loss arising from reliance on it, including rejected documents, missed deadlines, or fees paid to any third party. If that allocation of risk is not acceptable to you, the remedy is not to rely on this site.

Changes and contact

These terms may change; the date below records when they last did. Questions about them, like everything else, go to [email protected].