It’s bad enough people are having a hard time finding work as it is, but this only makes it worse for them. Employers are digging deeper into people’s pasts. Even after the courts purged or expunged arrest information, and criminal records, offender’s pasts can still haunt them. Records can still appear in newspaper archives and data mining companies.

Getting criminal records expunged or sealed doesn’t come cheap and not everybody is eligible. Besides that, in the digital age, this is not a cure-all. Even if arrest records and criminal information are purged by the Clerk of the Court, or law enforcement agency, offenders’ pasts can still haunt them. Background information may still exist in private data mining companies. This raises the question, is it really possible to erase your digital criminal past? Unfortunately, this is the result of a growing information broker industry. Most of these private firms are unregulated, except for credit checks.

Unfortunately, private data companies have no legal obligation to remove criminal records from their database, so they can often provide more complete information to employers, hence many simply turn to private database firms to dig up the information.

Your employer is going to run a background check on you. Find out what your employer is going to see about you, whether the records contain falsehoods or errors, and whether you can or should have them expunged or sealed…