Public Records: What Anyone Can Look Up About You, and What They Can't

There is no single American file on any of us, and no single rule about who can see it. What exists instead is a few thousand separate collections — county deed books, state license registries, court dockets, motor vehicle databases, credit files — each governed by its own statute, each with its own idea of who counts as the public. Some of those collections will hand a stranger your name and address in eight seconds for free. Others require a court order. A few will not open for anyone, including you, without a form and a fee.

The useful mental model isn't "public versus private." It's a ladder with four rungs, sorted by the effort and the credentials it takes to reach the record. Once you can place a record type on the ladder, most of the confusion — and most of the mythology that "everything is out there anyway" — resolves.

Rung 1: Wide open

The genuinely open tier is larger than most people expect, and almost all of it is state and local rather than federal.

Court records. Civil and criminal case files are presumptively public, and most courts publish a searchable docket — the running index of everything filed in a case. Names of parties, charges, filings, judgments, and outcomes are typically visible to anyone, which is why a decade-old small claims case can surface in a search of your name. Federal filings live in PACER, the judiciary's electronic records system, which charges $0.10 per page with a $3 cap per document, waives fees for anyone spending $30 or less in a quarter, and posts written opinions free — the current terms are on the PACER pricing page. Those numbers change on January 1, 2027: the judiciary announced on June 26, 2026 that the per-page fee rises to $0.12 and the quarterly waiver rises to $40, for five years — the first change since 2012.

Land and property. Deeds, mortgages, liens, and easements are recorded with a county recorder or clerk precisely so the world can rely on them. Ownership, sale price, and lot details are usually public and increasingly online, alongside assessor records used for property tax.

Registrations and licenses. Corporate and LLC filings sit with the secretary of state, with registered agents and officers named. Professional licenses — medical, legal, contracting, cosmetology — are typically searchable, often including disciplinary history. Voter registration status and party affiliation are public in many states under varying rules; the ballot itself never is.

Understanding this rung explains something useful about the commercial "people search" sites: they are not a leak. They are aggregation. Their raw material is rung one, bulk-purchased and cross-matched with marketing data. That the information appears in one place is a product decision, not a change in the law.

Rung 2: Open on request

This is the tier that public records laws created, and the tier where people most often ask the wrong government for the wrong thing.

The federal Freedom of Information Act reaches federal executive branch agencies — 5 U.S.C. 552(f) defines "agency" as executive departments, military departments, government corporations, and independent regulatory agencies. That definition is the whole trick. FOIA does not cover Congress, the federal courts, state and local government, or private companies. An agency generally has 20 business days to decide on a request, and nine exemptions permit withholding — including the two privacy exemptions that keep other people's personnel, medical, and law enforcement files out of your results. The government's own portal at FOIA.gov explains the process and routes requests.

Rung 3: Restricted to permitted uses

Here the record exists, and the holder will release it — but only to a requester whose reason appears on a list Congress or a legislature wrote.

Driving records. The Driver's Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. 2721, bars state motor vehicle agencies from releasing personal information from your driver record except for enumerated purposes: government functions, vehicle safety and recalls, court proceedings, insurance claims and underwriting, licensed investigators, employer verification of commercial licenses, research that doesn't republish or contact you, and use with your express consent. A category the statute calls "highly restricted personal information" — including photograph, Social Security number, and medical information — is tighter still. The law was passed after DMV data was used to find and harm people; it is the reason a stranger cannot simply buy your address from the DMV.

Credit and background files. Consumer reports are available only to someone with a permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the statute also limits how far back a report may reach. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681c, consumer reporting agencies generally may not report bankruptcies older than 10 years, or civil suits, civil judgments, arrest records, paid tax liens, collection accounts, and other adverse items older than seven years. Two things surprise people. First, records of criminal convictions are excluded from that seven-year cutoff by the statute's own wording, though a number of states impose their own limits. Second, the time limits fall away entirely for a credit transaction of $150,000 or more, life insurance of $150,000 or more, or employment at an annual salary of $75,000 or more. A background check for a senior role is legally a different document than one for an hourly job.

Vital records. Birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates are held by the states, not the federal government, and most states restrict certified copies to the person named, immediate family, legal representatives, and others with a documented interest, with fees set state by state. The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics maintains the official directory of where to write for vital records, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

Rung 4: Closed

Some categories are simply not open, and no request form changes that. Medical records held by providers and health plans are governed by HIPAA and released to third parties only with authorization or under narrow exceptions. Student education records are governed by FERPA. Juvenile court files are confidential in most states. Adoption records are sealed nearly everywhere, with state-specific processes for opening them.

And then there is the category courts create deliberately: sealed records, which continue to exist but are hidden from public view, and expunged records, which in many states are treated as never having happened for most purposes. That distinction is one of the few genuine levers an individual has over a rung-one record — how record-clearing works and where to check eligibility is its own subject, and the terminology differs in nearly every state.

Reading your own file

When a report is wrong — a judgment that was vacated, a case that belongs to someone with your name, an item past its reporting limit — the FCRA gives consumers a dispute process with the reporting agency, and the federal complaint system takes it from there. Which agency handles which grievance is a map of its own, and where a complaint actually lands determines whether anything happens.

The overall picture is less alarming than the phrase "public records" suggests, and less reassuring than "my information is private." The truth is jurisdictional: a stranger can find your house from the deed book in an afternoon, cannot get your address from the DMV at all, cannot pull your credit file without a permissible purpose, and cannot see your medical chart under any circumstances they can arrange. Those lines were drawn one statute at a time, and each one is public reading.