Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a binding agreement between you (“you,” “user”) and the operators of Open Public Records (“we,” “us,” the “site”) located at https://www.open-public-records.com/.

By accessing or using the site in any way — including viewing a single page — you agree to these Terms and our Privacy & Cookies Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the site.

2. What this site is

Open Public Records is a free reference site that indexes and presents public records and public-interest information drawn from US government agencies and other publicly available sources. It includes:

• Indexed court case references from federal and state court systems
• Live cross-references against US Treasury OFAC sanctions, FBI Most Wanted, HHS-OIG List of Excluded Individuals/Entities, and similar federal datasets
• Cross-references against state unclaimed-property registries and inmate-search systems where available
• Links to official government portals so you can verify the source
• Plain-English explainers about how the public-records system works

The site is informational. It is free to access. There is no paid tier, no membership, and no account system.

3. What this site is not

To be unambiguous:

• The site is not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act
• The site is not a government website, court, law-enforcement agency, or government agency of any kind
• The site is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice
• The site is not a background-check service
• The site is not an investigative service
• The site is not a data broker, and we do not sell personal information

If you need a background check for an FCRA-regulated purpose (such as employment, tenant screening, or credit), use a properly licensed Consumer Reporting Agency. If you need legal advice, hire a lawyer.

4. FCRA restrictions

• Employment (hiring, retention, promotion, reassignment)
• Tenant or renter screening
• Consumer credit (loans, credit cards, financing)
• Insurance (underwriting, eligibility)
• Government benefits or licensing
• Any other purpose for which FCRA compliance is required

By using the site, you certify that you will not use any information obtained here for any FCRA-regulated purpose. Misusing public-records information for an FCRA-regulated purpose can subject you to civil liability under federal law and may also violate state law.

5. Permitted use

You may use the site for personal, journalistic, academic, research, and informational purposes, including:

• Looking up public court records that name you, a family member, or a person who has consented
• Research and reporting that is not FCRA-regulated
• Genealogy and family-history research
• Locating publicly available government data sources
• Educational use

6. Prohibited use

You agree not to:

• Use the site for any FCRA-regulated purpose (see Section 4)
• Use the site to harass, stalk, threaten, intimidate, defame, or harm any person
• Use the site to discriminate against any person on the basis of any protected characteristic
• Scrape, spider, crawl, harvest, or otherwise extract content in bulk except as expressly permitted in our robots.txt file
• Use automated tools to submit excessive requests that degrade site performance for other users
• Circumvent, disable, or interfere with any security or rate-limiting feature
• Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the site or its infrastructure without prior written permission
• Use the site to attempt unauthorized access to any system, account, or data
• Use the site to commit fraud, identity theft, or any other crime
• Republish or resell content from the site as if it were a commercial database product
• Use the site in violation of any applicable law

7. Accuracy & completeness

We do our best to index public records accurately, but:

• Public records change. A case shown on this site may have been sealed, expunged, dismissed, or otherwise updated after we indexed it. Always verify with the originating court or agency before relying on any information.
• Public records can be incorrect at the source. We index what the government publishes; we do not independently audit the underlying facts.
• Two different people can have the same name. A name match on this site is not proof that a particular person was involved in a particular case.
• Live data feeds (OFAC, FBI Wanted, HHS-OIG, etc.) may be temporarily unavailable, return stale results, or change without notice.

The site is provided as a starting point for research, not as a definitive record. Verify everything important before you act on it.

8. Third-party links & advertisers

The site links to and may display content or search forms provided by third parties, including the sponsored search box near the top of many pages. Clicking those links or submitting those forms will take you to a third-party site under its own terms and privacy policy, not ours.

We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, or practices of any third-party site. Inclusion of a link or sponsored form does not imply endorsement.

9. Intellectual property

The site’s layout, design, original written content, code, branding, and the way we organize and present information are owned by us or licensed to us. You may not copy them in bulk, sell them, or pass them off as your own.

Public-records data sourced from government agencies is generally in the public domain. You may freely use that underlying public data, subject to the prohibitions in Section 6.

Fair use, news reporting, commentary, criticism, research, and similar uses are not affected by this section.

10. Your submissions

If you send us a message through our contact form, a record-removal request, a DMCA notice, or any other communication, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use that communication for the purpose of responding to you, operating the site, and complying with our legal obligations.

Don’t send us anything you don’t want us to read or act on.

11. Privacy

How we handle data is set out in detail on our Privacy & Cookies Policy page. Short version: we collect very little, we do not run analytics or behavioral-tracking scripts, we do not sell personal information, and we do not set tracking cookies on user-facing pages.

12. Record-removal requests

If a page on this site references you and you would like it suppressed from our index, send us a request through the contact page that includes:

• The exact URL(s) you want removed
• Enough information for us to confirm the page actually refers to you
• A short statement of why removal is appropriate

We review every request individually and balance your interests against the public-information nature of the underlying record. Even if we remove a page from our index, the underlying government record remains at its source — we cannot delete records held by courts or government agencies.

We may decline removal requests that are abusive, fraudulent, intended to suppress legitimate public-interest reporting, or duplicative.

13. DMCA notices

If you believe content on this site infringes your copyright, send a notice that complies with 17 U.S.C. § 512(c) through the contact page. Your notice must include:

• Your physical or electronic signature
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed
• The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing material
• Your contact information (name, address, phone, email)
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner

We respond to valid DMCA notices promptly. Misrepresentations in a DMCA notice can subject you to liability under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

14. Disclaimer of warranties

The site is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including:

• Merchantability
• Fitness for a particular purpose
• Non-infringement
• Accuracy or completeness of information
• Uninterrupted or error-free operation
• Freedom from viruses, malware, or other harmful components

We do not warrant that the information on this site is current, accurate, complete, or reliable. Verify everything with the underlying government source before relying on it.

15. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages arising out of or relating to your use of the site, including (without limitation) loss of profits, loss of data, loss of business, loss of reputation, or cost of substitute services, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or relating to the site is limited to one hundred US dollars ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

16. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the operators of this site, our affiliates, and our respective officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claim, demand, loss, damage, cost, expense, or fee (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to:

• Your use of the site
• Your violation of these Terms
• Your violation of any law
• Your violation of any third party’s rights
• Your misuse of public-records information obtained from the site (including any FCRA violation)

17. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the site at any time, without notice, for any reason, including suspected violation of these Terms. The sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law, and dispute resolution) will survive.

18. Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the site will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in California, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remainder will continue in full force.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms when our practices change or when the law changes. When we make a material change, we update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

20. Contact