Search to see if someone has a history of causing harm.

Garbo’s new kind of online background check enables you to see available public records of violent and harmful behavior including arrests, convictions and sex offender registry records.

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How Garbo Works

Garbo is the easiest, fastest, and most affordable online background check that focuses on the reporting of violent and harmful behavior.

Search Someone with Limited Information

Designed to be used early in starting to trust someone, Garbo’s system is able to identify individuals with a limited amount of information — like a first name and phone number.

Access Records of Harmful Behavior

We strive to have access to the largest amount of available harmful arrests, convictions, and sex offender registry records while getting data into the system as soon as possible after harm has been detected.

Finding the Balance of Privacy and Protection

We prioritize the safety of both the user searching and the user being searched by limiting access to personal identifying information and certain types of offenses through our offense reporting policy.

When to Use Garbo

Garbo helps you understand if you should trust someone with your safety.

When Meeting an Online Date

Search someone you met on a dating app or in-person before sharing too much about yourself.

When Buying Something Online

Before you send money or meet in-person, be sure they don’t have a history of harm.

When Meeting Online Friends

From online gaming to social media, make sure you’re being safe online.

Your Current Partner

If you’re seeing red flags, you may want to search them on Garbo.

Your Boss or Potential Boss

See if your boss has a history of violent and harmful behavior.

Garbo is a non-FCRA platform and the information on the Garbo platform must not be used for purposes covered by the FCRA

Our Platform Partners

Garbo partners with online platforms to help make their communities safer.

Frequently Asked  Questions

What is Garbo's platform?

Garbo's platform is an easy-to-use online background check, making it simple for individuals to see if someone has a history of causing harm including arrests, convictions, and sex offender registry information. In addition to our background check platform, we also offer resources, education and community connection.

What is Garbo's mission?

Garbo's mission is to help proactively prevent harm in the digital age through technology, tools, and education.

Can anyone use Garbo?

Garbo is available to anyone over the age of 18 in the United States. Garbo’s results only contains records of individuals in the United States over the age of 18.

Will someone know if I search them on Garbo?

All searches are confidential and the individual searched is not notified when or if they have been searched.

How much does Garbo cost?

You can purchase 1, 3, or 5 searches for $2.50 each plus a $0.75 processing fee per transaction. If for whatever reason you can not afford to purchase additional searches, you can contact Garbo at help@garbo.io and a representative will reach out to assist.Most states charge to access public records — which requires us to charge a small fee to sustain operations and provide free services to those in need. Garbo is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and all funds go directly to furthering our mission. Our partners and sponsors do not profit from purchases and no revenue is shared between organizations.

What information do I need to perform a search?

Garbo works with the limited information someone has before a first meeting — often only requiring a first name and phone number. Please note, Google Voice numbers and other similar types of phone numbers or “burner phone numbers” may not be able to be matched to an individual. We may request additional information to provide more accurate search results.

The more information you input initially, the faster and more accurate your search will be.

Entering variations of information on the same individual may categorize them in different buckets (high, medium, low possibility).Some combinations of information that may work include:
- First name and phone number
- Full name and date of birth
- Full name, age, and location

What information does Garbo provide access to within a search?

Garbo provides access to available public records of arrests, convictions, and sex offender registry data across the United States.  We do not currently provide access to orders or protection, also known as restraining orders.

Garbo’s database may be missing information as we do not have access to every record in every county due to jurisdictional laws and availability. Please always continue to use caution.

Garbo believes in the privacy of both the person searching and the one being searched — therefore we limit personal identifying information (PII) including address history, full birthdays, and other information in our search results.

We also limit access to certain non-violent, non-harmful offenses based on our Offense Reporting Policy. To learn more about this decision, you can read this blog post.

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Stay safer using Garbo's application.Stay safer using Garbo

Try Garbo's new kind of online background check now.

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