Security Statement
     
Encryption
BackgroundsUSA takes every precaution to protect our user's information.  When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line by 128 bit encryption and a Verisign or Entrust Certificate displayed at the bottom of every secure page. An example of the Entrust logo is shown at the bottom left of this page.
   
We take your background screening order through an online ordering system. The system is secure and all connections are encrypted using a state-of-the-art 128 bit encryption process. After you click on any of the Order NOW links that are to be found throughout the site, you will be linked to our system using the 128 bit encrypted link. You can check the security of the link by looking at the address bar, where the URL (web page address) will be prefixed by "https://" (https: stands for a secure link rather than the standard http: prefix), or at the bottom of your browser, where you will see a padlock symbol. If the padlock is "closed" then the link is secure. And the padlock symbol will look like this:

When the BackgroundsUSA registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL.  While on a secure page, such as our order form pages, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just surfing.

Internal Policies
While BackgroundsUSA uses SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line.  All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices.  Only BackgroundsUSA employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Furthermore, ALL BackgroundsUSA employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices.  Any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’ information is protected.  Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure locked environment.

Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user.  Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site.  Once the user closes their browser, the cookie simply terminates.  This site uses cookies during the order and credit card authentication process to ensure the accuracy and security of the online order. These cookies are used exclusively to provide security and are not used to gather information about users.  We do not share information about our users with other sites. If a user rejects the cookie, there may be problems with their usage of our site because we would have no way of validating the user.

Log Files
We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user movement through the site, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.  IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. We do not store or obtain any information from the log files that may be used to identify a user of the web site. IP numbers and the associated domain names can be identified geographically from the domain extensions (for example, .uk = United Kingdom, de = Germany, fr = France, au = Australia, nz = New Zealand) but beyond this wide regional information the actual identity of the user is not revealed in any way.
 
Questions or concerns about BACKGROUNDSUSA's security statement may be submitted to BACKGROUNDSUSA’s Webmaster.