Yours may be one of them. Find out who answers when someone verifies your job or your income.
Three ordinary moments. Each one can open a door you may not see close.
You started a new job and signed a stack of paperwork. One of those pages may have been an authorization, and it can keep working long after the day you signed it. Requests can be answered from your payroll record without a fresh question to you, and you may not receive real-time notice of any single one.
Data is received from employers' payroll systems on a per-pay-period basis.
Source: The Work Number social service verification page.You apply for four apartments and sign with the first landlord who says yes. Signing that lease does not close the other three files. Each application could support its own check of where you work and what you earn, days, weeks, or months later, and you may not hear about it when it happens.
A collection agency is pursuing an account in your name. The law can give that collector a legal path to your employment information, and you may not receive real-time notice when it is used.
Collection of an account is one of the FCRA's listed permissible purposes.
Source: FCRA Section 604.The industry handles at least 149 million employment verifications a year.
Source: One provider alone reported 149 million in 2024 (144 million in 2023), per that competitor's published reporting.The repository is indexed by Social Security number, and verifiers pull records by SSN.
Source: Equifax Employment Data Report request form.A 2013 NBC News investigation documented debt collectors among the users of employment data. Robert Mather was quoted.
Source: NBC News, 2013.Authorization is not consent. Consent should be current at the moment of the question, not inherited from a form you signed on your first day.
Two tools exist today. Neither one is the same as being asked at the time of request.
When an employer puts its current and former workforce on MyEmployment, a verification request comes to the employee at the time of request.
The request shows who is asking, the stated purpose, and what they want to see.
You get the chance to approve or deny each request. A denial blocks the release. The only exception is a subpoena or other legal process.
Debt collection and skip tracing requests proceed only on your affirmative approval. A nonresponse never authorizes them.
Requests, decisions, and outcomes are recorded.
Your employer decides whether to join. That is why the next step is finding out who answers for yours.
Send us your employer's name. A person on our team replies with which verification service your employer uses, and whether there is an opt-out.
A person from MyEmployment will reply by email with which verification service your employer uses, and whether there is an opt-out. Watch your inbox, including spam.
We ask for your employer's name, plus a last name and email so we can reply. No Social Security number, no pay details.
HR may not know how verification requests for your records are handled today. This note asks three plain questions. Copy it, or send it by email.
A note for HR
Hello,
Does our payroll or HR setup send employee records to an outside verification service? Can employees see who requests them? Would we consider a consent-based option like MyEmployment, where employees are asked at the time of request?
MyEmployment for employers: https://www.myemployment.com/employers/
Thank you.
“I have been a licensed private investigator since 1993. I know how much a job and a paycheck can reveal about a person. You should know who is asking about yours.”
Short notes on who can verify your job and income, and what you can do about it. Confirm your address once. Unsubscribe anytime.
Send us your employer's name. A person on our team replies with which verification service your employer uses, and whether there is an opt-out.
Yes, looking back. Consumers can see employment-purpose recipients for 24 months through file disclosure. It shows who asked after the fact, not at the time of request.
Source: The Work Number Employment Data Report FAQ.You can place a freeze. A freeze is available at no cost and blocks many verifiers at once. It is a blunt instrument, not a way to approve one verifier, for one purpose, at one moment.
Source: Equifax and The Work Number consumer FAQ; FCRA Section 605A.It can. Collection of an account is one of the FCRA's listed permissible purposes. At employers on MyEmployment, debt collection and skip tracing requests proceed only on the employee's affirmative approval.
Source: FCRA Section 604.Send HR the short note on this page. It asks whether your records go to an outside verification service, whether employees can see who requests them, and whether your employer would consider MyEmployment.
Send the name. A person replies.
