It may contain potentially non-factual statements that may be sufficiently derogatory to cause harm to my reputation and livelihood. I consider the attempts to

It may contain potentially non-factual statements that may be sufficiently derogatory to cause harm to my reputation and livelihood. I consider the attempts to keep it a secret to be an attempt to evade accountability for incorrect reporting. I trust the HR departments of most employers and the background check companies to act ethically about as far as I can kick Jupiter with my bare feet. Which is zero meters. I trust them zero. None. If I cannot see what they are doing behind my back, I naturally assume that they are discriminating on the base of race, age, sex, religion, family relationships, sexual orientation, hairstyle, and shoe quality, while cramming every rejected candidate into either "unqualified" or "bad cultural fit" piles, for plausible deniability. I understand the need for background checking. But I have also been cleared by the US federal government, and they have a process for handling derogatory reports that would allow someone who might be negatively impacted to speak before a federal judge. If there was ever a problem with a government background check, the person affected always got to see what it was, and rebut or appeal through an established process. If a private background check says I not only eat babies, but do it in a racist and fiscally irresponsible way, I can't tell whether the company cuts off contact and never communicates with me again because of that report, or because it is just a company that does that in general. My opinion is that you are insufficiently suspicious and overly trusting of the companies buying and selling private background checks. Besides all that, I would wager a trivial amount on the hypothesis that many companies that pull background checks do so to learn spending habits and salary history, so they can initially offer the candidate the lowest salary they would likely accept.