Open book?

By Erin Jordan/The Gazette

A good friend of mine started dating again after a 10-year-marriage.

In college, researching a dating prospect was as easy as finding someone from his dorm or hometown. But in today's digital age, you can dig up a lot of dirt on your laptop or iPhone. The same journalistic tricks used to research political candidates, business leaders or garden-variety criminals can be applied in the dating scene.

The first order of business is to make sure your date isn't one of the aforementioned criminals. I know, he's clean cut and spells “their” right in text messages, but you'll sleep better knowing he isn't wanted in three states.

Check Iowa's sex offender registry at Iowasexoffender.com/search to verify your date hasn't been convicted of a sex crime. If not - whew! - type in your Zip code just to see whether sex offenders live in your neighborhood. Might help you plan your jogging route.

Iowa Courts Online at iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/SelectFrame lets you do a free search for the whole state or specific counties.

Choose the basic case search (the advanced search costs money) and plug in your date's name. A search turns up any civil or criminal cases with which your date is associated. Here you can also confirm your date's age. Did he make himself five years younger on eHarmony?

If case numbers appear when you search for your date's name, click on each one to find more information. Under “criminal charges/disposition” you can learn the original charge and whether he or she pleaded guilty to something different. Could be the case was dismissed.

Everyone has speeding tickets, right? But if you find out your date has four in the last year, maybe you should offer to drive or take the bus.

Divorce records should also show up on the list of court cases. Within a divorce record, the “filings” link will show you the ex's name as well as whether your date has any children from this union. The “financials” page shows whether he has paid his child support or alimony.

We've all heard that financial disagreements contribute to rising divorce rates. It wouldn't hurt to know a little more about a person's financial situation before getting personally invested, right?

If he or she is a public employee, his or her salary is public record. Check out The Gazette's database of 60,000 state employee salaries at Thegazette.com/iowa-state-employee-salary-database.

Want to find out if your date owns his or her house? Most Iowa counties and larger Iowa cities have online property searches on assessor websites. Go to Iowaassessors.com to find links to the 91 counties that have online property look-ups.

The Cedar Rapids assessor's site, Cedar-rapids.info/assessor/pmc, only lets you search by address, not name. If you need your date's address, try 411.com.

By typing an address into the assessor's site, you can see not only if your date is listed as owner, but you can look at photos, a map of the street and assessed value of the property. You can even see if he has made any recent upgrades that required a permit. A note of caution: when he starts telling you about the patio he installed in his backyard, don't nod knowingly.

Want to verify that your date graduated from college? Public schools are required to say when a student attended, if and when he or she graduated and with what degree. At the University of Iowa, the registrar's verification department at (319) 335-0238 can provide this information. It helps if you have your date's middle name.

Social media has opened up a whole new level of snooping. If you're Facebook friends with your date, you can review his or her old posts and photos as well as see if you have common friends you could pump for more information.

No one wants to be dating a loose cannon, i.e. Charlie Sheen. Do a Twitter search, at Twitter.com, with an @ sign followed by your date's Twitter handle to turn up any message to your date or about your date.

These tips can be just as useful when hiring a nanny or checking out your neighbor who always seems to be carrying rolled-up rugs. The information is public and we, as citizens, have a right to it because of Iowa's Open Records Law, enacted in 1967. Journalists use public information to shine a light on how taxes are spent and make sure government is conducted fairly and ethically.

So celebrate your right to public information by backgrounding someone.

And don't forget, this information is also available about you. So keep it classy, folks.

Web searches

• Sex offender registry: Iowasexoffender.com/search
• Iowa Courts Online: iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/SelectFrame
• State employee salaries: Thegazette.com/iowa-state-employee-salary-database/
• Property: Iowaassessors.com or Cedar-rapids.info/assessor/pmc/