Sex offender screening API for social media platforms
From creator programs to communities with minors, screen accounts against every US registry — at signup, inside moderation queues, and across your existing base — with a scored API built for platform scale.
25 free searches, no card. $0.15 a call, no platform fee, no seats, no minimum. No code needed: search from your dashboard, or integrate the full API when you’re ready.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Mei", "lastName": "Chen", "dob": "1990-01-17", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Screening challenges for trust & safety teams at social and creator platforms
- Creator programs and monetization raise the bar on who you platform
- Communities where minors are present carry a different duty than general UGC
- A reported account needs an answer in the review queue, not next week
- Screening at platform volume needs scores and de-duplication, not raw name lists
What sex offender screening gives trust & safety teams at social and creator platforms
Gate creator and monetization programs with a real screen
Give moderators ranked, source-cited answers in the queue
Sweep an existing user base without drowning reviewers
Social Media Platforms sex offender check API: request and response. One POST per person, or the same search from the dashboard with no code.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Mei", "lastName": "Chen", "dob": "1990-01-17", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Send what you have. Name and date of birth; age or birth year when that is all you hold. Date of birth drives matchState: dob_match, year_match, age_match or no_dob_age_year.
Read the counts. sourcesComplete against sourcesQueried says whether all 58 registries answered, so a partial search is never read as a clear one.
Branch on the score. matchConfidence and matchBasis on every record, with the registry cited.
| Person | Checked for | Result | Answered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mei Chen | creator verification | No match | 58 / 58 |
| Jordan Sample | creator verification | Match · dob_match | 58 / 58 |
| J. Sample | creator verification | Review · year_match | 58 / 58 |
Read the API docs › · Search from the dashboard › · Screen a CSV without code ›
Sex offender screening built for social media platforms. One key, one schema, one stored record of every check.
Signup and monetization gates
A low-latency sync call fits inside account creation or creator-program acceptance, so the gate runs where the risk starts.
Inside the moderation queue
A reviewer runs a reported account’s name — in the dashboard or by API — and gets ranked candidates with photographs and official registry records to decide from.
Sweep the existing base
Run the back catalog in batches by CSV or API; confidence scores and cross-source de-duplication keep the review queue proportionate to real risk.
When trust & safety teams at social and creator platforms run a sex offender check. Each moment, and the call that fits it.
At account creation for youth-facing features
Platforms that let adults message minors, join youth groups or host live sessions screen before those features are switched on.
When an account is reported
Trust and safety reviewers check registry status as one input in an abuse or grooming report.
Before granting creator or moderator roles
Accounts that gain reach or authority over other users get a check before the role is granted.
For verified identities, on a schedule
Monitoring keeps a verified identity current when a registration starts after sign-up.
Social Media Platforms screening workflow. Step by step, from the first call to the stored record.
Screen only verified identity data. A name and date of birth from your identity-verification step; display names are not enough to match against.
Search once across the 58 US registries. Results come back scored by match strength, with the reason each candidate matched.
Send strong matches to human review. An automated match never closes an account on its own; a reviewer confirms against the official record link.
Apply your policy and log it. Keep the response, the reviewer’s decision and the policy clause with the account record.
Monitor accounts with youth access. Alerts arrive when a monitored account holder’s registry status changes.
Social Media Platforms screening: what the law requires and what it doesn’t
No federal law requires a social platform to check the sex offender registry. Platforms screen because their own policies bar registrants from youth-facing features and because a grooming report is far easier to act on with a confirmed record. The legal exposure sits in accuracy: regulators have penalized name-only matching against registries, which is why every result carries a match score and an official source link.
Screening is a moderation input, not a consumer report, as long as it is not used to decide employment, housing, credit or insurance. Keep a person in the loop for every enforcement action and an appeal path for the account holder.
Scale changes the design. A large platform cannot search every account, and shouldn’t: match quality depends on verified identity data most accounts never provide. Screening fits best at the points where identity is verified anyway — creator programs, youth-facing features, in-person events, paid verification — and in the review queue for grooming and abuse reports. Batch screening clears a verified backlog, and monitoring keeps verified accounts with youth access current.
Sex offender screening for social media platforms, by the numbers. The same answer whichever registry holds the record.
Registry and criminal records for social media platforms, on one key. Most trust & safety teams at social and creator platforms need more than one check, and running two vendors means two integrations, two contracts and two invoices.
Sex offender registry
58 US registries, continuously updated, with photographs, aliases, addresses and the official record citation on every match. 1.5M records in one schema.
Sex offender API ›Criminal records
1,408 county jail rosters, 53 state corrections systems, courts, warrants and federal custody, almost 50 million records in the same scored, source-cited schema. Same key, same price.
Criminal search API ›FCRA background checks
When a result decides a hire or a tenancy, the check runs as an FCRA order through FCRA Partner Access: consent, the check, disputes and adverse-action steps. Pricing is quoted per partner.
FCRA Partner Access ›Coverage today: 1,914 criminal jurisdictions catalogued, 1,564 live, 51 states + DC + federal. See what each state publishes, or the live list at /v1/criminal/sources.
What social media platforms screening costs per check. $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No platform fee, no seats, no minimum.
| Checks / month | Cost | Per check |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $75.00 | $0.1500 |
| 5,000 | $630.00 | $0.1260 |
| 50,000 | $5,580.00 | $0.1116 |
A batch is billed per row, so bulk screening costs the same per person as a single lookup. No setup fee, no per-seat licence, no monthly minimum on search and no annual contract, so the price scales down with you as well as up. A fraction of what legacy screening platforms charge.
The background check API · screen a CSV without code. More for developers: the free background check API tier, background check API pricing, the employment screening API and tenant screening API, and the background check API in Python and background check API in Node.js tutorials.
Social Media Platforms screening FAQ
For anything else, talk to sales or read the API docs.
Is it fast enough to sit inside signup?
Yes. The sync endpoint answers from our current snapshot, and every response reports its own elapsedMs so you can hold it to your own latency budget.
Can non-engineering trust & safety staff use it?
Yes. The dashboard is a search box with photographs and official registry records on every match — reviewers can work a queue without touching the API. The first 25 searches are free.
How do you keep false positives manageable at our scale?
Every record carries a confidence score and match basis, and people are de-duplicated across sources, so a common name returns one ranked candidate set rather than a pile of raw rows.
Is this a background check / consumer report?
Not on the standard API: standard results are not a consumer report. FCRA-regulated use runs through FCRA Partner Access, a separately enabled service for approved consumer reporting agencies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement.
Do social platforms have to screen users against the sex offender registry?
No federal law requires it. Platforms that do it enforce their own policies, usually for youth-facing features, messaging with minors or creator roles.
Can we match on a username?
No. Matching needs a real name and ideally a date of birth from identity verification. Name-only matching produces false positives that regulators have penalized.
What volume can the API handle?
Calls are billed per search with no minimum, and batch screening handles a backlog of verified accounts.
Can screening run inside a moderation tool?
Yes. The API returns structured results with match scores and record links, which a review tool can show beside the report.
Does the data include photos?
Where the registry publishes one, yes, which helps reviewers confirm or clear a match.
Related
Screen trust & safety teams at social and creator platforms with one API
From creator programs to communities with minors, screen accounts against every US registry — at signup, inside moderation queues, and across your existing base — with a scored API built for platform scale.