Nothing in federal law stops a landlord from typing an applicant’s name into a search box. The question is not whether you may. It is what you now know, and whether you can prove the decision was not made because of it.
The practical answer, and the one to write into your process today: leave the search out of screening entirely, and if someone on your side has already done one, record the decision against the written criteria and nothing else.
What a search hands you that a report never would
A consumer report is a narrow product. Credit accounts, public records, and whatever eviction or criminal data the provider covers, assembled by an agency that is regulated on accuracy.
A public profile is the opposite. A single page of it can reveal race, national origin, religion, family makeup, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy, and political views. The federal Fair Housing Act protects seven characteristics (42 U.S.C. § 3604), and California’s list runs to sixteen (Cal. Gov. Code § 12955(a)). A screening process that routinely collects all of that is building the record for the complaint it is trying to avoid.
There is no version of the argument that ends well. Either you saw the information and denied the applicant, which is what a plaintiff will say, or you saw it and approved them, which does not help the next applicant you deny.
The FCRA does not cover what you find yourself
This surprises people, and it cuts against the landlord rather than for them.
A consumer report under 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(d)(1) is a communication of information by a consumer reporting agency bearing on a consumer’s creditworthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living. A consumer reporting agency, defined at § 1681a(f), is an entity that regularly assembles or evaluates such information for the purpose of furnishing reports to third parties.
Your own Google search is neither. So the applicant gets no right to dispute what you found, no right to a copy, and no adverse action notice from the reporting side telling them how to correct it.
That sounds like less work for you. Read it the other way. Nobody verified the profile is the right person, nobody checked whether the post is five years old or satirical or someone else’s, and the applicant never gets a chance to say so. When the decision is questioned, the only account of what was found is yours.
The neutral-looking version is still a problem
Some landlords limit the search to things that sound job-relevant: photos of a party in a rental unit, complaints about a previous landlord, an apparent pet the application did not mention.
Two problems survive that narrowing.
The first is selection. If you search some applicants and not others, the process is no longer consistent, and consistency is the thing that makes a screening decision describable. Searching everyone is worse rather than better, because now you have collected protected characteristics on the whole applicant pool.
The second is the discriminatory effect standard at 24 C.F.R. § 100.500. A neutral practice can still be unlawful where it produces a disparate impact on a protected class, is not necessary to a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest, and could be served by an alternative with less discriminatory effect. A social media check is close to a textbook example of a practice with a less discriminatory alternative available, because the alternative is a landlord reference call that asks the same questions of everybody.
What to do instead, for each thing you were hoping to learn
Every legitimate question behind a search has a better source.
- Will they damage the unit? Prior landlord references, asked as a fixed script. See questions to ask a tenant’s previous landlord.
- Is there an undisclosed pet or occupant? Ask on the application, ask the prior landlord, and write the pet policy into the lease.
- Are they who they say they are? Government photo ID at showing, plus the identity matching the consumer reporting agency already does.
- Can they pay? Income verification, which is the only thing in this list that actually predicts rent arriving. How to verify income and employment ranks the documents.
Each of those is defensible, repeatable, and produces a record. None of them tells you an applicant’s religion.
If you have already seen something
It happens. An applicant’s profile comes up while you are verifying an employer, or a co-owner sends you a link.
Do three things. Do not save it, do not forward it, and make the decision on the written criteria with the reason recorded. If the file shows the application failed the income multiple, that is the reason, and it is a reason that existed before anyone opened a browser.
Then look at why the search happened. Usually it is a gap in the process: a question the application does not ask, or a verification step nobody is doing. Fair housing compliant screening criteria is where that gap gets closed properly.
The one-line policy
Write it into your criteria page, because a policy that exists only in your head is not a policy:
Applicants are screened on the written criteria and the verifications listed here. Public internet searches of applicants are not part of screening and are not considered in any decision.
That sentence takes ten seconds to add and does two jobs. It tells anyone helping you what the process is, and it is the first thing you would want to point at if a decision is ever questioned. Keeping the criteria attached to the application record itself is what makes it more than a sentence, and a standard rental application is the right place to collect the things you were tempted to search for.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.