(Ad) It can take months to get to know someone, but most of us don’t have that kind of time.

If you need to truly know someone fast—especially if you’re thinking of offering them a job—then one of your best options is to use a background check service.

These sites reveal a person’s criminal history, social media accounts, current, and past addresses—even speeding tickets. This information can help you decide if you can trust someone with your business, family, or possessions.

All you need is their name or phone number, and a good background check site will do the rest. In 10 minutes, you’ll have a criminal record report and additional information useful in helping you decide if you can trust them.

Not all background check services are equal, though. For this article, we’ve spent over 30 hours researching every type of background check service and sorted them according to what they’re best at.

13 Best Background Check Sites Reviewed

First look:

1. Most thorough criminal record report: Truthfinder
2. Best for reverse phone look-ups: Intelius
3. Best for finding social media, dating profiles, and photos: Instant...

When your car breaks down or acts up, it’s a major inconvenience — and often a major expense. That’s why finding a good repair shop is so important.

Unfortunately, nonprofit Bay Area Checkbook and Checkbook.org found that many repair shops disappoint their customers; they do lousy work, impose long delays, sell unnecessary repairs, give inaccurate estimates. But not all shops are lemons: Plenty almost always perform top-quality work quickly and for a fair price.

Checkbook’s evaluations of 479 shops in the Bay area include ratings for quality and price. Checkbook’s ratings are based on more than 23,000 ratings it collected by surveying area consumers; a review of consumer-agency complaint records; more than 1,900 price checks by its undercover shoppers; and other sources.

Fortunately, there are a lot of top-quality auto repair shops in the area. Many were rated “superior” for overall quality by 90% or more of their surveyed customers. But there are also shops you’ll want to steer clear of: Dozens of the businesses Checkbook evaluated got such favorable ratings from fewer than 60% of their surveyed customers.

Checkbook’s ratings of area shops include a separate rating for price, derived from price quotes collected by its undercover shoppers for several carefully constructed repair jobs. You want to be sure a shop charges fair prices before you bring in your car because, like with most repair work, it is difficult to shop for price before you know exactly what needs to be done.

Checkbook’s undercover shoppers found dramatic shop-to-shop price differences. For example, to replace the water pump for a 2014 Ford Escape, they found prices ranging from $208 to $598 among area shops. Hourly labor rates range from $65 to $195.

If you know what repairs you need, you can compare prices from shop to shop on...

The former CEO of Boeing, who was fired in the wake of two deadly plane crashes, is now working with a Silicon Valley tractor startup hoping to be the "Tesla Inc. of the agriculture world," Bloomberg reported.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. will raise rates by an average of 8% on residential customers to fund improvements to reduce wildfire risk.

Nasdaq is pushing for the more than 3,000 companies listed on its U.S. stock exchange to make their boardrooms less overwhelmingly male and white by hiring directors that better reflect the country’s diverse population.

The company filed a proposal Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that, if approved, would require all companies on the exchange to disclose the breakdowns of their boards by race, gender and sexual orientation. Companies that do not comply could be delisted, or kicked off the exchange.

The proposal would also require most Nasdaq-listed companies to have at least two diverse directors or, if they cannot meet the mandate, to explain why not. That could include one board member who is female and one who is either an underrepresented racial minority or LGBTQ. Foreign companies and smaller companies would have additional flexibility in satisfying this requirement with two female directors.

California passed a law earlier this year requiring public companies headquartered in the state to diversify their boardrooms. Those rules require more people from diverse backgrounds be added more quickly to boards than what the Nasdaq rule is proposing, according to Jeffrey Thomas, a senior vice president at Nasdaq.

Thomas said the stock exchange worked with organizations including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an advocacy group whose membership includes more than 360 major businesses, to craft the proposed changes.

“The California law is really saying ‘We want to see more diverse people on boards,’” Thomas said. “We want to see much more disclosures from companies of who is on their board.”

Thomas said the exchange plans to help...

An obscenity-laden 2014 message from Balwani to Holmes describing one lab as a “disaster zone” may have been prescient.

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