So I recently did a background check through Certn for a work client. The results were mostly uneventful on account of my being a model citizen, but I also came back as a “politically exposed person”, apparently in part because of something published in a gov.tw database/on a gov.tw website:
Politically exposed persons (PEPs) are individuals who hold prominent public positions or have close associations with such figures. Examples include:
Government officials;
High-ranking politicians;
Military officers; and
Leaders of international organizations.
While not inherently indicative of wrongdoing, their positions expose them to potential risks, such as bribery, corruption, and money laundering.
A PEP check serves as a preventive measure, allowing businesses to assess the risk associated with engaging with individuals or entities linked to PEPs.
Needless to say, none of these apply to me, and as far as I can see my name doesn’t appear on any public gov.tw websites, CNN, or Reuters, and nor would I expect it to.
So, like… what’s going on? Has anyone done one of these and had something similar?
Possibly, but my full name was listed for all three sites, and considering that Certn is performing these things internationally that seems likely to make the results meaningless for countries where there are many more Andrews than here!
I wouldn’t focus too much on the Politically Exposed part because that’s just tagged with those particular websites or some activity connected with those websites.
Figuring out your connections since you don’t know will probably take some effort and a deep dive.
PEP also could mean you are related to someone in a position that makes him/her a PEP, perhaps blood relative or otherwise. Keep an eye on it, because you never know if you might accidentally get de-banked for this denotation.
Have you tried the obvious, stick your full name in to Google, Chat GPT and the like an see what comes up, enhance with nationality etc. to try and pin down a link? You may find someone with exactly the same name.
I did some googling yeah, but nothing came up. As far as I can see, I’m the only one with my full name, especially in Taiwan. There are a couple of people with my first name and last name though, including some author, but nobody in Taiwan as far as I can tell.
To me that looks like they searched those three data sets and found no matches.
If they found matches I would expect the other fields to display results.
Those aren’t emails or results …. Those are the search terms (names) and the data sets. I’d imagine they searched the gov.tw data set as you live in Taiwan, and the CNN and Reuters presumably is the global search.
I don’t think so. It literally says “possible match” at the top, and on the previous page too, and that section is marked in yellow not green like the other sections.
Those are the domains where the supposed possible matches were found, I think. Otherwise, it would say “none found” or something.
Try a few different AI services, Chat GPT & Co-Pilot often throw up weird answers. Chat GPT insists that I’m the CFO of the company I work for, same full name, same company however I’m not even in the finance department. When asked to double check it backs down and gives the actual CFO however if asked to double check again it goes back to insisting it’s me!
