Incorrect on background checks - there are employment verification services that get quite a lot of data (many companies opt in to sending them payroll data).
I tried pulling my TheWorkNumber report, and I was surprised to see my weekly salary history not only at my current and prior BigCo jobs, but also at my prior small (~100 employees) company. Apparently they used ADP for payroll and that was enough to get into the Work Number database. I’m not sure I HireRight always cross references with databases like TheWorkNumber, but it would be trivial for them to do so.
