If you’re looking for a job, an apartment, or a loan, there’s a good chance that someone will be looking at you — closely. They may search for your name online or order a background report. They’re looking for red-flag warnings that another candidate may be a safer bet.
According to a lawsuit filed on July 27th, MyLife.com, which sells background reports, raised red flags by posting deceptive “teaser” reports online. The lawsuit says MyLife promoted these reports to employers, landlords, and others to convince them to subscribe to its services. The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit on behalf of the FTC.
Here’s how it worked:
MyLife displayed the teaser reports when someone typed a person’s name into a search bar at MyLife.com. If the person had no criminal, traffic, or sex offender records, the report typically suggested the person had such records. It also prominently displayed large, clickable buttons, one inviting the user to “View [searched-for person’s] Court, Arrest, or Criminal Records,” and another inviting the user to “View [searched-for person’s] Sex Offender Records.” Mylife.com users could view the full records only after paying for a subscription.
In many instances the searched-for people did not have criminal or sexual offender records, or they had minor traffic citations only. As a result, the lawsuit says, the reports were deceptive, violating the FTC Act.
The lawsuit also charges that MyLife didn’t take reasonable steps to make sure its background reports were accurate, violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act, used misleading billing practices, violating the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, and didn’t clearly and truthfully disclose that MyLife “had a policy of not making refunds and of discouraging cancellations,” violating the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
MyLife was originally founded as Reunion.com, had a brief stint known as Wink.com eventually becoming the information brokerage firm it is today. MyLife gathers personal information through public records and other sources to automatically generate a MyLife Public Page for each person.
A MyLife public page can list a wide variety of personal information, including an individual’s age, past and current home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, employers, education, photographs, relatives, political affiliations, a mini biography, and a personal review section which encourages other MyLife members to rate each other. MyLife claims to provide public background data on over 325 million identities. Public pages can be edited or removed if users register and pay for its paid service, or by email/phone request without paying. The site also allows people to search for any person in the United States, read their auto-generated public page, and review them.
Here’s what I discovered
I visited the website and was unpleasantly surprised at how much information they actually had about me, home address, my age, date of birth, mortgage information and a whole bunch more. I also discovered that MyLife reportedly has a data sharing partnership with Ancestry.com (That’s another good reason to read the privacy information before signing up for any online service) Think about how much more info they might have about anyone who also subscribed to Ancestory.com – pretty scary.
To get ALL the purported information they might have on someone, you’ll need to subscribe to the service. $!.00 for a 3-day trial subscription
If you decide not to cancel during the 3-day trial period, your subscription will automatically renew/bill for $16.95 per month for a minimum 3 month subscription term. The website states you can cancel at any time via Customer Care or on the subscribers “My Account” page. That sounds pretty simple but based on the number of complaints and Better Business rating, getting un-subscribed is really not that simple. Expect to get a run around as they don’t seem to cancel subscriptions very easily. My advice – Stay Far Away and don’t even think about taking advantage of their 3-day “free” trial.
