The Federal Trade Commission settled with an online data broker that charged consumers $10 based on the false promise that it could “lock their records” so that others could not see or buy them.
The FTC charged that its claims were deceptive and violated federal law. The settlement requires that the broker, US Search, refund the fees it charged to nearly 5,000 consumers, and it bars misrepresentations about the effectiveness of any service that claims to remove information about consumers from the broker’s Web site.
US Search compiles public records and sells data about consumers to the public. The records may contain not only names, addresses and phone numbers, but information such as aliases, marriages and divorces, bankruptcies, neighbors, associates, criminal records and home values.
US Search offered customers a variety of search services, including "People Search," "Background Check," "Real Estate Reports" and "Criminal Records/Court Records Searches."
It also offered a "Reverse Lookup" service that can return the name of an individual associated with a particular phone number or property address.
Since June 2009, US Search sold consumers its PrivacyLock Service, which it claimed would allow them to lock their records and prevent their names and other information from appearing on the company’s Web site, its search results or advertisements for a year.
According to the FTC complaint, the claims were false. The agency alleged the PrivacyLock Service: did not block consumers’ names from showing up as an associate of someone else in a search for the other person’s name; and did not block consumers’ information from appearing in a reverse search of their phone number or address, or in a search of their address in real estate records.
It also did not work if the consumer changed addresses, thereby generating new records that would not be subject to the PrivacyLock and did not work if the consumer had multiple records - for example “John Smith” and “John T. Smith."
The settlement bars US Search Inc. and US Search LLC from misrepresenting the effectiveness of their PrivacyLock Service or any other service they offer that will allow consumers to remove information about themselves from search results, Web sites and advertisements.
The settlement order also requires that they disclose any limitations on such services and provide refunds to consumers who paid for the service.
