InstantCheckmate, TruthFinder Misappropriated Consumers’ Identities for Commercial Gain, Lawsuits Allege

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Two proposed class actions respectively claim the operators of InstantCheckmate.com and TruthFinder.com have violated Alabama and California laws by using consumers’ identities to advertise subscriptions to the websites’ “people search” services.

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The lawsuits, filed in California on November 16, contend that the state laws bar entities from using consumers’ identities—including their names, signatures, photographs, images, likenesses, voices or “a substantially similar limitation of one or more of those attributes”—in advertisements for commercial gain without a person’s consent to do so.

The lawsuits respectively claim that Instant Checkmate, LLC and TruthFinder, LLC have allowed visitors to their sites to search for the names of individuals and used those individuals’ identities to advertise subscriptions to their full databases of consumer information.

Also named as a defendant in both lawsuits is The Control Group Media Company, LLC, who does business as PeopleConnect and operates “people search” websites TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, Intelius and US Search.

The nearly identical cases claim the defendants have misappropriated consumers’ identities without first obtaining their informed written consent to do so, in violation of the Alabama Right of Publicity Act and California Right of Publicity Act.

“Most importantly, TruthFinder never obtained written consent from Plaintiffs and Class members to use their names for any reason, let alone for commercial purposes,” one lawsuit reads. “Defendants never notified Plaintiffs and Class members that their names would appear on the TruthFinder Marketing Page in conjunction with an offer to purchase subscription access to its database of reports. Moreover, Plaintiffs and the Class members have no relationship with TCG or TruthFinder whatsoever.”

The lawsuits explain that TruthFinder.com and InstantCheckmate.com purport to offer “detailed reports” about people to “anybody willing to pay for a monthly subscription.” Per the cases, the reports include information pulled from databases and public records, including individuals’ addresses, birth dates, marriage records and criminal histories.

When a consumer visits TruthFinder.com or InstantCheckmate.com, they are permitted to perform a free “people search” by typing in the name of a person, the lawsuits relay. The websites will then display the searched individual’s name alongside certain identifying information, such as their age, location and relatives, according to the suits. If the website visitor clicks on the “Open Report” button on either of the sites, they are shown an offer to buy a subscription to the website’s databases, the cases state.

The lawsuits emphasize that TruthFinder and InstantCheckmate offer for sale not only information about the searched individual but “an entirely different product”—namely, a monthly subscription service that includes “unlimited access to background reports on anybody in [their] database[s].”

“In this way,” each of the complaints state, “[the defendants] misappropriated people’s identities (individuals’ names and other identifying information such as their age, location, and known relatives) for [their] own commercial benefit (i.e., to market and promote a monthly subscription to access unlimited reports on individuals in [their] database).”

The two plaintiffs, whose names appear on both suits, claim they never provided the defendants with written consent to use their identities for commercial purposes and have never been compensated in exchange in any way.

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