TruthFinder

TruthFinder launched around 2015, and it's now the highest-profile of the brands PeopleConnect presents as its own, alongside Intelius, Instant Checkmate, US Search, and Classmates. Type in a name, phone number, or email and the site walks you through a long teaser flow that ends at a paywalled subscription for unlimited background reports (criminal and traffic records, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, and social profiles).

The paper trail is layered but consistent. TruthFinder, LLC is the registrant on the California and Vermont data-broker registries, and the FTC's 2023 case names it alongside Instant Checkmate and three related companies: The Control Group Media Company, LLC (which PeopleConnect's privacy policy names as doing business as PeopleConnect), PubRec, LLC, and Intelicare Direct. H.I.G. Capital described PeopleConnect Holdings, Inc. as its affiliate when it completed the acquisition of Classmates in 2015; H.I.G. also invested in Intelius that year and now lists that investment as realized. Who owns PeopleConnect today isn't publicly documented. An August 2023 court filing by settlement counsel even described PeopleConnect, Inc. as the "former owner of some of the Websites," so we don't assert a parent-subsidiary chain at all. (The BBB profile's listed start date of 7/26/2003 predates the TruthFinder brand.)

In February 2023, PeopleConnect confirmed that a backup database dated April 2019 had been leaked on a hacking forum (20.2 million TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate customer accounts created between 2011 and 2019, with email addresses, hashed passwords, names, and phone numbers). The people exposed were TruthFinder's own customers, the ones buying reports, not the subjects of the reports. The company said it found no evidence its network was compromised and characterized the incident as an inadvertent leak or theft of the backup.

One naming note: TruthFinder isn't related to TruthRecord, a similarly named people-search site run by an unrelated operator.

TruthFinder's paid reports assemble the standard people-search dossier, and court filings show the free preview pages alone displayed enough to identify people. The categories below come from the FTC's 2023 complaint, the Fischer settlement filings, and PeopleConnect's own descriptions. The site itself blocks direct reading.

TruthFinder shares its suppression center and much of its litigation history with the rest of the PeopleConnect family. Instant Checkmate was a co-defendant in the 2023 FTC order; Intelius and Instant Checkmate were both parties to the Fischer settlement. One suppression request covers the four sites that PeopleConnect specifically names, while Classmates uses its own removal process. PeopleConnect also sells an identity protection product called OmniWatch.

TruthFinder shows the familiar gap between BBB's engagement-driven grade and what reviewers report. The BBB profile carries an A+ alongside 547 complaints closed in three years, SmartCustomer sits at 2.1 / 5, and Trustpilot sits at 3.4 / 5 across 3,471 reviews.

TruthFinder's litigation file is unusually complete for the category. It includes a federal deception and FCRA order with a $5.8 million civil penalty, a $10.1 million seven-state right-of-publicity settlement covering four of the family's people-search sites, and an appeals-court fight over the arbitration clause PeopleConnect wields across its brands.