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TruthFinder claims it is an online background check that enables individuals to perform a people search or reverse phone lookup to identify relevant information about an individual. TruthFinder claims on their website they have 9 million average monthly users with 300,000 daily searches.
TruthFinder says they have updated information regarding individual’s personal information including:
While many individuals have used TruthFinder in an effort to keep themselves safe and to understand if someone has a history of harm - we believe that they overstate their data access and quality.
In this article we will discuss Truthfinder’s pricing, features, accuracy, and things that you may not know about online background checks - and why we think that they don’t actually keep people safe.
TruthFinder is a people search tool that enables individuals to search those living in the United states with information such as:
They offer a variety of people search tools (all of which are essentially online background check tools) including:
For example, an individual could enter someone’s phone number into their reverse phone lookup tool and see who is registered to that phone number. Basically, they enable an individual to enter limited information and find out more information about someone.
They claim to do this by accessing dozens of third-party data aggregators and compiling this information into a single report. With this in mind, TruthFinder would be considered a data broker. Data brokers are companies that collect personal information about individuals from various sources and compiles and sells that data to third-parties without having a direct relationship with the individual the data belongs to.
Data brokers have what many would consider a dirty reputation - which is why you’ll never see them use this term in their marketing.
But - they are registered as a data broker under data broker registration laws in California, Vermont, Oregon, and probably should be registered in Texas (although we could not locate their registration as of publication).
And while you may want to know if someone has a history of harm or who the phone number sending you scammy texts belongs to… whether TruthFinder can actually do this is questionable at best.
TruthFinder also claims they have “thousands of positive reviews and an A rating from the BBB”. - which is technically true that they have an A rating (many publications have claimed that BBB ratings can be manipulated).
But, they also have the overall customer rating on BBB of 1.69 out of 5 starts as of publication.
On TruthFinder’s Trustpilot page, they have an overall rating of 1.6 out of 5 stars based on 1,384 reviews.
Which might leave you asking… “is TruthFinder legit?” to which we believe … kind of… but not really?
But it depends on what you mean by “legit”.
Another way to ask this question would be “is TruthFinder a scam?” and our opinion would be … most likely.
Don’t worry - we’ll explain our opinions further below and give you the information you need to make your own decision about using TruthFinder or similar services in the future.
TruthFinder’s website generally leads you to a landing page where you can input known information about someone.
From there, it’s kind of hilarious what happens next… And by hilarious, we mean that they then take you through an up to ten minute “search process” that says it’s doing all of this manual work, asks you a bunch of questions about the person, and makes you click a bunch of seemingly scary buttons about what you might find and how you can use the data.
(Yes, it takes nearly 14 minutes to get through the signup process for TruthFinder...)
You can also click a “I do not want to wait” button which magically takes you to the same search page without wasting your time!
After all of these screens, it will take you to a payment page - or sometimes, depending on a variety of factors, it may reveal a little bit of information about the searched individual and then take you to a payment page.
Once you pay for a full TruthFinder report, you will get an online report that looks like this:
That is, if you can find the person you’re searching for. TruthFinder is required to delete the data of individuals who file data removal requests. Anyone has the right to remove their data or opt-out of being added to their services - including convicted sex offenders, rapists, and murderers.
That means you might search for someone on TruthFinder, find no records, and think they’re a safe individual or have not committed violent crimes.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we believe is TruthFinder’s misleading marketing - we’ll get into their data access and quality issues further below.
TruthFinder offers a variety of “services” and therefore a variety of payment options - most of which are monthly subscriptions with additional add-ons such as PDF Reporting/Monitoring or Dark Web Monitoring (which is a whole other thing we’ll discuss below…).
In general, they charge a subscription fee per month of ~$25 in order to be able to see the most relevant data about someone such as their criminal records, court records, and other important information.
According to their website, they offer refunds on a “case by case basis” but according to hundreds of TruthFinder reviews, they do not generally offer refunds.
This TruthFinder subscription includes unlimited monthly “person” and “location” reports with all of the types of data included. It does not include Report Monitoring, Unlimited Phone Reports, or
$28.33 per month
$23.52 for two months ($47.03 due today)
You will need to have the correct first name and last name in order to run this type of search.
If you are not sure 100% about the person’s information, such as going on an online date with someone, this search could be misleading. You cannot trust identity information unless you have verified in some manner such as viewing their driver’s license or other identity documents.
This subscription plan includes “unlimited phone reports”. However, it can be unclear what information these phone reports include and exclude.
$4.99 per month
TruthFinder Reverse Phone Lookup Reports may include:
TruthFinder Reverse Phone Lookup Reports exclude:
While it may seem like their reverse phone lookup service is a cost efficient way to run a people search with limited information, they exclude a majority of the most important information to those looking to protect themselves including criminal records and court records (including sex offender information).
TruthFinder’s reverse email lookup allows you to see if they can find personal information about a specific email address. However, this type of people search is often the most difficult type of people search as anyone can create an email address without providing their identity information - meaning these types of searches often do not work.
This TruthFinder subscription includes “Unlimited Person Reports” and “Unlimited Email Reports with many exclusions in terms of information.
$29.73 per month
TruthFinder Reverse Email Lookups may include:
TruthFinder Reverse Email Lookups exclude:
Similar to their reverse phone lookup subscription, you may not realize that this type of search doesn’t provide the data you are looking for without reading the fine print.
TruthFinder also tries to upsell their users to purchase additional add-ons to their main services.
TruthFinder add-ons include:
PDF Reporting and Report Monitoring costs $3.99 per month
Dark Web Monitoring costs $2.99 month
If you haven’t realized yet, our opinion is that TruthFinder is not accurate or reliable in terms of pricing transparency, data quality, data accuracy, and overall reliability of their services.
Here’s a summary of why we believe TruthFinder is not legitimate:
The most accurate data on TruthFinder is often address, phone, and location data about individuals. Their criminal data, court records, and other pertinent information is often the most unreliable data source for data brokers - but they will not be transparent about this.
While people use TruthFinder for many reasons, they clearly advertise use cases for searching neighbors, friends, family, and potential dates. What type of data would you most likely want to know about these individuals if trying to use an online background check?
We’d bet it is to see if they have any criminal records, if they’re married, or if they’re telling the truth about their assets or job… yet data brokers like TruthFinder often do not have accurate or updated information about these types of data.
You don’t have to believe our opinion about TruthFinder - you can trust the thousands of negative reviews found on sites like BBB, TrustPilot, Reddit, and other review sites.
REMINDER: TruthFinder has a a 1.69 out of 5 stars as of publication on BBB
Here are some of the hundreds of negative reviews of TruthFinder on BBB:
“They are a fraud. Just paid for criminal report on someone sitting in jail on 5 warrants in 2 counties and after paying ***** I was told no criminal or traffic reports are found. This is a total rip off!!!!!” - Mary L, BBB review published 11/09/2024
“Would NOT recommend! Was useless in finding any more information than I could find in my own. I canceled my subscription only to be billed two more times. When I called (since there is no easy way to cancel) they said I had only cancelled the *** downloads and data monitoring. It was NOT clear there were 2 parts to the subscription and my cancellation only canceled the $3.99 a month not the $28.34 charge. Bait and switch!! And I should have been more diligent in monitoring the charge.And then was asked if I would like reverse email lookup subscription NO THANKS!!” - Kate G, BBB review published 10/21/2024
“They have terrible customer service. I have had to call three times to get my account cancelled. I have received emails confirming that I cancelled my account. They continue to charge me. At what point does become a criminal matter. Seriously, do not give them your money or info.” - Frank S. BBB review published 10/16/2024
“Total scam...tricking you with language like "person" is on a government watch list or "You will be shocked to see the criminal or embarrassing information about said person", etc. If you aren't sure, just look up your own name first.” - Jody S, BBB review published 10/09/2024
“A complete waste of time and money. Information finally provided was incomplete and out of date. Some was blatantly inaccurate. I would never use this service again.” - Fred C. BBB review published 08/26/2024
In general, TruthFinder’s reviews on BBB often cite advertising their service as free, not having accurate information, not having updated information especially about criminal records, and making it very difficult for individuals to cancel their subscription.
Trustpilot is a review site similar to BBB that enables individuals to leave reviews of different types of consumer businesses from online platforms to ecommerce websites and beyond.
REMINDER: TruthFinder has a a 1.6 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot as of publication
Here are some of the hundreds of negative reviews of TruthFinder on TrustPilot:
“Terrible service that preys on the elderly and gullible people. False marketing, absolutely no morals, and horrid experience. All 5 start reviews here are bots. I barely ever write a negative review but this site is disgusting enough for me to feel the need to trash the service.” - Kate, review on TrustPilot published 12/03/2024
“I'm giving Truthfinder 2 stars instead of zero because they at least respond to every bad review they've gotten which is more than most do.Here's what I don't get; why do you keep on trying to fool people into buying a service that clearly doesn't work, isn't accurate and is making people very angry? NOT TO MENTION THE DANGER YOU ARE PUTTING WOMEN IN WHO TRUST THIS SERVICE TO KEEP THEM SAFE FROM PREDATORS AND CRIMINALS. If I were you I'd be ashamed of my failure and STOP before someone gets hurt or killed by your bad information......I mean like, duh....” CJ, review on TrustPilot published 09/25/2024
“It says it's free, it's not. The process of getting to the records of so convoluted as to be almost completely incomprehensible. The amount of information they were actually able to pull was less than useless. Do not waste your time and money on this site.” Terry N. review on TrustPilot published 10/06/2024
“Canceled!! Absolutely of no use to me. Searches are full off addresses, emails, phone numbers, relatives etc. but lack in criminal history and descriptive information One search really had little or no information beyond the latter part of the last decade when I am certain there is (was) a lot more to report. Service reps were defensive and told me I could be in violation of our terms of agreement and as such, I may not be able to sign up for their there service again. Really do they really think I would even think to return to something this un-useful and for what $29 +/- a month.” unknown name, review on TrustPilot published 08/01/2024
“It's a scam! Half the information on my report was wrong. Had relatives that weren't. Social media profiles that weren't mine. Said I lived in a state I never had. Said I owned a Benz and a Lincoln. Never drove either of those let alone owned them. I looked up my two daughters and it made one older than she is. The other one said she was a dental assistant and she's not. This site is a joke. Don't use it” - Stephanie R. review on TrustPilot published 09/12/2024
In general, the TruthFinder reviews on TrustPilot claim misleading free trials and advertisements, long loading times to run an initial check, inaccurate people data, missing criminal records, and difficulties canceling subscriptions.
Beyond consumer TruthFinder reviews, you can also read what the FTC had to say about TruthFinder and InstantCheckmate including the $5.8 million fine they were required to pay in September 2023.
To summarize some of the FTC claims against TruthFinder include:
The company behind TruthFinder, PubRec, also operates Instant Checkmate, The Control Group, and Intelicare Direct.
We also believe PeopleConnect is associated with PubRec, as their website claims they run TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, Intelius, US Search, and OmniWatch. If you’ve ever used another one of these other people search sites - you’ve likely used the same data sources as TruthFinder as they have the some operators.
So… is TruthFinder legit? Does TruthFinder work? Is TruthFinder accurate?
We’ll let you decide.
There are dozens if not hundreds of people search sites advertised across the web. However, we believe they all have the same issues as TruthFinder - some better (or worse) than others.
The online background check (aka people search) industry has a lengthy history of allegations of misleading and misrepresenting their access to data, accuracy of data, and freshness of the data.
We know a thing or two about background checks.Garbo developed our award-winning “new kind of online background check” in 2021 and shut it down in 2023.
We shut it down due to threats from violent individuals when we would not delete their records, the increasing issues with public record access, and other issues.
Garbo is a tech nonprofit that puts protection over profit - and with that in mind, we could not in good faith continue with this technology despite our efforts to educate users, be as transparent about data access as possible, and never delete records of violent offenders.
Many newer companies have tried to replicate Garbo with their own versions of background checks that are focused on histories of harm or ensuring you know who you’re talking to. Essentially, they’re trying to remove the “creepiness” of traditional data brokers that provide access to home addresses and other invasive personal information - but still have the same fundamental issues as them.
So - in our opinion, the best alternative to Truthfinder is not next-gen “solutions” like RealMe or BrightCheck. These types of sites also obfuscate their data access, quality, and accuracy.
As an example, RealMe is owned/operated by individuals behind MyLife - a company and owner who had to pay the FTC $21 million.
While we set out initially to build a new kind of online background check, we realized that it’s not actually possible due to state and federal government issues (despite what these data brokers want you to think).
We believe the real alternative to TruthFinder is our Online to IRL Safety guidebook that teaches you how to verify someone’s identity, how to search for court records with ease, and how to protect yourself in the digital age.
Disclaimer: This blog post contains material that may be copyrighted by third parties. Such material is used for purposes including research, teaching, commentary, criticism, and reporting, which align with the principles of "fair use" under U.S. Copyright Law (Section 107 of the Copyright Act).
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and contributor organization and do not necessarily reflect the views of affiliated entities. All content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be taken as definitive advice or facts. Readers are encouraged to independently verify any information presented here.
We work with online platforms to help proactively protect their communities through our innovative background check system. Get in touch to learn more about how we can integrate Garbo or help you proactively screen users at sacale.
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