FTC charges background check companies for data privacy violations
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate will settled charges regarding deceptive background check reports. The companies are also settling claims that they allowed people to access background checks without a permissible purpose.
California-based Instant Checkmate and TruthFinder market people-search services, allowing users to search unlimited background reports on individuals, and charge monthly subscription fees to view the full reports. The FTC says that when a customer flagged an item in the background report as inaccurate, the companies never took any steps to investigate items flagged by consumers as inaccurate, to modify the reports, or to flag to other customers that the information had been disputed.
The FTC says that, in addition to failing to ensure the accuracy of their reports, the companies violated the FCRA by providing background reports to people who did not have a permissible purpose to obtain them and failing to implement reasonable procedures to limit who could obtain their background reports. The FTC also says the companies failed to investigate and respond to consumer complaints about inaccuracies in their reports, as required by the FCRA.
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