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.