Intelius.com - Publishing private information

[JoeDoe]

Not sure where to put this..

A number of sites owned by Intelius Inc (Spock.Com, Isearch.com, probably others) are publishing information that are part of the public domain. However, they have a various sneaky methods of getting information.

It appears in certain cases they gather names from public areas, automate posting names in the Myspace search feature, and scrape whatever content and data they can find. This information is under limited license by myspace to use, and I was under the assumption that my name was only in my account settings, and would be used by those that new me and could contact me by searching for my profile, not to have data published under my name without my permission for perpetuity.

I'm still waiting to hear from myspace whether they coordinated with Intelius Inc in this effort, but my suspicion is this is highly unlikely.

This content has been removed, and under the terms of myspace's agreement, the limited license is terminated, and is not part of the public domain. Myspace's terms also deem it illegal to scrape and aggregate their user data.

It appears that Intellius is scraping internet sources, and keeping a "running database" of information of individuals, and keeping them published without any permission from owners, without any claims to copyright, even after they are removed from the public domain.

Myspace terms: [url=http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms]Terms & Conditions - MySpace.com[/url]

Also, Intelius's sites state that they have no method of removing content per user request.

They also state that they are subject to Washington State law. I believe this to be in violation of Title 63, Chapter 60, which states "Every individual or personality has a property right in the use of his or her name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness. Such right exists in the name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness of individuals or personalities deceased before, on, or after June 11, 1998."

Is what they are doing legal? And what ability to individuals have to prevent content from being published?

[quincy]

First, the ONLY way you can prevent your private personal data from winding up in an online database is to not publish any of your private personal data online. Information obtained from public records (even if personal) is, for the most part, public information.

If you want to file a complaint about Intelius with the Washington State Attorney General's Office and/or the Better Business Bureau, your complaint will join the hundreds of others already submitted about this company.

The owner (Naveen Jain) has been involved in several lawsuits and has been investigated by the FTC. For a very brief period of time, Intelius provided public access to cell phone numbers - until a threatened lawsuit by Verizon halted the distribution by Intelius of these private numbers. There is currently talk of a class action lawsuit being filed against Intelius, for consumer fraud and deceptive marketing practices.

The Washington law you quoted, by the way, is an invasion of privacy tort (misappropriaton of a name or likeness) and this tort is actionable when an individual's name or likeness is used without authorization for a commercial purpose. The invasion of privacy tort more likely to apply to personal data being revealed without authorization is the "publication of private facts" tort, although it appears that the data gathered by Intelius is "public" information, obtained from public records and/or originally published online by the individuals whose information is now winding up in the Intelius database. If you publish private personal data on MySpace, it is no longer private personal data.

[JoeDoe]

All Great points.

The misleading part is that the information was never intended to be published along side of the name of the individual. It would be akin to signing up for a website and posting, and then years later the website selling all its database information and tracing your I.P. or other information to your name, and releasing everything you've ever posted. You just don't generally *expect* that to happen.

Here it look's like Intellius had a back-handed method of scraping that data, and more than likely, against Myspace's own user terms. Ideally, Myspace, is in position to pressure the company to back down. Hopefully they will respond to my inquiry in a positive manner.

I would also disagree on the particular tort, and that this falls under the "Personality Rights" to the section on property. I do understand that it would probably not fall under private information considering it was user posted. However, under the terms of Myspace, to my understanding, I am giving them a limited license to the use of the content within their network, and that license is terminated after removal of that content and retained by myself. Thus I would question it being "public data" as I am retaining the full rights to it, arguments for fair use or editorial aspects withstanding. Thus I would say that it is "an individual's name or likeness is used without authorization for a commercial purpose". It may not be "private data" anymore, so to speak, but only I am in charge of legally authorizing it's use by a third party commercial enterprises.

At least this is my understanding and interpretation of various state laws on this sort, which do admittedly allow a bit of wiggle room.

I could understand a social network aggregator that displays real-time public information, however, the sites in question are showing content many years old. And scraping the content and hosting it on their own servers is questionable as well.

I am certainly not in a position to file a tort of my particular claim. But I would like to explore avenues of public pressure to put a halt to this practice. In my own case, I only have one goofy picture from halloween being displayed from many years ago, certainly not something I would need to hide from employers and the like, but I can imagine others having much more questionable material. I just find the general practice of content scraping to be extremely insulting by the principle of it. And I don't so much appreciate seeing my content being utilized by a commercial entity without my authorization.

Thanks for the background information about this company. I wasn't able to find much pertinent information besides the stuff about their background checks, which I am not so much concerned.

One thing though, what is the jurisdiction of this type of proceeding? Is it generally the State the company resides? the individual? or possibly any State that it is being published? If the latter, it seems any privacy rights group could easily established case law for representing somebody in the most legally established jurisdiction, in this type of situation.

[JoeDoe]

Also, food for thought, this company had a tricky method of aggregated pictures for the Names of individuals in their database.

It is possible to scan somebody's picture and put the information into a web crawler to search for other pictures of that persons identity as well. I don't know all the details, but it is a pretty expensive and intensive operation used to prevent content theft by Internet companies.

But what is to happen as this becomes cheaper and easier to implement? That *every* picture you or anybody else has ever taken and published can be aggregated by a third party and tied to your name and likeness?

Clearly, a legal precedent needs to be established that can be up to date in the realities of internet technology that can prevent this sort of thing from happening, and allow individuals at least some control over the publication of their image and likeness, besides individuals filing torts on a case by case basis.

[quincy]

You are misunderstanding the privacy tort of misappropriation of a name or likeness.

Your name and likeness are indeed considered "property." And, yes, Intelius is a commercial enterprise making use of your personal data, which includes your name and likeness. But in order for you to file suit under this tort, Intelius would need to be using your name or likeness to advertise their business or using it in a promotional manner (ie. selling tee-shirts with your name and likeness on them).

The tort that could apply to your situation is the private data tort - but there is definitely a question as to whether any of the data Intelius has gathered on you is "private." If you published it online, it is not private.

A court in Washington would be found to have jurisdiction, more than likely - although jurisdiction can always be fought. However, Washington is where Intelius is based and where the data is stored. Individuals wishing to use Intelius services (say for background checks) would be going through the Washington-based site. Therefore, any suit you would wish to bring would have to be brought in Washington under Washington state laws.

If you believe your personal data has been scraped by an "Intelius bot," in violation of your rights to privacy and in violation of the MySpace terms, consult with an attorney in your state (and you failed to mention exactly what state it is you DO reside in - this makes a big difference when discussing jurisdictional matters and the laws involved in any internet action).

At any rate, I suggest you add your complaints about Intelius to the many, many others piling up in Washington's AG's office, and do some research on your own to see if any class action has been filed yet. The Attorney General has, by the way, requested specific legislation to address the type of deceptive advertising Intelius has been accused of, but that would not cover your area of concern, and I am not sure what the current status of any legislation is.

[Hot Topic]

Please keep in mind that the Better Business Bureau has no legal "clout" to get a company to do, or stop doing, something you find objectionable/illegal and vice versa.

[quincy]

In its most recent report, the Better Business Bureau in western Washington notes 1159 complaints have been received about Intelius in the last 36 months. Just over half of these have been addressed, or resolved and closed, by the BBB so far.

Although Hot Topic is correct that the BBB has no legal clout, the BBB will work with both the consumer and the company to try and resolve a complaint, outside a courtroom. This helps both the company and the consumer avoid costly litigation. Because the BBB issues "Reliability Reports" and details a company's complaint history and rates the company for a consumer's review, which can affect the business, it is of benefit to a company to work with the BBB in satisfying a consumer complaint.

Currently Intelius is not a BBB accredited business and Intelius has been given a "no rating" with the BBB, due to the number of complaints still being investigated.

Although Joe's situation is one that the BBB could not resolve, he could still file a complaint. The number of complaints filed against a company DOES help to put "public pressure" on a company, which is an avenue Joe was interested in exploring.

[Skyymiles]

ah another life discovers that not all things in cyberspace are indeed private

[quincy]

It DOES sort of boggle the mind that, with all of the information now readily available on the legalities of online activities, people still seem to believe there is privacy on the internet, there is anonymity on the internet, and they can say whatever they want about whomever they want on the internet without fear of reprisal.

[JoeDoe]

Originally Posted by quincy

It DOES sort of boggle the mind that, with all of the information now readily available on the legalities of online activities, people still seem to believe there is privacy on the internet, there is anonymity on the internet, and they can say whatever they want about whomever they want on the internet without fear of reprisal.

Quincy, you do make some good points on how personality rights can be limited due to interpretation of the statute (although, i would still suggest intellius is using property has "merchandise", in that the actual webpage is their merchandise in a commercial application, rather than say a T-shirt). However, i do believe you are misinterpreting this situation and my objection to it entirely.

I also never even mentioned anything on the grounds of privacy, so whatever it is that's "Boggling your mind" I sure hope you do find it.

[quincy]

My comment about anonymity and privacy, JoeDoe, was in response to Skyymiles' comment.

I also understand your situation and why you are upset by it. You are not alone in being upset. There is very little information about you, however, that is considered private.

As for your personal information being used in a commercial manner, I will say once again that selling your personal information is NOT a violation of the "misappropriation of a name and likeness" tort, which has a very specific application. If Intelius were to advertise using your name (or perhaps your Halloween image) in their advertising, then the tort would apply. You would then be entitled to compensation for the use of your "property."

An example of a case where the misappropriation tort was used successfully: A male model had posed for photos when he was young but never released the rights to his image. Years later a friend pointed out to him that the man on the Maxwell House coffee cans looked just like him. It was him. He had never signed a release for the use of his photo in a commercial manner and he had never been compensated for the use of his image in this very commercial way (until, of course, he won the suit ).

What Intelius has done, and profitably, is to gather public information on people in one place. Personal information can be public information (think marriage records, divorce records, all court records, criminal records, education records, employment records). Instead of an employer (or a prospective date) having to check court records and criminal records and education records and address records and all sorts of records to do a background check, they pay Intelius to provide them with all of the information. Intelius does the footwork. It saves the employer time (and provides the prospective date with some security before going on a date).

There is nothing illegal, for the most part, with what Intelius is doing (with the exceptions noted above). Intelius is not capitalizing off your name and image. Intelius may, however, make money off your personal information should someone (the girl you asked out, the new employer) want to pay them to compile it instead of going to the time and trouble of locating the same information themselves. It is all public information.

If Intelius is gathering information that is NOT public information (such as financial data or medical histories), THEN there is a problem. I already mentioned Verizon's threatened suit against Intelius, because cell phone numbers are private and yet Intelius had managed to get ahold of these numbers and Intelius was including them in the "packages" of information they were selling. Intelius has not revealed HOW they were able to get ahold of the cell numbers, but they no longer list them.

I think if you are concerned that some of your personal information that was private and/or confidential has been accessed illegally, you need to speak with an attorney. If you just want to make it known that Intelius MAY be doing something illegal (but you have no proof), file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the Attorney General's Office, and they will investigate.

I am not sure what else to tell you. . . .