Spokeo Sued For Allegedly Violating Fair Credit Laws

Spokeo

A Virginia resident has sued online data aggregator and broker Spokeo for allegedly "unlawfully operating and profiting as a consumer reporting agency."

In papers filed Tuesday in federal court in the Central District of California, Thomas Robins of Vienna, Va. alleges that Spokeo is violating the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act by offering inaccurate data about consumers without effectively allowing people to remove incorrect reports. He is seeking class-action status.

Spokeo allows people to search for detailed reports about individuals. The company gleans information from a variety of databases, including social networking sites like LinkedIn and MySpace. While it offers some basic information for free -- including people's addresses, phone numbers, estimated age and household composition -- Spokeo sells other data, including estimates of individuals' wealth.

Robins alleges that Spokeo correctly lists some data about him, such as his neighborhood and siblings' names, but that most of the other data is wrong. He says that contrary to Spokeo's report, he "is not in his 50s, is not married, is not employed in a professional or technical field, does not have a graduate degree, and has no children."

Currently seeking a job, Robins says he is afraid that "the inaccuracies in his report will affect his ability to obtain credit, employment, insurance, and the like."

Last month, the digital rights group Center for Democracy & Technology alleged in a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that Spokeo was violating the federal Fair Credit and Reporting Act.

Spokeo did not respond to a request for comment for this article, but a Spokeo spokesperson said last month that the federal fair credit law didn't apply because the site isn't a credit reporting agency and doesn't issue consumer reports.

But Robin's lawyer said that Spokeo meets the law's definition of credit reporting agency. "Spokeo gathers information about consumers and distributes and sells that information," said Michael Aschenbrener of the law firm Edelson McGuire.

Robins is seeking monetary damages and an injunction requiring Spokeo to comply with the federal fair credit law.

1 comment about "Spokeo Sued For Allegedly Violating Fair Credit Laws".
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  1. Fraser E from Opinions expressed herein are solely my own, July 25, 2010 at 2:16 p.m.

    Hmm. Spokeo's information is so far off base I thought it was a cute ploy to get better information, volunteered willingly, from people trying to get it to paint a more accurate picture of them.

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