• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 14, 2011

Arguing that it is not covered by federal fair credit reporting laws, online data broker and aggregator Spokeo says that two potential class-action lawsuits against the company should be dismissed.

"Spokeo is not a 'consumer reporting agency' and does not issue 'consumer reports,'" the company says in court papers filed this week in the Northern District of California, where it faces a potential class-action lawsuit by Web user Jennifer Purcell of Illinois. The company also recently filed similar papers in the Central District of California, where it is facing a similar lawsuit brought by a different Web user, Thomas Robins of Vienna, Va.

Spokeo drew headlines -- and two potential class-action lawsuits -- last year after critics complained about potential privacy violations. The company, which allows people to search for individuals by name, aggregates data from a wide variety of sources, including social networking sites like LinkedIn and MySpace. While Spokeo 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.

Spokeo allows people to remove themselves from its database, but advocates have said that the deletions are not always permanent. Critics also allege that much of the information in Spokeo's system is incorrect.

In addition to the suits by Robins and Purcell, the Center for Democracy & Technology filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

The lawsuits primarily allege violations of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, which imposes restrictions on companies that issue credit reports about consumers. Among others, credit bureaus must offer consumers access to underlying data, allow people to learn who has accessed their data and giving consumers the opportunity to contest incorrect information.

But Spokeo says that the Web users are "trying to fit a square peg into a round hole" because the company is a "search engine" and not a credit reporting agency. What's more, Spokeo argues, it requires users to agree as a condition of conducting searches that they can't use the company's information for any purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

In addition to arguing that it is not a credit agency, the company also says it's immune from liability under the federal Communications Decency Act. That law provides that interactive services providers like search engines are not liable when material found through their services turns out to be unlawful (except for material that violates intellectual property laws).