TruePeopleSearch.com is a people search engine of sorts, through which, one can track down most of the people living in the US, who have shared their personal information online at one point or another. That’s right: the site seems to feature stolen/illicitly bought personal information on people who have never given their consent to have the said information publicly displayed. There are a number of other things wrong with TruePeopleSearch.com too though. Let us take a closer look.
What exactly does TruePeopleSearch.com do and who is behind it?
As already said above, TruePeopleSearch.com provides contact details on a huge number of people living in the US. Besides phone numbers and addresses, email addresses are provided as well. What’s more, the site dangles an option for a “Full Background Report,” which is apparently a paid feature. This is how the site is supposed to make money.
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If you find the above at least a little creepy, you are 100% correct. By the looks of things, the whole operation is based on abusively acquired information, which can be used for an infinitely varied range of further abuse. Only the creativity and the imagination of the would be criminals can in essence set a limit to it.
Using TruePeopleSearch.com, one can track down the relatives and acquaintances of certain people, or through these social connections, individuals who are not featured in the database for whatever reason. Identity theft becomes much easier as well, not to mention possible home invasion and burglary (facilitated by information obtained through the landline phones, coupled with the address information). The bottom line is that if you really pay this whole setup more than a couple of thoughts, you’ll be terrified by what your own mind can cook up.
Exactly where the featured information was obtained by the site is a mystery, of course. What is apparent though is that at least some information pertaining to the social connections may have been lifted from Facebook. As one scrolls down towards the bottom of a person’s profile page, he/she will happen upon a listing of possible relatives and one of possible associates. These lists seem to reflect the web of social connections from the person’s Facebook profile.
So, TruePeopleSearch.com is a creepy trafficker in personal data. What makes it a scam though?
Apparently, the “Full Background Reports” for which people are required to pay a membership fee, simply do not exist in some (or most?) cases. There have been complaints of payments made and then no Full Background Report delivered (the page simply did not load).
There are all sorts of other red flags present throughout the TruePeopleSearch.com website too.
For starters, the About Us page of the operation features no information on who really is behind it all. There’s no company mentioned, nor individual names. For a website so keen on revealing all sorts of personal information on everyone else, TruePeopleSearch.com seems just as keen on keeping its owners’/operators’ identities under wraps. This – in the world of online scams – is never a good sign. The Contact page of the website only features an email form and again: no relevant information regarding the background of the operation.
The Privacy Policy page content was apparently lifted off another site, without any modifications whatsoever.
While the site makes it possible for its users to request the removal of their profiles from the records, the terms attached to this “service” are also abusive.
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How do you get your record removed from TruePeopleSearch.com?
The TruePeopleSearch.com website features a special option for this purpose. Removing an entry is surprisingly easy. In fact, what’s really surprising is that anyone can remove the records of any person who’s present in the database of the site. According to some, the process does not actually remove entries. It is meant as a sort of confirmation for the targeted profile (assuming that one would only want to delete something that is indeed correct), while at the same time it gains approval from the user to have his/her device tracked by the operation.
Removing your entry from TruePeopleSearch.com does not really make sense at the end of the day. There are scores of other such websites out there, and thus the only way to keep your address, phone number, email address and social media profile private, is to keep off the internet entirely.
The bottom line
Some people argue that TruePeopleSearch.com is a legitimate operation, featuring information that is publicly available anyway. While some of the said information is indeed of this nature, there are non-public phone numbers and email addresses listed too, not to mention the full background report and the social media profile, which carries perhaps the biggest potential for abuse.
Steering clear of this operation is a good idea, though it will not scam you out of any significant sums of money, even if you do choose to purchase membership. Also, there’s not much you can do to keep your personal information off it, short of going in and requesting that it be removed.
Thank you for your informative article. I agree with your take in many ways. On the flipside, our family was a victim of a serious crime by corrupt local law enforcement, whom I knew next to nothing about, and TPS helped me zero in on the perps on a shoestring budget in order to defend myself. So there may be cases where TPS could help in David vs Goliath situations. However, I was also alarmed at the detail provided ! and the possibilty that TPS might be logging my IP while also logging who I was searching on. There are also way too many “cloudflare select image” tests before you can proceed to next page. Very, very annoying. Thanks again.