MyLife

For other uses of "My Life", see My Life.
MyLife.com
Information broker
Founded 2002 as Reunion.com
Headquarters Santa Monica, California
Key people
 Jeff Tinsley CEO
Owner Privately held
Website www.MyLife.com

MyLife (or MyLife.com) is an American Internet company founded by Jeffrey Tinsley in 2002. It provides services allowing people to see and control information that's publicly exposed about themselves or anyone. It previously conducted business under the names Reunion.com and Wink.com, providing people search services to find old friends and classmates under Reunion.com.

Mylife gathers information on individuals through public records and sources, and uses that information to automatically generate a "MyLife Public Page" on individuals, which purports to be a "complete Wikipedia-like biography on every American."[1] A Mylife Public Page can list a person's contact info including age, past and current home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, jobs, education, photographs, relatives, a mini biography and a personal review section which encourages other Mylife members to rate an individual. Mylife claims to have "over 225 million Public Pages with information about almost everyone in America, 18 years old and over." [2] According to MyLife, a "Public Page cannot be deleted" and "only premium members can hide content on their Public Page and remove the info from the original source."[3][4][5]

History

In 2007, according to a company press release, MyLife.com received $25 Million in venture funding from Oak Investment Partners.[6] The company changed its name from Reunion.com to MyLife.com after merging with the search engine company, Wink, in the fall of 2008.[7][8] According to CEO Jeffrey Tinsely, the company's 2008 revenue was estimated at 52 million dollars[8] with 90% of the firm's revenue coming from paid subscriptions.[9] As of 2009, the company had acquired several smaller companies including: Planet Alumni, GoodContacts, HighSchoolAlumni, MyAddressBook.com.[8] That year, Ancestry.com reported it had begun a data sharing partnership with MyLife.[10]

Products and services

The company offers services that allow people to see and control public information and reviews about them. The company also allows people to search for friends, family members and business associates or anyone, read their public pages and review them.[7] Mylife.com includes public profiles of non-members which are created using collected public data and information.[11]

Reception

In August 2007, the company described its website as the 6th most popular social networking site with 28 million users[6] while a 2008 article in the LA Times criticized the company's "aggressive marketing approach."[12] In February 2009 ComScore reported the company's website as having 18.2 million unique visitors that month[8] and Tech Crunch characterized it as the 4th largest social networking website.[8]

A class-action lawsuit was filed against the company in Oakland, California in February 2011.[13] The suit accused the company of "false solicitation" by offering monthly membership and then charging member's credit cards at the annual rate.[14] The Washington State Attorney General's Office began an investigation in 2011 stemming from concerns that the company's TV advertisements may have violated the state's Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive practices.[15] According to State officials the company resolved the issue by making an "assurance of discontinuance" and paid $28,000 in attorneys' costs and fees.[16] In February 2011 the Courthouse News Service described MyLife's website as the continuation of the "scam" administered by the company under the name Classmates.com, after settling a 2010 lawsuit by paying $9.5 million.[13]

In February of 2015, MyLife agreed to a court judgment under which it would pay $800,000 in penalties, plus $250,000 in refunds to customers. The company also will be subject to a permanent injunction that prohibits false advertising and unauthorized credit card charges.[17]

The case grew out of a joint investigation by the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Investigators found that MyLife was tricking consumers into giving the company their personal identifying information, and later their money, through false and misleading ads.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has revoked MyLife's accreditation, giving MyLife a rating of D-.[18]

On 03/20/2015 this company's accreditation in BBB was revoked by BBB's Board of Directors due to recent government action involving the business's customer relations which indicates a significant failure of the business to meet standards of conduct expected of a BBB member.

See also

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, January 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.