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A website that offers to show you someone’s “reputation” and criminal history for a fee must face class action claims, after it allegedly suggested a Minnesota man was a sex offender when he only has traffic tickets.
In a Tuesday ruling, Minnesota federal Judge Susan Nelson rejected MyLife.com’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff Brion Finlay’s proposed class action against the public information company.
Nelson said MyLife’s profiles and “Reputation Scores” amount to a consumer report, while MyLife operates as a consumer reporting agency, so it can also be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, as well as for defamation.
Finlay brought the class action in May, claiming his MyLife profile incorrectly implied he had both a criminal and sex offender background, and alleging a similar situation has likely happened to many others.
The class action lawsuit accuses MyLife of editorializing and putting its own spin on information pulled from public records. In his case, MyLife incorrectly editorialized on its website to make a traffic ticket appear as a “criminal or arrest record.”
According to the summary of facts, Finlay is out of work and is searching for a job. He said it’s common for a prospective employer to Google a person’s name when they apply for a job. When you Google Finlay’s name, a MyLife profile for him comes up in the results.
Finlay did not create this profile with MyLife, instead the company creates “reputation” profiles for people based on public records databases, then makes up its own “reputation ratings” for people based on these records. It had rated Finlay a 2.32, a “poor score” by its own design.
On the MyLife-created page for Finlay, a user sees the sentence, “Brion Finlay (C), 42 – Minneapolis, MN Has Court or Arrest Records,” the summary of facts states. The website offers for users to view Finlay’s “Court, Arrest or Criminal Records” on his MyLife profile, stating that Finlay’s profile may contain “graphic content and sensitive details” and suggests that Finlay is a sex offender — which he is not.
Finlay also alleges MyLife includes this information in its profiles to cause reputational harm and incentivize consumers to pay it to “repair” their profiles, offering people the option to remove information on their MyLife profile for a fee. He said MyLife markets and sells its “information” on people to third-parties for employment and other purposes.
Judge Nelson ruled Tuesday it was plausible Finlay has been injured by the profile.
“The allegations in the Complaint — particularly Finlay’s status as a job-seeker and the widespread availability on the Internet of the allegedly false consumer information about him — give rise to a reasonable inference that a third-party viewed that information on his MyLife profile,” she wrote.
The judge also shot down MyLife’s argument that all of the information contained within Finlay’s profile is publicly available elsewhere, so it is not liable.
“The Court disagrees,” she ruled. “As the complaint alleges, MyLife itself devised and calculates the “Reputation Score” that it includes on consumers’ profiles. That, alone, dismantles MyLife’s argument that all of the information in its profiles is available elsewhere in the public domain… Consequently, the harms alleged in the Complaint are fairly traceable to MyLife’s conduct.”
The lawsuit claims that MyLife also runs a “class cyber extortion scheme” by offering consumers the opportunity to pay a monthly fee to remove false or negative information. It seeks to represent anyone whose MyLife consumer reports have been disclosed to persons without a permissible purpose under law.
This is not the first MyLife report scam class action lawsuit filed against MyLife. In September 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company by an individual who claims that MyLife sends mass solicitation emails saying that “someone” is searching for them online and then charges a fee to look at the reports.
Do you feel comfortable with MyLife creating an online profile for you? Let us know in the comments!
Brion Finlay is represented by David Madgett of Hutton Madgett PLLC and Jason Juran and Robert R. Hopper of Robert R. Hopper LLC.
The MyLife Consumer Report Defamation Class Action Lawsuit is Finlay v. MyLife.com Inc., Case No. 0:20-cv-01105, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.
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118 thoughts onMyLife.com Must Face Class Action Alleging It Falsely Implied Man Was a Sex Offender
This site is not only slandering myself and others, but providing old married names, baseless bad “so called” ratings and other private information. They shouldn’t be in business and should have to pay the people’s reputation, privacy they’ve injured without their permission. Where are they getting this information anyways? That’s another issue.
I’ll join the class action lawsuit. Lying assholes love to threaten us to get us to pay them still. The website needs to be taken down completely and the company no longer needs to exist. They are as bad as scammers are