Instant Checkmate (operated by Instant Checkmate, LLC) is a people-search/background-report site and one of the PeopleConnect brand family, alongside Intelius, TruthFinder, US Search, and Classmates — PeopleConnect's own site states these products were united 'as one company' formed from Control Group and PeopleConnect. Its privacy policy states it aggregates 'Publicly Available Information' from government records, commercial data providers and other databases about U.S. residents, including non-users, and separately discloses that in the preceding 12 months it shared personal information with third-party advertisers for consideration in exchange, while disclaiming any FCRA-covered use (employment, credit, tenant screening). The site's website domain 403s the pipeline user agent directly, so this draft is sourced from a Wayback Machine snapshot of the privacy policy plus a live FTC.gov fetch. In September 2023, the FTC announced that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate (both named respondents) would pay a $5.8 million penalty to settle FCRA and FTC Act violations for deceiving consumers about background-report accuracy and operating as an unregistered consumer reporting agency.
TRACK RECORD
1 BREACH · 1 ENFORCEMENT ACTION
BREACH LEDGER
[2019-04-12] · BREACH
Have I Been Pwned lists a breach record for Instant Checkmate: "Instant Checkmate".
Approximately 11,943,887 accounts affected, per HIBP.
The FTC announced on September 11, 2023 that background report providers TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate would pay $5.8 million to settle charges that they deceived consumers about whether search subjects had criminal records and violated the FCRA by operating as unregistered consumer reporting agencies while marketing reports for employment and tenant screening.
Instant Checkmate's privacy policy states that in addition to information collected directly, the company collects 'Publicly Available Information' from government records, commercial data providers, and websites to build its reports, acquiring and aggregating this data about U.S. residents including both users and non-users of the service.
PeopleConnect's own website states that Control Group and PeopleConnect 'united as one company' and names Instant Checkmate as one of its constituent brands alongside Classmates, Intelius, TruthFinder, and US Search, describing itself as one of the largest and most trusted sources in the people-search industry.
The same privacy policy's personal-information disclosure table includes a dedicated column, 'Category of Third Parties to Whom Personal Information is Sold And/or Shared,' covering categories including Identifiers, confirming a self-declared sale/share of collected personal information under state privacy law definitions.
Have I Been Pwned's breach catalog lists the "Instant Checkmate" incident (instantcheckmate.com), breach date 2019-04-12, affecting approximately 11,943,887 accounts. Data classes exposed per HIBP: Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers. Source: Have I Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com), CC BY 4.0.
The FTC announced on September 11, 2023 that background report providers TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate would pay $5.8 million to settle charges that they deceived consumers about whether search subjects had criminal records and violated the FCRA by operating as unregistered consumer reporting agencies while marketing reports for employment and tenant screening.
The privacy policy's 'Sales/Sharing of Personal Information' section states that in the preceding 12 months, Instant Checkmate has utilized third-party advertisers who collect cookies, pixels, or other technologies on its sites to serve interest-based advertising, and that the company 'may receive consideration for this sharing.'