Intelius, LLC is a people-search and background-report service founded in 2003 and operated since 2015 under PeopleConnect Holdings, Inc., a portfolio company of private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. Its sibling brands include TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, US Search, and Classmates. Intelius compiles publicly available records — including government records and commercial data-provider feeds — about U.S. residents, including people who have never used its services, and sells subscription access to reports containing addresses, phone numbers, relatives, and criminal or traffic records. Its site states it is not a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA and must not be used for employment, housing, or credit decisions. Intelius is registered as a data broker with the California Privacy Protection Agency under 22 web domains, and reported complying in whole with 226,356 opt-out-of-sale requests. In 2010, Intelius paid a $1.3 million settlement to Washington State over deceptive post-transaction marketing; in 2023, sibling brands TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate (not Intelius) were ordered to pay $5.8 million to settle FTC charges.
TRACK RECORD
3 ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
[2023-10-11]
The stipulated federal court order in FTC v. TruthFinder, LLC (filed October 11, 2023) names as defendants Instant Checkmate, LLC; TruthFinder, LLC; The Control Group Media Company, LLC; Intelicare Direct, LLC; and PubRec, LLC. Intelius, LLC is not among the named defendants, so the order's injunctions and civil penalty attach to those entities, not to the Intelius brand.
In September 2023 the FTC announced that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate — people-search brands that PeopleConnect's site lists alongside Intelius as one company — would pay $5.8 million to settle charges of deceiving consumers about criminal records and violating the FCRA. Intelius was not a respondent; this is corporate-family context, not an action against the Intelius brand. The FTC also noted Instant Checkmate had settled similar FCRA charges in 2014.
In August 2010, the Washington Attorney General announced a $1.3 million settlement with Intelius over post-transaction marketing that allegedly enrolled consumers in recurring membership programs without informed authorization; the settlement did not require Intelius to admit wrongdoing but restricted its future advertising practices and required refunds to Washington residents.
Intelius, LLC is registered as a data broker with the California Privacy Protection Agency, listing 22 web domains — including zabasearch.com, peoplefinder.com, publicrecords.com, and criminalrecords.com — that feed its people-search operation under the Intelius, US Search, and US Search Pro brands.
Intelius's homepage markets report contents including photos, possible relatives, and criminal and traffic records, and states that the company searches large volumes of public records to build its reports.
Intelius states in its privacy policy that it sources 'Publicly Available Information' from government records, commercial data providers, and websites, and that it acquires and aggregates this information about U.S. residents including people who are not users of its services.
Intelius, LLC's California data broker registration discloses its DBAs (Intelius, US Search, US Search Pro) and lists the same San Diego address — 375 Camino De La Reina — as the separate registrations of sibling PeopleConnect brands TruthFinder, LLC and Instant Checkmate LLC, documenting the shared corporate family in a public registry.
PeopleConnect's corporate website identifies Intelius as one of its brands, operated as one company alongside Classmates, TruthFinder, US Search, and Instant Checkmate.
Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital announced in October 2015 that its portfolio company PeopleConnect Holdings, Inc. had acquired Classmates as its second acquisition, following its investment in Intelius, Inc. in July 2015 — establishing that Intelius is ultimately owned through an H.I.G. Capital portfolio company.
In its California data broker registry filing, Intelius, LLC reported receiving 226,356 requests to opt out of sale or sharing in 2024 and complying in whole with all of them (the quoted CSV fragment spans the 'know what is sold or shared' block — 5,815 received, 5,392 complied, 423 denied — followed by the opt-out block: 226,356 received, 226,356 complied in whole, 0 denied, 1-day mean and median response).
Intelius sells subscription access to background reports on individuals while stating on its homepage that it is not a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA and that the site must not be used for eligibility decisions; the same page tells customers the search subject will never be alerted that they were searched.
Intelius's privacy policy states that in the preceding twelve months it used third-party advertisers who collect data on its sites via cookies and pixels to serve targeted ads, and that Intelius may receive consideration for this sharing — activity that state privacy laws treat as sale or sharing of personal information.
In August 2010, the Washington Attorney General announced a $1.3 million settlement with Intelius over post-transaction marketing that allegedly enrolled consumers in recurring membership programs without informed authorization; the settlement did not require Intelius to admit wrongdoing but restricted its future advertising practices and required refunds to Washington residents.
In September 2023 the FTC announced that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate — people-search brands that PeopleConnect's site lists alongside Intelius as one company — would pay $5.8 million to settle charges of deceiving consumers about criminal records and violating the FCRA. Intelius was not a respondent; this is corporate-family context, not an action against the Intelius brand. The FTC also noted Instant Checkmate had settled similar FCRA charges in 2014.
The stipulated federal court order in FTC v. TruthFinder, LLC (filed October 11, 2023) names as defendants Instant Checkmate, LLC; TruthFinder, LLC; The Control Group Media Company, LLC; Intelicare Direct, LLC; and PubRec, LLC. Intelius, LLC is not among the named defendants, so the order's injunctions and civil penalty attach to those entities, not to the Intelius brand.
An archived capture of the intelius.com homepage shows the site loading Google Tag Manager (container GTM-KT3SGWNB) through the first-party subdomain metrics.intelius.com rather than Google's own domain, a configuration that can reduce visibility to blocklist-based tracker blockers.
Intelius's privacy policy discloses that the site collects browsing data via cookies, pixels, web beacons, and other tracking technologies, including pages visited, IP address, and geographic location, and that third-party ad networks may use data collected across multiple sites to target ads. The policy states Global Privacy Control signals are honored as opt-out requests.