DISQUS

VentureBeat: The background-check scams: Is WhitePages really better than Intelius?

  • David · 7 months ago
    I'm a little confused. WhitePages is shady because of the conduct of an advertiser? Huh? Does not compute...
  • Bryan · 7 months ago
    You might want to take a look at Jain's former venture and reconsider his comments on scammers.

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesst...
  • pgomory · 7 months ago
    Matt thanks for this. Given that I'm a recruiter, I've hit the WhitePages site a number of times and it is really smarmy. And some of their data on me is wrong. Have never paid Intelius for anything and never will.
  • Jason · 7 months ago
    This story looks more like a comparison between US Search and Intelius, not WhitePages. All the screenshots are about US Search so I do not understand what WhitePages has to do with it.
  • Ben · 7 months ago
    Your argument is effectively that content publishers are responsible for the practices of their advertisers. This is a slippery slope. To prove the point, I clicked through on an ad that displayed on the upper right of this exact Venture Beat page - not marked in any way as advertising. It was for FRS Health Energy that immediately attempts to sign me up for a sketchy "FREE Trial" that... results in monthly billing (which of course, is only disclosed in tiny print). Would Naveen say that you're hiding behind another company?
  • Matt Marshall · 7 months ago
    Guys -- Jason, Ben and David, really straight names there -- wonder who you are. Anyway, you're making the same argument that WhitePages does, which in this case is that a tiny "sponsored" notice in the corner is enough to flag that I'm going off to another site. But when I was going through the exercise, I completely missed the notice, and even if I had seen it, I wouldn't have known what it meant. Your example about the VentureBeat ad is just not comparable. That's clearly an ad, and you expect to click through to something outside. In fact, beyond this MSN example that I illustrated in the screenshots, I saw several instances while using WhitePages directly (not MSN's version) where there wasn't even a "sponsored" notice -- just the blue links that if you click through take you straight through to the US Search site. It's all part of a seamless experience.
  • Bryce · 7 months ago
    Totally agree: you guys should be ashamed of your names. This weekend, while you're visiting with your mothers for Mother's Day, take a moment to let her know how disgusted you are with your straight name. Then change it to something gayer, like Nicki or Marco. www.ubersite.com/m/91024
  • Nobody · 7 months ago
    I agreee that you can;t hold websites responsible for random ads that appear, especially since many sites use Ad networks and have little control over what appears in the ad space.

    The US Search ad, however, isn't quite the same situation. WP.com has maintained a special relationship with US Search for 5-8 years now and has deliberately designed/structured that ad to blend in with their no results page. That's very different than randomly showing a remnant ad on your site.

    WP will likely deny this, but again and again, WP employees, partners, and customers pointed out that these ads were deceptive and "tricked" users into US Search's arms, but WP Sr. management (including Alex A) refused to give up the heroin-like revenue stream from US Search.
  • David · 7 months ago
    Yes, I guess the "sponsored" attribution notice is deceptive and far out of left field. I mean, Google has only been doing that for years ("sponsored links" on search results). You should visit Google sometime...it is a really neat site. Who would have thought of placing targeted advertisements on search results and calling them "sponsored links"
  • Ben · 7 months ago
    LOL - reasonable critique = conspiracy.
  • Matt Marshall · 7 months ago
    who'd have thunk? :)
  • Finally · 7 months ago
    It's nice to see Whitepages.com getting exposed for their scam, Here is a company that wanted to make all the money from the deception and now that the scam is exposed they are left with shifting the blame to someone else. I think it's time to fess up to the crime when they are caught with your hands in the cookie jar.
  • Fact-Check · 7 months ago
    USsearch.com's sole purpose of existence is to serve and do the dirty work for whitepages.com. Almost all of the users that visit ussearch come from whitepages.com. Alex's comments are so far from the truth and reality. He is essentially saying that we are not doing anything bad because we outsource all the dirty work to someone else eventhough we collect all the money from them anyway for the dirty work. It's so nice to see truth finally coming out on whitepages's scammy practices.
  • Stown · 7 months ago
    Good post here, and thanks for detailing out the 'slick' side of Whitepages' business. My problem with Whitepages USSearch relationship is that it's completely designed around playing the odds of a customer making a mistake. At it's best this is an inconsiderate business practice towards Whitepages' customers, and the fact that it is such a visible and well-promoted piece of their site doesn't give Whitepages any right to throw up their hands and say they can't control what their advertisers do.

    Here's hoping, as you mentioned, that the lure of better products (like their Blackberry app) can ween WP off of this shady relationship. But knowing Alex, I doubt it.
  • Intelius · 7 months ago
    There are a couple of important points to note regarding Alex's (whitepages.com CEO) comments. First, according to both ComScore and Hitwise, a substantially large portion of all users who visit Whitepages.com end up going to USSearch. In addition, over 70% of all USSearch's users come from the Whitepages.com. USSearch is completely dependent on Whitepages.com for its survival and vice versa. Whitepages.com is simply trying to hide behind another company to do its dirty work but is collecting all the rewards. USSearch has been an exclusive provider for whitepages.com to provide these deceptive services for several years. Any which way you look at it, these companies are joined at the hip like Bonnie and Clyde.

    One has to agree completely agree with the personal observation that John Cook, Editor of TechFlash made that WhitePages' post transaction marketing offers just keep coming and coming, making it nearly impossible to get to those records requests. He is also not alone when he said that he was left wondering why anyone would use this service.

    The fact that the majority of Intelius revenue comes from its repeat customers proves that Intelius provides valuable services and our customers find our advertising clear and transparent. All advertising on Intelius is reviewed and approved by our privacy and Consumer protection committee to make sure that it meets the highest standards.

    We invite everyone to try out Intelius free service that we offer to our partner AT&T (http://www.yellowpages.com/findaperson) and compare it with the service that Whitepages.com provides to MSN (shown above). You should try to go through the system end-to-end when you find no results to see how the two services compare. You will come to the same conclusion as everyone else that Intelius partners get substantially superior service.
  • Seth Godin · 7 months ago
    The qulaity of data on Intelius' AT&T application isn't nearly up to par with WhitePages' MSN site on this "free" search. I wonder if the data is intentionally dumbed down to drive traffic to the paid services...? Or maybe the product just isn't as good.
  • Elliot Spitzer · 7 months ago
    Matt props to you. Best post of the week across the blogs I read.

    Bottom line is as follows. THEY ARE SHADY!

    These companies are so shady and deceptive that my knees buckle when I read about them in the media.

    Your point "...In other words, despite customer complaints by a minority, the vast majority of people seem to be putting up with these practices."

    Is completely wrong. How many thousands of people just don't report this to the BBB.

    Look these guys have absolutely no shame scamming the public. What's laughable to me is Naveen Jain is attempting to take www.Intelius.com public. I am willing to bet this will be the biggest pump and dump in modern history when it hits the public markets. Actually, I don't think it will go public at all and hence why Jain is engaging with his comments - no quiet period for him.
  • Max Bardon and John Lusk · 7 months ago
    Max Bardon, President, and John Lusk, VP of Marketing at WhitePages here.

    Customer feedback has been and will continue to be a critical driver of improvements we’re always seeking to make at WhitePages. While we may not agree with everything in previous comments, we do strongly believe they will help us improve our service. Check out our newly-launched site (http://www.whitepages.com/?CID=05002) to see this in action. For example, we’ve made it easier to identify ads and determine where WhitePages ends and services offered by our advertisers begin.

    To be clear, WhitePages is not in the post-transaction marketing business, and there are a few other things in this blog post which we feel are inaccurate. Advertisers allow us to offer our services for free and US Search is just one of many advertisers who find value in WhitePages.

    Trust is core to our business. It’s why we’re transparent about who we are, it’s why we engage in online communities and why we provide many ways for people to interact with us on our own sites. We welcome any and all feedback. Just send your questions and/or comments to support@whitepages.com or feel free to engage us at blog.whitepages.com.

    Max and John
  • Poster · 7 months ago
    Vertrue.com and AdaptiveMarketing.com (Reservation Rewards) out of Connecticut is behind the scenes on all of the Intellius marketing practices, and probably contributes 25-40% of Intellius' top line revenue for the last couple years. They are the real ones you should be looking at and writing about.
  • Poster · 7 months ago
  • Dare · 7 months ago
    If you guys say this is shady practice then you haven't seen the real shady stuff in the people search business. I have been there analyzing and comparing sites for over 2 years and I've seen everything. Scam sites like gov-resources selling "unlimited" access to records (which is not true)...lots of companies who hide and whose address can't be found even via Whois...

    I am really happy for whoever does background check and decides to deal with Intelius and USSearch because they seem to be the most legitimate companies around (but as you said, their "legitimness" can be improved.)
  • Anon · 7 months ago
    Reservations Rewards is owned by Web Loyalty, a company just like Vertrue/Adaptive, and it is Web Loyalty's agreement with US Search that is the issue here. Web Loyalty pays US Search a certain amount of money for each US Search customer that enrolls in the Web Loyalty program. Problem is, the majority of US Search customers who enroll in Reservation Rewards are doing so without their knowledge. A lot of money is being made from these post-transaction offers -- and their success is causing them to spread like wildfire.
  • anon · 6 months ago
    Who gave Intellius the right to hi-jack Google? Does Google care? How much do they get kicked-back ?!!