A class action lawsuit has just been filed against MyLife.com, an online dating site that explicitly stated on their profile pages whether or not a user was convicted of any crimes involving sex offenses.
MyLife is a website that allows users to create their own life story. The site has been accused of falsely implying that the user is a sex offender. MyLife must face this allegation.
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After allegedly suggesting a Minnesota man was a sex offender when he just had traffic tickets, a website that promises to display you someone’s “reputation” and criminal history for a charge is facing class action lawsuits.
MyLife.com’s request to dismiss Plaintiff Brion Finlay’s proposed class action against the public information business was denied by Minnesota federal Judge Susan Nelson on Tuesday.
MyLife’s profiles and “Reputation Scores,” according to Nelson, are akin to a consumer report, and since MyLife is a consumer reporting agency, it may be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act as well as for defamation.
Finlay filed the class action in May, saying that his MyLife page wrongly suggested he was a criminal and a sex offender, and that a similar scenario has certainly occurred to many others.
MyLife is accused of editorializing and putting its own perspective on material obtained from public sources, according to the class action complaint. In his instance, MyLife erroneously editorialized a traffic ticket as a “criminal or arrest record” on its website.
Finlay is unemployed and looking for employment, according to the summary of facts. When someone applies for a job, he said, it’s typical for a potential employer to Google their name. When you search for Finlay’s name on Google, you’ll get a MyLife profile for him.
Finlay did not establish this profile with MyLife; rather, the business generates “reputation” profiles for individuals based on public records databases, then produces its own “reputation ratings” based on these information. Finlay received a 2.32, a “poor score” by its own definition.
A user on Finlay’s MyLife profile will notice the phrase “Brion Finlay (C), 42 – Minneapolis, MN Has Court or Arrest Records,” according to the summary of facts. The website allows visitors to see Finlay’s “Court, Arrest, or Criminal Records” on his MyLife page, but warns that the profile may include “graphic material and sensitive information,” implying that Finlay is a sex offender, which he is not.
Finlay further claims that MyLife includes this information in its profiles to damage customers’ reputations and encourage them to pay to “fix” their profiles, which involves paying a charge to have material removed from their MyLife profile. He claims that MyLife sells and promotes its “information” on individuals to other parties for employment and other reasons.
Judge Nelson decided on Tuesday that it was reasonable to believe Finlay had been harmed by the profile.
“The claims in the Complaint — especially Finlay’s position as a job seeker and the general availability on the Internet of the allegedly misleading consumer information about him — give rise to a reasonable inference that material on his MyLife profile was seen by a third party,” she concluded.
MyLife’s claim that since all of the material in Finlay’s profile is publicly accessible elsewhere, it is not responsible was likewise dismissed by the court.
She ruled, “The Court disagrees.” “According to the lawsuit, MyLife created and calculated the “Reputation Score” that appears on customer profiles. That alone debunks MyLife’s claim that all of the information in its profiles is publicly accessible elsewhere… As a result, the damages claimed in the Complaint may be traced back to MyLife’s actions.”
According to the complaint, MyLife also engages in a “class cyber extortion scam” by allowing customers to pay a monthly charge to have inaccurate or bad material removed. It aims to represent anybody whose MyLife consumer reports have been released to anyone for reasons that aren’t legal.
This isn’t the first time MyLife has been sued for a MyLife report fraud class action lawsuit. An person filed a class action lawsuit against MyLife in September 2019, alleging that the business sends mass solicitation emails claiming that “someone” is looking for them online and then demands a fee to look at the reports.
Do you agree that MyLife can create an online profile for you? Let us know what you think in the comments!
David Madgett of Hutton Madgett PLLC, as well as Jason Juran and Robert R. Hopper of Robert R. Hopper LLC, are representing Brion Finlay.
Finlay v. MyLife.com Inc., Case No. 0:20-cv-01105, is the MyLife Consumer Report Defamation Class Action Lawsuit in the United States. The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota is a federal court located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The “bad reputation score on mylife” is a lawsuit that was filed against MyLife.com for falsely implying that the man in question had a sex offender status. The lawsuit has been ongoing since last year.
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