Mylife.com: A new tool for bargain-seeking stalkers
What do you get when you combine leading people search technology and the personal data of 50 million+ users? A REALLY, REALLY, BAD idea called mylife.com — a rebranded version of reunion.com profiles linked to personal data from wink.com.
Why should you care? Your reunion.com profile information is now property of the largest online privacy data reseller. That’s right, the company holding your mylife profile is the same company that can sells personal information about the value of your home, your credit history and more (including satellite photos)!
They collect your personal data
A mylife.com profile (formerly reunion.com profile) includes all the elements of your reunion.com profile AND MORE: name, address, email addresses, high school, year graduated, biggest influence, can’t live without, could live without, hopes & dreams, favorite quote, sense of humor, 20+ personal characteristics, personality type, favorite movies, favorite music, favorite books, favorite tv shows, favorite travel spots, favorite sports, favorite hobbies, Facebook connections, MySpace connections, LinkedIn connections and your personal photo.
They sell your personal data
Wink.com (the same company) sells personal data including: a people search report for $1.95 that includes full name, address, phone number, age, date of birth and possible relationships; a $19.95 monthly membership with unlimited access to people search reports plus property information, death records, marriage records, divorce records and reverse phone lookup; and a $39.95 background report with all other information plus, aliases & maiden names, birth date, address history, property ownership information, relatives & neighbors and ‘much more”!
They own your personal data
Privacy concerns about the merger of reunion.com and wink.com into mylife are well founded. According to their user agreement, “you are licensing to MyLife.com and our third party service providers any ‘content’ you provide through or to MyLife.com and the service they offer. MyLife.com may modify, display, distribute and create new material using such content on MyLife.com’s Sites for the promotion and marketing of our services and the operation of our system.”
MyLife claims to meet “a critical market need left unmet by Google and other people search options”. That need? The ability to conveniently invade people’s of privacy for a fee.
“General search engines… do not access the offline databases you have to check when conducting a thorough search,” according to a Mylife.com’s press statement. “Existing people search sites have limited reach or depth of information and don’t look across the boundaries of proprietary social networks.” For $60 per year, or $36 per quarter, mylife.com subscribers (including cost-conscious thieves and stalkers-in-training) can view expanded personal profiles on individuals and earn ‘use it or lose it’ credits toward purchasing additional personal data.
You don’t have to support it
What can do? 1) Delete your mylife,com (former reunion.com) profile!; 2) tell individuals on your LinkedIn and Facebook networks to do the same; 3) Twitter about it; 4) add a comment to this blog letting everyone know you did; and finally, 5) celebrate the responsiveness of Facebook on privacy issues!
Doing any or all of the above sends mylife.com the same message popularized in the words of Billy Joel’s namesake song: “I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life.
“Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.”
Credits: Cartoon courtesy of the privacy commissioner of Canada.
What about those people that are searching for their classmates and friends? Mylife is helpful to them.
According to 2009 stats, classmates.com and facebook are still better resources than mylife:
http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/
…and they’re not reselling profile data!
MyLife membership is a total waste of money.
I signed up and after a few minutes on the web site I realized I had been taken. They have a NO REFUND POLICY. SO BUYER BEWARE.
It is not what it seems. The information they provide could easily be accessed for free on the internet.
After deleting your mylife.com account, you’ll need to unsubscribe from their email list.
I’m still getting email blasts from Mylife.com — after deleting my mylife.com account…asking me to “Add mylife@mail.mylife.com to your address book or safe list.”
No Thanks! I hit “unsubscribe” and don’t expect to hear from them again.
mylife is a complete ripoff! they used to be reunion.com, which google shows to have countless negative reviews. I thought they charge only $5, entered cr card info, clicked “next” thinking i havent yet agree to charges. legitimate inernet vendors have you click a final “yes” before charging you. “next” brought me to terms which i did not agree to so i closed the page. while checking my bank statment they had dinged me $1, $59, $1 in seconds. numerous calls to their reps resulted in them being argumentative, hostile. i reported it my bank. then recontacted mylife to get my name removed from their listings.
I have to agree with everyone. It’s a lousy, user unfriendly site, they make you call them to delete your account (thsi should be ILLEGAL! You’ve paid for the service and you have to call during their business hours to cancel?!), and there’s little to no information on there. There is no option to hide your profile, change your username, or surf anonymously. All in all, it’s crap.
@G.Sprague
Horrible,they take ur money and tell u they will reconnect u with your friends.I sent email after email to my friend and nothing,they had his wrong email address.I just wonder if they even send the emails.I did a search for him and then I got an email saying he looked at my profile,didn’t happen.He had no idea I was even on there.
VERY HORRIBLE SITE! MyLife emailed me with a message that a certain person was searching for me. Well, that person happened to be my DEAD fiancee, who passed away 5 months ago! I called their rep, and asked how this happened…….he put me on hold for 5 minutes, returned with a couple of flaky answers, never apologizing or even offering condolences. I am still in pain and grief, and receiving a message from a dead person via this shoddy site was like a kick in the gut.
Thank god I found this post. I answered an ad seeking Investigative Assistants and…oh god…sent them my resume…$%^&** They sent me a reply to go to a link and “have access to their search software” – MyLife, I didn’t click on their link but hell…I already sent them my resume so am probably doomed already.” If I had gone there and created a profile even more horrors would have occurred!!!
Wow. You people are really paranoid.
Don’t forget to wear your foil hats and fake beards when you leave your homes.
….loons.
@anonymous Hard to make a convincing case that sharing PERSONAL DATA with strangers is a bad idea when you can only share your argument (a hearty and well researched “you’re paranoid”) with us anonymously.
As the only one contributing to this thread anonymously (using a bogus name/email/url) — you’re the one ACTING the most paranoid.
Want to impress me with an argument about how sharing personal data with strangers isn’t a big deal? Include your full name, birthdate, social security number and credit card info. [grin]
@anonymous
If it really happened to them, IT AIN’T PARANOIA, “anonymous”.
@ anonymous:
My guess is you’re one of the founders of this totally bogus, set-up-for-phishermen site, anon…otherwise you would have
a) actually used a Name; and
b) been able to come up with some viable rebuttals to everyone else’s recounts of problems with the site in question.
Lastly- don’t be dissing loons…even they have more on the ball than you’re showing!
MyLife is a total scam. I deleted what little profile info I’s given them and canceled my account. No one uses that stupid site anyway. I only use Facebook. 90% of my high school and college friends use FB; no one uses MyLife. FB is free, as well as safer and better in every way!
Correction/Typo: Above should read “info I’d given…”
@Dare
Everyone who is anyone is now on FB. If someone isn’t on FB, he/she certainly isn’t on MyLife!
I actually found an old friend that I couldn’t find anywhere else because she wasn’t on facebook, or myspace or any of the other networks and had a very common name. I found her listing and purchased her address and mailed her a letter. Now we are back in contact.
The records they are selling are public records. If you didn’t find them here, you could find them through other sources. If you want to fight the system, start yelling at Lexus Nexus (good luck btw)
Thinking there is some magical way to delete one record from one database and suddenly become un-findable is just plain naive at this point.
Blast I knew it. I received an email to join mylife from one of my contacts on Linkedin and I joined mylife. I don’t think she voluntarily asked me to join mylife.com. When i try to see her profile on mylife, it is not there. Damn you mylife.com I wasted my time with you.
No, we do NOT voluntarily ask people to join. When you open the e-mail, it collects your entire e-mail register and sends notices to everyone. This sucks!
for whatever reason, this will not allow me to create a profile so I can delete the picture they have of me up! I am very uncomfortable with this site using this – i authorized linked in and facebook to use my photo, not this random site, and it is not theirs to SELL –
it keeps saying “sorry, we cannot create your profile at this time” (It looks like i need to create one to access and delete what they are displaying without my consent.)
There is no contact information – email, phone, whatever, and if you do “whois.com” to find out the registered owner, you get a message saying this is one of the few sites that does not provide that information. i have never come across that before! i’m very upset.
Some stupid arguments really. First I tested mylife for manual/automatic sending and if I select manual they don’t send invites to all of my friends.
Second, take a look at quantcast.com enter mylife.com their primary population are OLD people who are trying to reconnect with friends then take a look at facebook most of their population are young people.
For those of you who wrote that you found 90%+ of your classmates online let me ask you how old are you? Below 30?
Why don’t you guys simple go there and try for yourself..god God’s sake do not listen to what others say.
Plus they have a reverse email tool there are sites like spokeo that charge you a lot for that. So Mylife is 80% worth it for the money.
However, they seem to have some negative reviews because of their forced continuity program…like always huh. You get charged on your credit card automatically and then you start bitching to everyone…lots of companies do this.
The site is worthless. You can create a profile for free, but you can’t do anything with it. You have to pay to be able to send an e-mail or find information about a friend.
I believe my husband bought it to delete contents with certain people on reunion.I saw him as Steven Colbert in his email there is a colleen colbert his special friend,everyone should delete their accts,they are HACKERS
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I RECEIVED AN EMAIL INFORMING ME THAT THERE WERE PEOPLE LOOKING FOR ME. WHEN I ATTEMPTED TO UNSUBSCRIBE TO THE MYLIFE.COM WEBSITE, I WAS UNABLE TO DO SO. THERE ARE REASONS WHY I HAVE NOT NOR WILL I EVER PARTICIPATE WITH ANY WEBSITE THAT CHANNELS INFORMATION OF ME OR MY WHEREABOUTS TO ANYONE FOR THE SIMPLE FACT THAT IF THEY WERE A FRIEND AND NEEDED INFORMATION ABOUT ME, THEY WILL HAVE TO TALK TO ME DIRECT. I AM NOT A MEMBER OF MYLIFE, NOR HAVE I SOLICITED THE WEBSITE TO DO ANYTHING ON MY BEHALF. I AM REQUESTING NOW THAT YOU, MYLIFE.COM DELETE MY INFORMATION FROM YOUR DATABASE AND DISCONTINUE ANY EMAILS TO THIS ADDRESS. IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUESTED. THANKING YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR EXPEDIENT RESPONSE IN THIS MATTER. LENORA R. SIMPSON
I received an email that someone was searching for me on here (which wasn’t true after I asked her about this). It emailed me at home and at work AND sent me a text message on my cellphone.
I’m trying to unsubscribe without signing up for this crap but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this! Shouldn’t this be illegal for them to contact you on your cellphone? Collection agencies have rules regarding this and I also have my phone on the Do Not Call registry.
@anonymous
Nice comment to make anonymosly – get paid by Mylife.com much?
Amanda you may have hit the jackpot and can help close this operation down. The Government’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) completely redesigned their site in the past few months and have made it very user friendly to submit complaints. I was reading about their new policies when they evaluate a violation — AND THEY WILL LOOK INTO A SINGLE VIOLATION — and at the top of their list was the question ” is this operation organized in a way that will or could result in numerous scam-type violations?. Clearly these guys will be in trouble. Do it fast while the company still has money because I believe they are making violators pay $10,001 to each of the victims identified.(I know from 20 years in securities biz that number over 10k forces all private and public companies to report the details of such violations to their shareholders — then their balance sheet takes a hit because they have to set aside enough to cover anticipated future penalties (most of which go to the victims). Amazingly, something the gov’t actually appears to be executing quite well. Complain here and get your $10,000 while some is left! Good Luck, Tom
We can not unsubscribe eaither. Never intended to be on the site but someone sent us a request to join them Thought it was like FB. Never paid anything but want to quit recieveing the e-mails…what do we do?
@cj
You can stop receiving mylife.com emails by unsubscribing at http://www.mylife.com/viewNotificationSettings.do
I have not paid anything, but inadvertently gave access while creating a free membership in order to look up someone else. I thought I was creating a password for the account when in actuality I was giving them the password to my email account. (Stupidly, I used the same one.) Now they have created profiles for everyone in my email contact list.
Good luck trying to delete your own profile. The help section says to click the “Is This You?” link on your public profile, but no such link exists. You can unsubscribe from the free membership;, but that only means you have no way to access the info they are publishing about you. You would be locked out for good and unable to change or correct any info.
My tactic has been to edit my personal info so it reflects an incorrect name, birthdate, city/state, and to create a secondary email address to use so that at least my normal email address is not there.
There should be a law.
@al
PS: I just filed an FTC complaint
The my life bunch post data on people who are not consenting to anything such as age, family members, home cities. They are implying that all of these people have accounts when they are just data mining to get the info. Should be illegal. There should be a movement to attack these kind of sites and bring them down- Also pressure on IP providers who sell them services, as well as regulators.
@anonymous
It is unfortunate that so many people are completely ignorant of privacy concerns. Even legit companies and government organizations are overly casual with private data- and anyone who thinks that laws that allow collecting private data with only a little slap on the wrist for mishandling it will protect the individual…. keep dreaming. Do you think these creeps at mylife care about identity theft etc? NO, just making a buck from their scam.
@Lenora R. Simpson
ahhh.. this is not the mylife website! Complain to the FTC!
Seems thay have been siphoning data from classmates.com as they claim that they have my classmates.com account as a “user”.
@Dare
I tried to locate people for my high school reunion and I trusted MY LIFE to do as they promised and locate them and allow me to send an E-mail to those lost students. I sent one to myself to see how it worked. Instead of forwarding my message via E-mail they each received an invitation to join and they would not get my message unless they paid up before hand. They did not even get to know who sent the message without paying the fee. BIG Disappointment and a lot of wasted effort.
Not Sure what this is. Recd email (replied with an email)then had to pay to join. Do not even know if email was originally sent to me and email I replied to was sent. No other transactions took place.
No confirmation and no record of the emails???
They just want the info and the money? We had our reunion this past summer and have looked up numerous people through google, classmates, and neighbors.
So when I got the mylife email, I thought it was a return info. I assumed it legite. Better thing is if you like research, do not do it late at night, and do not pay any fees for a membership
I’m trying to figure out how they got the names of myself and immediate family members. I never signed up for an account nor do I think a family member has. I read through the FAQs and while it says one can delete one’s public profile, it does say any information they have is a matter of public record. So Effun What! I did not create an account so other people could find me. I’m not interested in other people finding me. Nonetheless, in order to delete the public profile, I have to login and click on some link and follow directions. Ok, so now I have to create an account to remove my public profile. That kinda like clicking a link in Phishing scam or an “subscribe” feature. Once you respond, you just validated your existence and whatever else Personally Identifiable Information revealed. Effun Jerks! Well, this issue is dead. Last post was 43 days ago. MyLife.com is safe and secure. Good night princess ….
I have been fighting MyLife for months. I had a person stalking me and my family. All my information was on this site. I have yet to understand how to remove it.
It says to click “This is me”on your account and it will delete all information. I have no “This is me”. I have tried to change my name and information, email addresses but they keep everything. They show every alias that I have tried to fool them with and have my relatives and contacts on each account. I have finally purchased the service of a company to remove my name from this site but when it is removed, it resurface. You don’t have to be on the web to have your information on these Search sites. If you have ever place an order with some companies, they will sell your information to MyLife. If you don’t believe that you or your child is on MyLife then click on their site. You will learn things about yourself that you never knew.. You would be surprised at the relatives that you will have required, some that are dead or never lived.. If you want to see just how bad this search engine is,make a false account.. Look that name up and you will be promised to give all the information from birth for that false person and you will pay for it. You don’t have to join it just give them information and they will keep it, after all they don’t care if it is true, maybe someone will buy it..
Mylife.com is a complete scam and rip off. It was created by a once-modest, happily married guy whose ego has flown past the sun. He divorced his wife, he’s is a complete player and now preys on people’s vulnerabilities on this site. Cancel your account and stick to FB and classmates.com.
it said to post my name ( this is not mylife ) so i didnt cuz im not sure. moving on to mylife. i read all the comments and seen the commercials. it seems like a scam and for stalkers. whatever you decide, i recommend not joining. its says FREE and you pay for adresses, memberships to buy ADRESSES and other crap. its not worth it. if you sign up and then see if people are looking for you, and you dont know anyone that age or something similar, they are either testing(not likey) or are stalking you. you probably already have an account if you didnt sign up, because as it says in some of the comments they find all your relitives and their relitives etc. and if you go onto that account, it confirms you are an actual person. so they they can publish it. there should be a law, but i guess that the goverment figures common sense. they shouldnt even been going on the scam of a “free” website. Account = free, search on account = GIVE US CREDIT CARD. it also says in above comments that they want your social security number, your phone # and other things such as adresses and birth dates. In one of the comments it says that they got a notification somone is looking for them. They said it turns out to be their dead fiancee. so, goes to prove, your name may be being used by someone else right this very minute. creepy thought.
Next point. does it seem safe? people seem so. on commercials it looks safe, and they say its FREE! nope. probably says http, not https, like this website. which of course means they can pobably sell the email you gave them, so, give out fake things. unless you want certain things which they send to your email. Example: On toontown, they say if you want to type instead of speedchat, you must go into options of something, and they send it to your parents email. of course, i trust disney. i dont trust disneymovierewards. they sell your email. back to my point. that is the only reason i give emails out. i dont even have a youtube account. Sad, huh? moving on ( sorry i get off topic ). that was the example. so really, if you trust these websites, you might as well cancel your bank account. you are getting scammed.
most likely anyway. i havent signed up. i was goining to tonight, but i wanted to make sure it wasnt a scam. im glad i did. this is pretty long, so im gonna go. DONT SIGN UP.