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MyLife Review: People Search and Background Checks |
| Sign up for MyLife | |
Rating: |
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| Who's Searching for You product is unique and useful, but People Search falls short | |
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Introduction:
MyLife was founded in 2002 as Reunion.com and currently has 4.2 million unique monthly visitors. MyLife bills itself as "America's #1 People Search," but unlike the other people search services we review, MyLife has a finger in too many different pies to be very effective in any one category. One exception is Who's Searching for You, which is separate from People Search and a unique product among this type of service. Pricing and Features: Simply joining MyLife is free. Signing up helps you control your online image within the MyLife world, but you also agree to let anyone for whom you're searching and who has subscribed to MyLife see that you are searching for someone of the same name, but more on that later. Your view of the information will be very limited. However, if you become a paid member of People Search, you can access 750 million profiles and easily narrow your results, and you can receive full contact information. Search Scout logs your searches and notifies you when new search results appear. Once you find the person you're seeking, you can send him or her a message through MyLife. You can search a multitude of ways. The information that might be returned is very basic and limited: contact information, current address, other users searching for this person, "life events," which, outside of birth, death, moving to another location, and the like, must be added by MyLife users themselves, and more. The best deal for MyLife's People Search is $7.95 a month for 12 months. A one-month membership is $15.95 per month. Who's Searching for You is the best product MyLife has going for it. Once you enter your information, you can see MyLife members who have viewed your MyLife profile, when, and why. You can also check out who has been searching for you on Google, although that information is understandably limited; the most specificity we encountered was certain geolocations. You can also view who besides you is searching for someone else—say, a potential romantic partner—with SearchSpy. The pricing scheme for Who's Searching for You is the same as for People Search, but it's important to note that the services are sold separately. Our Test: We used the names of two volunteers to test the accuracy of the service. Because the information MyLife offers through People Search is so shallow and can probably be found rather easily through a little deep Googling, it came back accurate. It also returned several duplicate listings: Rather than combine a person's LinkedIn listing with his or her Facebook profile, MyLife created separated entries for each one. Managing your account online is easy. From your account page, you can disable or enable auto-renewal for your subscription, save a credit card for future purchases (in case you want to join its singles-matching service later), and even delete your account—which, incidentally, is the only way to keep your MyLife profile from appearing in search engine results. Unlike most of the other people search services we review, MyLife does not provide records such as property ownership, criminal convictions, and bankruptcies. Additional Features: MyLife also offers a simplistic dating service called "Quick Match Singles," which uses your answers to seven questions to match you with other local singles. But to connect with any of these singles costs extra, to the tune of $16.95 a month for 9 months (the best deal). This service seems to be peripheral, a cherry on top, to MyLife's main audience. Another somewhat passive product on MyLife shows you local services and deals, from accounting to pest control. You can see basic info for these services and even submit your own company. But to be actively promoted by MyLife, you must again pay ($7.95 a month for 12 months). Conclusion: MyLife is a light version of people searching that may be trying to do too many things at once. Its strong point, though, is in showing you who might be searching for you—or for someone else you know. Sign up for MyLife | Compare to other people search services |
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| Report Price: | People Search: $7.95-15.95/mo. for unlimited searches Who's Searching for You: $7.95-15.95/mo. |
| Information Included: | People Search: phone number, address, relatives & associates, previous locations, social networks, education, work, "life events" Who's Searching for You: MyLife profile, location, date |
| Best For: | Finding out who's searching for you |
| Depth Grade: | C |
| Accuracy Grade: | B+ |
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