TruthFinder is a platform that claims to be one of the most trusted and best background check services in America. The company says it goes deeper than competing services by scanning dating profiles, education history, and owned assets when performing a check.
- Want to try TruthFinder? Check out the website here
But how well does the site work in practice? As you’ll find out in this TruthFinder review, there are a few problems with the service, especially when it comes to pricing transparency and overenthusiastic promises about the level of information you’ll receive. Read on to find the truth about TruthFinder.
Plans and pricing
TruthFinder is frustratingly opaque when it comes to pricing. The only way to find out how much the service truly costs is to attempt to perform a background check and then wait several minutes while your report is prepared. At last, just before you open your report, you’ll be shown a pricing page.
Rather than charge for a single background check, to use TruthFinder, you’ll have to subscribe for a monthly membership that unlocks unlimited reports. This costs $27.78 per month or $46.04 for two months. The TruthFinder site is also programmed to occasionally offer special deals such as a single report with no membership or $1 for a 5-day free trial.
Besides standard background checks, TruthFinder offers a reverse phone lookup service. This is a significantly cheaper product, costing just $4.99 per month for unlimited lookups. Again, no non-membership option is available so be sure to cancel your membership quickly if you only need to perform a single search.
Features
TruthFinder offers many of the same features that you’d expect to find with other background check services. These include searches that cover both public and private databases plus the ability to identify potential associates and relatives of your search subject.
If TruthFinder correctly manages to identify the person you are searching for, you could receive a report containing many important details about their life. These will be collated from sources such as birth records, social media profiles, and criminal histories.
The TruthFinder platform also offers self-monitoring tools, meaning you can view your record to see what potential employers, or other people who search for you, will see on the platform. Through TruthFinder, you can even claim a particular record as your own. If you do this, you’ll be able to correct factual inaccuracies on it or hide it from other TruthFinder users.
If you’re getting suspicious calls from a number that you don’t recognize, you may be able to use TruthFinder to identify its owner. In some cases, TruthFinder may even be able to reveal social media profiles or photographs associated with the number you are searching for.
Interface and in use
The TruthFinder interface is slick and easy to use. To perform a search, all you need to do is enter the search subject’s name and their local city. Next, TruthFinder will ask a series of questions to help narrow down potential results.
After that, TruthFinder will display a series of loading screens and progress bars. However, although these pages are visually attractive, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that they are simply presented for show.
Eventually, TurthFinder will show you a list of candidates who match your search query. You can identify the correct person based on a few factors such as their address and social network. During our testing, TruthFinder was able to successfully identify the majority of people we tried searching for.
Once you’ve found the correct person, you’ll have to pay for your report before opening it. The final report screen is a lengthy interactive document containing a wide range of information on your search subject including location history, contact information, and possible relatives. Weirdly, TruthFinder also includes unnecessary additional information in reports, such as horoscopes and astrological signs.
Support
If you run into trouble or have any difficulty using TruthFinder, you can turn to the help section of the platform’s website. Unfortunately, the information presented here isn’t as detailed as we’d like. Consequently, If you need assistance, you’ll probably be better off contacting the service via a toll-free number or by email. TruthFinder support staff are available every day and work extended hours, so your query will be responded to quickly.
Security
To keep your search query private, TruthFinder applies 128-bit encryption to all information transmitted and data stored by the service. One primary security concern with any background check site is that the service shouldn’t be used for malicious purposes such as stalking. To this end, TruthFinder does attempt to inform customers what the site can and can’t be used for via a series of pop-up warnings.
The competition
One major limitation of TruthFinder is that you can’t use the service to complete pre-employment background checks. If you are looking for such a service, consider People Trail instead. People Trail is licensed to perform pre-employment background checks and doesn’t require you to sign up for a lengthy membership as TruthFinder does.
PeopleFinders is another background checking service in direct competition with TruthFinder. If you’re not keen on TruthFinder’s hefty monthly cost, you’ll be glad to hear that PeopleFinders’ prices start at just $2.95.
Final verdict
TruthFinder is a useful tool if you need to look up a long-lost relative or double-check what information about yourself is available in the public domain. However, the service certainly loses points for its pushy marketing tactics and high price point. In the end, because of its expensive subscription model, we only recommend TruthFinder to users who need to perform frequent background checks.
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