Perhaps you dialed the wrong phone number after receiving a missed call, or you searched the name of an old coworker before meeting them, and a BeenVerified link appeared, offering you a complete report once you pay. Or perhaps it was the other way around: You looked up your own name and discovered your address, your relatives, years of old phone numbers on a site you never joined. In any case, you’re not the only one typing the following question into Google each month: Is BeenVerified legit or is it simply a fancy method of obtaining your debit card number?

The short answer: BeenVerified is a legitimate, viable company, not a fake background check site. “Real” doesn’t always mean worth your money and your data, and the details are more important than the one-word answer.

What is BeenVerified?

BeenVerified, in essence, is a background check website, or, more accurately, a people search site that gathers data from public and semi-public records, and collates it into a single reportable search. Established in 2007 by Josh Levy and Ross Cohen, it continues to be operated from New York, and though it has grown to tens of millions of users, it’s one of the more recognizable names in a burgeoning industry that’s exploded over the last 10 years or so.

Enter a name, phone number, email address or home address and BeenVerified conducts a search of its databases and provides a report that may include current and past addresses, phone numbers, relatives, social media accounts, property, court records and criminal records if available and publicly recorded. In addition to the basic person search, there is a reverse phone lookup, an email lookup, a vehicle and vehicle identification number (VIN) history and even a capability to locate unclaimed funds held in state databases. It is also accessed via a browser or mobile app and none are free - you must be at least on the trial to get a full report.

None of that underlying data is invented. Derived from existing commercial data sources, social media, voter files, and county court records, all of which existed well before BeenVerified came along. The company did not produce the information, but has organized it and placed a search bar in front. The distinction is important for nearly any of the rest of this article, as it accounts for why the service is actually helpful to many individuals and equally upsets many.

Is BeenVerified legit?

Begin with a straightforward ‘yes’. When people ask: “Is BeenVerified legit - is this a real company?” or “Should I trust it with my money and my data?”, they are asking two different questions, and each requires a different answer.

With the first question, there is not much ambiguity. It’s not malware, phishing, or a disguise for identity theft at the checkout page, BeenVerified has been around for almost 20 years with the same founders.

The second question is where independent sources are really helpful. Better Business Bureau rates BeenVerified with a grade of “C” and has not been accredited, claiming over 350 complaints have been filed regarding the company and explaining that the complaints repeatedly share similar themes that it has been unable to resolve. Trustpilot reviews of BeenVerified also paint a similar picture with an average rating of about 2.5 out of 5, in Trustpilot’s Poor rating category, based on approximately three thousand reviews.

That is not a typical scam operation, however. Scam sites do not last for nearly 20 years and they do not answer almost all negative reviews within a day this is what the BeenVerified support team always does. What this BeenVerified BBB rating really means is that a company is providing an actual product, but they are having a real problem with their billing and canceling procedures, and it is evident in the complaints they receive on their website as soon as you read them rather than just the ratings.

Where the is it a scam question really comes from

If you type in “is BeenVerified a scam,” you’ll discover lots of people who believe it is a scam. If you read enough of their stories, however, you’ll notice a trend: the real story has nothing to do with it, and the whole story has to do with the checkout page.

Typically, BeenVerified offers a seven-day trial for approximately $1 per day. The trial rolls over into a full subscription, usually in the high $20s to high $30s monthly, and continues on a recurring basis without any regard to the amount of use. They are listed on the account sign-up page but can be overlooked when you are just trying to see a phone number or criminal record, and there is no self-serve “cancel” button on the account dashboard. Usually, it will require you to email or call support directly, and even if you delete the app or close your browser window, nothing will be cancelled in the background. That extra friction is exactly what turns an honest, one-time slip into a recurring charge nobody notices for months.

That’s a fair criticism of the way the business is operated. It’s not proof that the company is bogus. Most of the ones that follow after a missed cancellation will receive their money back. The same reviews that complained about the charge will mention a quick refund a few messages later, but that ought to be something you don’t have to ask for. When you sign up, set a reminder on your calendar the day before the end of the trial, and regardless of your card statement, check it the following month.

How accurate is the information BeenVerified shows?

Another question that people seldom ask themselves out loud is: Is BeenVerified accurate? Generally, but with some caveats before applying its words to your trust.

Since BeenVerified relies solely on the public records that are available and have been digitized, the quality can vary greatly from one record to another. Some counties upload new court cases within days, others are still going through paper court files from 10 years ago. The disparity in the gap could also mean that a report linked to a state with robust digital infrastructure is likely to be strong and a report from a smaller or slower state might be weak, stale, or lacking entirely. There is the problem with common names, too: trying to find a Michael Johnson or a Maria Garcia and the likelihood of ending up with all the information being a mix of the right person and the wrong person with the same name rises quickly.

The criminal history section deserves the most caution. Even arrests that didn’t result in a conviction, charges that were dropped and even records that were expunged in the past can reappear in the report just because they’re in the records, not because they were never resolved. Don’t assume that a report, your own or another person’s, is a fact but rather consider it a clue to pursue. If any serious issues arise, verify the information with the actual court record or the individual who would be affected by the action first.

What a BeenVerified report can not legally be used for

Now, here’s something that is a big point people miss: per BeenVerified’s own terms, it is not a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and its reports cannot be used for employment screening, tenant screening, credit decisions, insurance underwriting, or anything else that the FCRA covers.

That’s not a small technicality. A BeenVerified report is the wrong tool for a landlord who is considering hiring an applicant or a manager who is considering hiring a renter. What you need is a screening service that handles consent, disputes, and maintains accuracy standards, which you won’t find at BeenVerified. For personal curiosity, reconnecting with someone, or checking out a new online acquaintance, none of that restriction applies. It does not become a real problem until people overuse it.

What BeenVerified costs and the billing trap to watch

There’s no free tier. The prices you’ll likely be quoted with BeenVerified begin at that seven-day trial for approximately a dollar, and that will provide you with nearly one hundred report views to work with. Once then, you’re in the high $20 to high $30 monthly plan or a three-month plan that’s paid up front, which is cheaper per month if you’re willing to sign up for the entire term. Any numbers you come across on the internet online should be considered for the exact moment they were published, as they are subject to change due to location, continuous promotions, and sales tax.

The real problem isn’t the cost of the number of background check tools that charge for a similar amount. It’s the auto-renewal coupled with a process to cancel that’s not as straightforward as flipping a toggle in your account settings. If you just want one report, collect it and cancel it immediately at the end of the trial period, don’t wait to get to that later. When paying by card, a virtual or prepaid card provides you with a clean alternative to setting a limit on the amount the company can charge you, and you don’t need to rely on future you to remember.

By now, the question of whether BeenVerified is legit is not really a yes-or-no proposition anymore, it’s more like a “yes, but” question, and that said, a lot of the services in this category are pretty much the same.

Is your own data sitting on BeenVerified?

For now, it’s been all about the trustworthiness of BeenVerified as a customer. But there’s another, much more significant question lurking beneath it: BeenVerified is a data broker, too, namely a People Search Website, and it very likely already has a file on you, even if you never actually registered for the site.

Once you register a warranty, show up in a public court record, list a property, or are advertised by someone that’s just a tad too generous with information, such details can end up being scraped, licensed, or bought and compiled into a people-search database somewhere. BeenVerified isn’t alone in running this model, either you’ll find the same basic setup at TruthFinder, Spokeo, and Intelius, among others. Search the name of your own person on any of them, and there is a chance that you will find a current address, phone numbers, names of relatives and years of address history behind a few dollars of paywall, available to anyone willing to pay a few dollars for it.

None of that is illegal the underlying records are public, but legal and comfortable are two different things. When your private data goes online and is grouped together and searchable in a single location, it’s easier for someone to create a convincing scam, turn up somewhere they shouldn’t, or worse. The details are what make identity theft and targeted harassment easier to achieve and most people aren’t even aware that such an identity profile exists unless they look for it.

How to remove your information from BeenVerified?

The only thing that works the way you’d like about this process is that it costs nothing to opt out and doesn’t take a long time. Navigate to the bottom of BeenVerified’s site and click on Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. That will allow you to use a search tool to enter your name and your state, then find the record that matches. There may be more if you’ve lived in different places or had different spellings of your name and then pick the one you don’t want. You’ll be taken to an email address to confirm the request, and BeenVerified will provide an email address verification link that completes the BeenVerified opt out the instant you click on it. Most removals are processed within 1-3 days.

Two things trip people up here. Cancelling a paid subscription and opting your listing out are two different things. You cannot cancel your profile and cancel your charge without canceling both requests. This isn’t a “one and done” either: BeenVerified continually updates its database from the same public and commercial data sources it began with, leading to a reappearance of a listing you thought you deleted months later. Don’t consider taking your info from BeenVerified an afternoon task, toss it on the list of things you do every couple of months.

If it sounds like more work than you want to do, then that’s where automated removal tools come in handy. We’ve broken down how one of the better-known ones actually performs if you’d rather have someone else handle the repeat requests. And because your opt-out rights depend partly on where you live, it helps to know what your state actually guarantees you before assuming every broker has to comply in the same way.

Use BeenVerified safely

However, don’t despair none of this suggests you shouldn’t use BeenVerified at all. It’s great for finding someone you lost touch with, doing a reverse phone number check for a number that keeps calling, or basic information about someone you met online. A few habits make the experience noticeably safer.

Treat all reports as leads, not verdicts, and particularly all of those that might affect one’s opinion of a person of flesh and blood. Don’t enter any card information after reading the terms of cancellation. For the trial, use a card you can closely watch, or a virtual card with a spending limit. And if you’re searching for information that you don’t want to be discovered, or if you’re looking into something that could affect your safety, it’s easier if you don’t leave a trail while you do. A VPN will not affect data that has already been in a public document, but it does prevent someone monitoring the connection from tracking your location, IP address, and searches. For exactly that sort of browsing, EonVPN is free and silent.

Conclusion

Therefore, is BeenVerified legit? Yes, it’s a real, functional business that has a product that works, and they are not a scam run by a money thief or an identity thief. The following grievances that tag along with it are real, too, and almost exclusively complaints about the lack of billing transparency and the hassle of canceling a service, not about the fake service itself. Come in with an understanding that the trial will convert automatically, with a healthy dose of realism for how accurate you will get, depending on the data, and under no circumstances use a report to make a decision the FCRA exists to avoid.

When you’re done with this tab, what sticks with you won’t be the name of the company BeenVerified. Well, it’s possible your own name, address, and phone number are in a database just like this one and waiting for anyone who wants to have it sent to them for a fee. It is not obligatory to opt out, and it is worthwhile even if you have to do it again and again from time to time. Combine that with the private nature of your everyday browsing, and you’ll have the solution: what people know about you, and what they can discover if you’re not careful. It is actually a combination that they are getting right, not one particular tool alone that will keep your online privacy safe.