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Spokeo reviews 2023- Legit and Fast People Search Engine

Cons:

  • Quick sign-up process
  • Reasonably priced membership
  • Simple-to-use site and mobile app

Cons:

  • Available in the USA only
  • Not accredited by FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) law

Average Rating: 5

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Looking for someone you haven’t heard from in ages? Or, you just realized that summer romance was THE real deal?

Fortunately, with just a name, or an old number, a long-forgotten address maybe, you can locate the person you haven’t heard of in what seems like a lifetime now. Spokeo is the engine that could perform wonders for you.

Stay with us and find out more about it and how you can make the best of it for your personal needs.
But before we go any further, let me give you a tour of everything we will elaborate on regarding Spokeo. We gathered and organized all the information from previous Spokeo reviews and Spokeo reviews 2021 to provide you with a complete insight into the company.

Contents:

  • Spokeo Bio
  • Quick Spokeo Overview and Highlights
  • Types of Background Checks Offered by Spokeo
  • Plans and Pricing
  • Ease of Use
  • How does Spokeo work?
  • Pros and Cons
  • Spokeo Online Testimonials
  • Spokeo Customer Reviews
  • Spokeo Ratings and Accreditation
  • Spokeo Alternatives
    • Spokeo vs. BeenVerified
    • Spokeo vs. InfoTracer
    • Spokeo vs. SpyFly
  • Conclusion
  • FAQs

Spokeo Bio

Spokeo is an A+ BBB accredited people service that deals with individual background screening, i.e., searching, connecting, and discovering a target person.

It was first established in 2006 by not one but four founders: Mike Daly, Harrison Tang, Ray Chen, and Eric Liang, to function as a social media aggregator.

With head offices in Pasadena, California, the USA, this social media aggregator continued to advance into a social search engine (2008).
And finally, in 2010, it became a people search engine that served twenty million visitors a month.

As a people search engine, it is famous for many reasons.

Here are some of them:

  • Spokeo is registered with the USA Security and Exchange Commission.
  • It has access to more than twelve bn licensed public records.
  • It maintains its SSL, McAfee SECURE, PhishTank, and Google Safe Browsing certifications.

The hundreds of positive Spokeo reviews assure us that it possesses the most extensive data and background reports inventory among background checking sites.

For instance, there are more than 120 million property records, nearly 4 billion historical records, and 600 million court records, to name a few.

Stay foot; as this article progresses, we will get to hear more about Spokeo from the many customer reviews left on numerous review sites.

Quick Spokeo Overview

Highlights

  • Reverse phone lookup
  • Finding lost contacts
  • Exhaustive data inventory

Types of Background Checks Offered by Spokeo

Spokeo is living proof that background investigation has never been more accessible. Take a look at what

Type of information you can provide  Type of information obtained by Spokeo Your benefits
  • Name and surname
  • Username
  • Phone number
  • E-mail
  • Address/Location
Contact and location info: name, family name, phone number, carrier, e-mail, location history, intellectual property assets.
  • Find a relative or a loved one
  • Identify unknown calls or texts
  • Halt unwanted texts or calls
  • Avoid scammers
  • Protect your family
  • Protect your online presence
  • Connect with potential customers
  • Verify an address
  • Prevent fraud
Public records:
birth or death date, education, military history, criminal records (arrests), sex offender details, warrants.
Family and personal info: relatives, associates, relationship status, social profiles, household interests.
Wealth and work info: present and previous jobs,  bankruptcies and IRS liens, business affiliations, vehicle/property ownership.

Plans and Pricing

You can give Spokeo a chance with the free seven-day trial they offer. At the same time, a one-time full name report goes for less than a dollar.

They also offer plans and monthly memberships, which come with different prices.

There is a Spokeo for Business membership plan available at request. Spokeo for Business is used to verify a person’s identity, validate healthcare and homeowner insurance claims, real estate inquiries, etc.

Let’s check them out first:

1. Basic Business Plan – $35.95 a month
With it, you will get 200 background reports instantly.

These reports contain:
– Personal Contact Info
– Criminal Records
– Property Details

2. Professional Business Plan – $69.95 a month
By subscribing to this plan, you will get 500 background reports (with instant results).

This is what the reports will contain:
– Personal Contact Info
– Criminal Records
– Property Details

3. Enterprise Business Plan – $119.95 a month
This plan lets you have a thousand background reports, instant results, and these are the information you will get:
– Personal Contact Info
– Criminal Records
– Property Details

Let’s move onto the monthly memberships:

4. 1-Month Membership – $23.76*
With this membership, you are entitled to a hundred background reports. The results come instantly.

The report contains:
– Location of family members
– The month of birth and much more

5. 3-Month Membership – $13.95 (a month)
By subscribing to these many months, you will get three hundred background reports (or a hundred each month) with instantaneous results.

These reports contain:
– Location of family members
– The month of birth and much more

*NB: after the trial period has expired, if not canceled, the membership will be automatically renewed, thus charging you $23.76 a month.

Otherwise, the same goes for each of their memberships/plans—if not canceled, you will get automatic renewal of the same.

Expect to pay extra fees for Court and Historical Searches ($2.95).

Ease of Use

This background check service has a simple sign-up process that does not take more than two minutes.

How does Spokeo work?

To make things more simple, let’s do this together, step-by-step:

Step 1: go ahead and visit www.spokeo.com; once you land on their website, select your membership plan.
Step 2: Fill in the email, and cardholder details, then tick the box to accept the Consumer Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Plan Specifications. Next, click on the see results now button.
Step 3: Once the payment has been verified, you can log in to your account and start people searching.

After the account has been activated (you can do that on this link right here), all you need to do is type in a name, email, and/or other information to start your search.

Spokeo uses a “deep web” search to find relevant information that is not necessarily attainable through basic internet searches. Once the information is here, you can filter your search results and sort them by relevance.

Here is some more good news. For those wishing to use Spokeo on the go, you can also download the Spokeo mobile app for Android or iOS. It is entirely free to download and easy to use.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Private and thorough background check
  • Instant and organized results in easy-to-understand reports
  • Reasonably priced membership
  • Quick sign-up process
  • Simple-to-use site and mobile app
  • Fast and reliable customer service support 24/7
  • “Search Concierge” service via phone, chat, or email
  • Some basic searches are free of charge

Cons

  • Available in the USA only
  • Not accredited by FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) law
  • Information cannot be used to determine a person’s credit, insurance, employment, housing, or other eligibility

Spokeo Online Testimonials

Spokeo background check reviews can be grouped into categories according to the type of background investigation.

What do people say about Spokeo?

There are lots about Spokeo on numerous review sites. Here’s in brief what people said for each of the different searches they have conducted so far:

  • Spokeo email search reviews

Upon entering a full email address, Spokeo has provided them with the names of people who have used the email address and all social media profiles associated with the email address.

This makes Spokeo email search an influential people search tool.

  • Spokeo phone report reviews

People say that this Spokeo search tool has helped them trace bothering unknown callers. Upon typing a full 10-digit number in the Spokeo search query, they will provide available public records of the owner, such as his/her name, the location the phone is registered to, and carrier information.

  • Spokeo address search reviews

Spokeo search has helped them conduct identity and address verification checks which protected their children or revealed a spouse’s cheating.

  • Spokeo name search reviews

This search is not as successful as those mentioned above. Its character reference checks give you all the people who relate to the name on public records. This means that you will probably get a bunch of unrelated or missing data if there is more than one person with the same name.

  • Legit Spokeo reviews

These searches include Spokeo court records reviews as well. As stated in them, while Spokeo has access to court records and criminal records, these cannot be used under FCRA law.

The Spokeo mobile app reviews are primarily positive, stating that the mobile app is simple and easy to use.

Spokeo Customer Reviews

Even though you had the opportunity to ‘witness’ some of the testimonials on each search and its accuracy in results, still, there’s another way to learn more about this people search engine. Therefore, my suggestion is to go through more satisfied and less satisfied customer reviews (positive and negative reviews).

With no further, let’s start with the positive reviews:

Positive Customer Reviews

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(The screenshots were taken from actual verified Spokeo customers on various review sites)

Negative Customer Reviews

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(The screenshots were taken from actual verified Spokeo customers on various review sites)

Spokeo Ratings and Accreditation

Spokeo has a bright and shiny A+ BBB accreditation. This is a grade given based on Spokeo’s reviews on BBB—269, of which have been closed in the last three years, and 98 have been closed in the past year or so.

Let’s see how well Spokeo rates on other significant review platforms:

  • ConsumerAffairs – 3 stars based on 795 customer ratings.
  • SiteJabber – 2 stars based on 616 customer reviews.
  • TrustPilot – 2.2 stars based on 99 reviews.

All in all, despite its low rating of 2 or 2.2 stars on platforms, such as BBB, Trustpilot, and SiteJabber, the majority of Spokeo people’s search reviews from verified members who used its search powers are positive.

The undeservingly low rating is primarily due to the automatic subscription renewal of trial users who either have not read the full seven-day trial offer or forgot to cancel their membership. There is also a positive trend of nearly 42% from the reviews left on SiteJabber in the past year, with an average response time of three days.

Anyway, apart from the one-time trial users who report the company as a scam, Spokeo membership reviews praise the site and its online background checks for helping them find a close friend or a relative, reveal unknown callers, and protect themselves from email scammers.

Spokeo Alternatives

As is the case with every business on the market, Spokeo has a vast number of competitors. Among the top-ranked are BeenVerified, InfoTracer, and SpyFly.

Spokeo vs. BeenVerified

BeenVerified provides customers with more or less the same features and services, just like Spokeo does. One of the most distinguished differences is the fact Spokeo offers a limited number of searches per customer. Opposed to BeenVerified’s membership which includes unlimited searches.

Spokeo vs. InfoTracer

InfoTracer has been longer on the market than Spokeo, which accounts for its high rating of 4.15 stars from 10.858 reviews on SiteJabber.
When compared, just like Spokeo, InfoTracer has excellent customer service and provides quick results through name, username, email, address, phone number. However, it offers something Spokeo doesn’t — a face recognition search. On the other hand, a frequently mentioned InfoTracer flaw is that the survey pops up before the user searches.

Spokeo vs. SpyFly

SpyFly is ranked relatively high among other background checking sites on the Internet. The positive reviews mention that it is faster and more accurate than other sites, although these features are often mentioned in Spokeo reviews. What SpyFly has in contrast to Spokeo are the email alerts on changes in the information of up to four persons.

Conclusion

In summary of all the Spokeo reviews we have analyzed, Spokeo is the best at finding lost contacts, reverse phone lookup, and fraud prevention. Moreover, Spokeo reviews state its most significant advantage is the endless data inventory which attracts over twenty million people a month. Furthermore, in play are the affordable membership, easy use, and quick sign-up process.

FAQ

1. Are Spokeo background checks legal?

Spokeo is a registered company with the USA Security and Exchange Commission. It legitimately collects all publicly accessible data and organizes it into an easy-to-understand report. However, since it is not FCRA accredited, the information obtained by Spokeo cannot be used for screening tenants or determining credit, insurance, or employment eligibility. (This is also mentioned in another section in this article).

2. Is Spokeo free?

No, it isn’t. Even though you can run a basic search for free, that search will get you information like the city and state, age, relatives, and locations of the people you looked up to. Unless you need more in-depth information, then you can subscribe to any of their plans or memberships.

3. Is there a fee for using Spokeo?

Yes, there is. There are Spokeo memberships and Spokeo Business Plans. Each of these come with a distinctive price. Read more about it in the Spokeo Plans and Pricing section.

4. Is Spokeo anonymous?

Yes. Spokeo allows you to conduct a private background check—meaning the person you looked up will not be notified of your search.

5. Is Spokeo accurate and how often is it updated?

According to Spokeo reviews from members and the Spokeo team itself, the information obtained by them is accurate and always up-to-date.

6. How can I reach customer service?

  • You can reach customer service through any of the following:
    24/7 email support – [email protected]
  • 24/7 automatic bot help service
  • From 6 am to 6 pm (Monday to Sunday) via online live chat – https://www.spokeo.com/contact
  • From 5 am to 8 pm (Monday to Sunday) via phone 1 (888) 906-0849

7. Can I use Spokeo background check for hiring employees or screening tenants?

No, you cannot. The information obtained through Spokeo cannot be used to determine a person’s employment eligibility or for screening tenants.