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Reunion.com Faces Privacy Problems

Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 2nd, 2008 2:59 PM

In the social networking industry, the single most important factor for building user trust is strict control over their privacy. It looks like Reunion.com continues to break their users’ trust. Back in May I wrote about Reunion.com spam tactics. An article in LA Times highlights yet another privacy violation by Reunion.com.

This time around the company paid a third-party for a massive user database which ended up including the data of minors, one of which was only 4-years old. According to the article, “Reunion.com’s privacy policy says the site ‘prohibits registration by and will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under 13.’ But that doesn’t address the site’s own data-gathering.”

The data may not have come from their recent user database acquisition though. Instead a Reunion.com supervisor suggested that the information probable came from “state vaccination records or from the Centers for Disease Control.” Wherever the data came from it can be shocking to see the information of your family members who aren’t members of the site showing up within your profile thanks to the help of third-party data.

Oregon State officials stated that this information is technically not public and that Reunion.com’s assertion was completely inaccurate. I think I smell a lawsuit coming. The company appears to be in the business of aggregating profiles of individuals created by third-party data providers whether or not those individuals are actually users. If there is one company that is good at building a bad reputation, I would say Reunion.com is.

Have you had any bad experiences with the company?

Posted in News
  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 39 Comments

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    Lord yes. My significant other was trying to find a cousin she's fallen out of touch with through Reunion.com. Next thing she knows, her entire address book is spammed with invites - without permission.
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    I was contacted by a lawyer in regards to a complaint I made about Reunion on a pretty well known blog. Email stated that they were investigating reunion.com and wanted to learn more about my experience.
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    who was this lawyer? so I can write to them about my experience and concern because I work for a prison. I want to know what I can do with this.
    Thank you for your time.
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    I am a member of Reunion and have never had a problem with my privacy when using the site. I almost used the Address Book feature Joshua mentioned, but decided to click on the opt-out link. It isn't required. It's so important to read carefully when it comes to sharing your email address book information. Thankfully, I did.
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    Reunion.com’s business practice is totally unacceptable. They invaded my privacy by sending out e-mails to my entire address book. I just signed up to be part of a class action lawsuit against the company. I would love to have the e-mail of Reunion.com’s president so that I can spam his e-mail address book.
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    I would love to be a part of this class action lawsuit. Do you know whom I can contact?
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    Hi there. Thanks for communicating this to the general public. My address book was snarfed this am without my permission and 300 emails were sent to contacts because I was unaware of this practice of not utilizing opt in/out protocols.

    Please let your readers know they can file a complaint against www.reunion.com by accessing the Federal Trade Commission website and "filing a complaint. They can also file a complaint via the Southland BBB in California.

    For more information on the practice reunion.com is using, check out their wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion.com

    By all means, this company doesn't seem to be taking privacy seriously and needs to be forced to the same regulations the rest of the world is espoused to.
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    I had an experieince that I am so angry at reunion.com. I have been looking for an ex-boyfriend on reunion.com for a while. He was never on it but it took me to to something like Intellis. This has been going on for about a year. A couple of months ago, I was given a free six month trial period. Lo & behold, his name appears with some members of his family. I immediately wrote a message and sent it to his reunion email address. I never heard from him. A couple of days ago, I happened to go on the help section and I found out that reunion.com takes names from Public Record!!! I called up and spoke to customer service and that is what they do. I told the guy that the person I was looking for was an ex-boyfriend
    and this was playing with my emotions!!!! He said that he will tell management. Has anybody had the same experience? Is there a class action lawsuit on something like this. If there is or somebody is planning on doing one, count me in! Also, this not fair to my ex-boyfriend either. Maybe he doesn't believe in getting in touch with the past. It's not right to place his or anybody's info without permission. Again, count me in on any class action lawsuits.
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    YES! I've had bad experiences. How do you block them??
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    A so called friend put my name on the free reunion site and whatever else needed to be
    on there. Now when you search for my name, they have the reunion.com link and you click on the link and there is reunion.com and my entire name (first, maiden and married) and
    my city and state AND email address! You cannot get ahold of them on the phone, I
    tried and it kept me on hold. I am filing a complaint.
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    I am not a member of reunion.com and when doing a random search for my name on Google, reunion.com has me in their database. I opened this link to check this out and found my full name, age, and cities/states that I have lived in since the 1990's. Also, they had my high school, parents names and city and state, mother law, sister, etc. as well as their cites and states (residence). How can I get this information off of their site. And is their a link to file a class action suit (especially since I never signed up on their site). I live in NC and don't think this type of information should be public.

    Please help
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    I have the same complaint as the person immediately above. I googled myself, and found my entire family, their ages, and cities of residence. No member of my family has ever subscribed to reunion.com. This is an invasion of my privacy and I want such information removed from their website.
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    I also think this is an invasion of privacy, to just post people's information on the internet like this. They have the nerve to have an opt-out form , which you have to either submit your personal information to them online or fax/mail them a notarized form with proof of your identity -- i.e. more personal information that they have absolutely no right to. This is just ridiculous. Are we the only d@mn country that has to put up with this crap? The land of the free??? Free to be treated like sh!t apparently.
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    Unfortunately, looks like the class action law suit being filed by Kronenberger Burgoyne, LLP only covers the spamming of the personal address book entries and not creating profiles without permission or consent. Hopefully, there will be one on this issue as well.

    I wish everyone best of luck getting their information off. I am still working on mine. In the meantime, the article above suggests complaining to the FTC. However, I am very tempted to contact the firm that invested millions in Reunion.com, Oak Investment Partners (http://www.oakinv.com/contact/)
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    I just contacted the FTC since, I too, was added without permission or consent onto their site. This is a flagrant abuse of privacy, and it has to be stopped immediately.
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    I just googled myself and found my name, age, city, my husband and all his info, and also my father, even though he has a completely different name and lives in another state. That really freaked me out. How did they know he was my father? I have never even shared an address with him. None of us have ever sign up to this website. How can I get this info removed?
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    Although I never joined Reunion.com, I too googled myself today and found quite a bit of information about myself on their site. Although I have not been able to find any information about a class action lawsuit based on privacy concerns, it would seem to me that Reunion.com is vulnerable to suit on the grounds that they do not provide adequate identity theft protection. Anyone looking to steal my identity, or that of anyone else who's "public" information was listed on reunion.com, could do so quite easily and quickly because they have access to complete names, ages, places of residence, etc. for free on one particular site. I believe that from a legal standpoint, this is problematic for a number of reasons which I won't get into here (yes, I am a lawyer).

    My advice to those who are shocked and angered to find themselves listed on Reunion.com is NOT to contact the company, at least not yet, for a few reasons. First, their removal process is questionable, to say the least, and you will be doing nothing more than confirming that you do indeed exist and the information they have about you is indeed correct. Second, upon googling myself again (and again, and again), I noticed that the Reunion.com information moved further and further down the search results page. This leads me to believe that the company is using some sort of algorithm scheme or arrangement with Google to "test" certain names and information. So, despite the fact that they seem to have boatloads of information that they have been able to put together, and you may know that the information they have is actually correct, they still aren't 100% certain that it *is* correct and are trying to entice you (or anger you) into confirming. Third, my guess is there are enterprising lawyers out there who are already looking into this site and potential claims. It's a bad economy fueled in part by amoral decisionmaking at large corporations and private equity firms such as the ones involved here. Things like this add fuel to the fire. Given the companies and enterprises involved with Reunion.com, there are certainly funds available to provide relief to such a large class. Probably once more names, ages and telephone numbers start showing up on this site, they will come under more scrutiny and the lawyers will be contacting YOU. :) In the interim, perhaps keep track of the dates and times when you googled yourself and found your information on Reunion.com. Perhaps also monitor your credit report (as you should be doing already) to check for unusual activity that might coincide with the dates on which you found your personal information on Reunion.com.

    Best wishes to all!
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    Hello! I also googled my name like some of you have done, and found my personal info noted on Reunion.com. I too, have never signed up on the site for their alleged service either. I tired to remove the info about two months ago by using their site form (I didn't give them any other info then what they already had noted on my profile) to do so, but all that happened in me doing this was for them to post more info on my profile, like some of my family members (which some of the info they newly posted was incorrect). I don't think it's Reunion.com 'RIGHT' to collect people's 'personal information (without the people's knowledge and approval of their permission),' and then 'sell' this info to 'paying' clients who join their site to 'supposedly' use the info for reuniting with classmates, etc. As far, as the Reunion site getting people's address contacts, this might be being done by the use of a site program which grabs the info. Be careful yourself, not to give your personal information out by you putting it on your desk top or on sites, boards, in chats and, so on. Take care, and good-luck!
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    If there will be a lawsuit about the privacy concerns, I will join as well. I too googled, seen, and was appalled at the level of information they collected about me. I too used the form and was never removed. Shortyl after, more information on my profile showed up. Totally unethical. Not to mention the poor people who pay for this site thinking they can contact violated people like me who isn't even a member. Isn't collecting money under false pretenses? The contacting member thinks the violated member is actually a member, and they will reach them by paying money to this site.
    I am completely disgusted.
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    Yes, I totally agree with you dkuddle, and with the other poster's comments too. They do seem to be misleading with some wording on their site for sure. I also wonder, if they'll take legal responsiblity for their actions and their part in the matter, if someone is tracked down from their site info noted, and harmed in some way or another. Yes, some of the info on people is public info (but still, as I have already mentioned some of the profile material on just mine alone isn't correct information), but still not gathered up, and presented in the way they have done so on their site. My brother and I have different last names and he's noted for me on their site. This is so really strange. They must really search deep to collect such info. Some people might rather put their past behind them to start a new life, and then they get slapped in the face so to speak with a reminder of their previous life on the net. Goodness. As I started to mention in my first post, at least 'try' to protect yourself while on the net by also (besides what's noted about protecting yourself in my first post) never saving your account numbers, or other personal info (don't even save your mailbox/s account numbers/info online. write any info you'd like to keep on a notepad off line), don't have your mailbox open while your searching or whatever online, always take brower address, account name and other personal information off of a site page when you're attending to business online, and don't forget after attending to business online close the brower page and open a new one if you want to do other business or whatever while online. Do everything you can to keep your personal info safe while you're online, but even then no one is safe online. no matter what you try to do to protect yourself while on. Take care, again.
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    Sorry, about the wording it really should have been in my last post; always take brower address, account number, account user name, and other personal information off of a site page when you're attend