| BeenVerified | |
| Foundation: | [1] |
| Founder: | Josh Levy Ross Cohen |
| Location City: | New York City, New York |
| Location Country: | U.S. |
| Key People: | Josh Levy, CEO[2] Ross Cohen, COO[3] |
BeenVerified is a background check company that provides consumer initiated criminal background and people search services through its website for profit as well as its mobile application "Background Check App."[4] [5] The company also launched additional mobile applications including a reverse number look up called NumberGuru[6] and a registered sex offender tracking app that uses augmented reality to locate sex offenders.[7] [8]
Founded in 2007, Josh Levy and Ross Cohen launched BeenVerified in 2009 and began advertising on national television, as well as on the back of garbage trucks.[1] Initially, the company included a service called StandOut that allowed people to check and verify their own background information to use as a marketing tool online in the form of an embeddable seal as well as see what information employers could potentially find out about them.[9]
Levy and Cohen have discussed the company's pivot from originally focusing on the small business market to becoming a consumer-focused background check service in Inc. and CIO Magazine.[10] [11]
In 2009, BeenVerified launched an iPhone application called the Background Check App, allowing users to use the service on their iPhones.[12] It was the second background check app for the iOS platform behind the DateCheck app launched by Intelius a year earlier.
In 2010, BeenVerified released a sex offender tracking app for both iOS and Android platforms.[7] The app uses public records such as sex offender registries, geolocation services, and augmented reality to show users the location of sex offenders.[7]
The company released another app in 2011 called "Number Guru", a free reverse phone number look up service.[6] [13]
BeenVerified ranked #26 on the Inc. 5000 list for 2013, including being named the fastest growing company in New York. The company reported revenues of $13.7 million in 2012.[14]
In 2015, BeenVerified launched a caller ID and reverse phone lookup app for the Apple Watch.[15]
BeenVerified uses traditional background methods in addition to Web 2.0 and social networking to return results to a requesting user.[16] Users enter the name and/or email address of the person they are requesting information on and are given information from public records and other privately licensed databases of public record information.[9] [16] The Background Check App released allows users to run background checks with a smartphone.[17] The app uses names and email addresses to run background checks through its website, with the capability of checking anyone in a user's contact list.[12] The services at BeenVerified are not free, and users must pay for access through either a one- or three-month billing plan.
BeenVerified has an opt-out process for anyone wanting to remove their own information from the site.[17] The company has also come under scrutiny in the past for its opt-out process[17] and works with companies to remove their information upon request.[18]