Private company

inome

American public records business

Intelius, Inc. is an American public records business headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It provides information services, including people and property search, background checks and reverse phone lookup. Users also have the ability to perform reverse address lookups to find people using Intelius’ services and an address.² It was founded by Naveen Jain.¹ Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2003Founded¹

HeadquartersBellevue¹
Websitewww.intelius.com

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Intelius, Inc. is an American public records business headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It provides information services, including people and property search, background checks and reverse phone lookup. Users also have the ability to perform reverse address lookups to find people using Intelius’ services and an address. Intelius, founded by former InfoSpace executives, was started in 2003. It is owned and operated by PeopleConnect, Inc.²

The story

Founded by Naveen Jain in 2003.¹

History

Intelius was founded in 2003 by six former Infospace executives: Naveen Jain, Kevin Marcus, Niraj Shah, Ed Petersen, Chandan Chauhan and John Arnold. Intelius submitted plans for an initial public offering on January 10, 2008, but withdrew in October 2010.

On December 5, 2006, Intelius acquired Bothell, Washington-based IntelliSense Corporation, a background check, fingerprinting and drug screening company. The acquisition of Intellisense eventually became TalentWise. TalentWise was then spun off to Intelius stockholders in May 2013. On April 30, 2009, Intelius acquired Spock, a people-oriented search engine.

In November 2011, Intelius purchased the Facebook genealogy app Family Builder. In 2012, Intelius was renamed "inome" to serve as the corporate umbrella, and the Intelius name was given to the division focusing on background checks. By 2015, inome was doing business once again as Intelius. On July 1, 2015, Intelius was acquired by private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. As part of the transaction, Abani Heller replaced Jain as the company's CEO. On August 12, 2015, PeopleConnect Holdings Inc., bought the social media business Classmates.com for $30 million. The early social media site Classmates.com was created in 1995 to connect school, work and military colleagues.

Information services

Intelius has created an app available for both Android and iOS that allows users to perform people searches, reverse phone lookups and background check services directly from their mobile device.

PeopleConnect operates four people search websites including Intelius.

From Wikipedia’s article on Intelius, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.³

Leadership

Who has led inome, and when. Pick a name to see everywhere that person has worked.

FounderNaveen Jain¹

Controversies and legal

Class action lawsuits

On September 30, 2009, before the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, a class action lawsuit was filed alleging that Intelius automatically enrolled California consumers into programs of its partner, Adaptive Marketing, without permission. The complaint showed evidence as to how the defendants allegedly automatically charged California consumers' credit cards for "memberships" and intentionally frustrated the victims' abilities to dispute the charges.

On October 19, 2009, in the Federal Court in Seattle, Intelius was accused of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act. In the class action lawsuit Lee v. Intelius Inc., filed by Ohio resident Donovon Lee and Washington resident Bruce Keithly, it was alleged that after purchasing background reports through Intelius, the plaintiffs were each charged recurring $19.95 monthly fees for multiple subscription services which were not requested from both Intelius and its partner, Adaptive Marketing. Plaintiffs sought damages for the Class alleging deceptive practices against Intelius. On March 7, 2013, the United States District Court ruled in favor of the Plaintiff Class. Intelius appealed to the US Court of Appeals (9th Cir.), which on December 16, 2013, also ruled in Lee's [et al.] favor for the Class as follows: "We hold that Lee did not enter into a contract with Adaptive to purchase the Family Safety Report, and did not enter into a contract with Adaptive to arbitrate. We therefore affirm the district court."

After losing this appeal, Intelius sought arbitration with the Plaintiffs and subsequently agreed to two settlements of this lawsuit in favor of the class (one for Mr. Lee and one for Mr. Keithly on different case merits) resulting in a combined $10.5 million settlement for Class Plaintiffs.