Oneupweb Reviews: TrueScoop: Free Public Information Facebook App

Have you considered running a background check on Facebook yet?

With information at our fingertips it’s commonplace to Google a person’s name when their resume looks promising. If you like what the search results reveal, you bring him or her in for an interview. But why wait until after that first interview to find out more about your potential hire?

TrueScoop is a new Facebook app launched earlier this month by Wyoming-based investment firm Arbor Venture and i2we, a California start up founded by Karel Baloun, the first Senior Engineer at Facebook.

The purpose of this app is to give you access to search 20 million records and a million photos of personal and criminal history free of charge. Besides access to the national sex offender’s list and criminal records, such as misdemeanors and felonies, you also have access to Page 6 news from the New York Post.

In other words, if you’re company has a strict no drugs policy, TrueScoop can tell you whether that potential employee was ever arrested for smoking pot and if anyone famous was involved.
Criminal information is public record, but usually comes with some sort of third party fee. TrueScoop gives you the bare bones information free of charge—courtesy of a backend database powered by i2we.

Here’s what results look like.

You can search about people without them knowing and then share your findings with other people on Facebook. Maybe it’s the old journalist in me, but I love information at my fingertips. My concern is whether this information is accurate. How often is it updated?

Accuracy of information wasn’t discussed in the press release about TrueScoop, or on i2we’s website. AllFacebook does warn people that information is more than likely not up-to-date and to be cognizant that you may upset a few people.

While I like the idea of information at my fingertips, I know that information needs verification. And I would encourage employers or people looking to checkout their date’s history to verify their facts.

Also, I don’t like that someone can share this information without a notification to the person whose history is being shared. Talk about your own personal public relations nightmare if you smoked pot (like our friend at the AllFacebook blog) and were caught ten years ago, but haven’t done it since.

While I like the overall concept, I’m not thrilled with the execution. To me it sounds like a dangerous game of telephone with a huge potential for rumors that will go viral, taking someone’s reputation along with it.

Official Oneupweb Review: Oneup Thumbs-Down