‘Online ads using racial profiling’

Instantcheckmate.com which labels itself the internets leading authority on background checks, is one of many data brokers that use and sell data for a variety of purposes. Picture: www.instantcheckmate.com

Dr Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout her medical career.

Yet someone searching the web for the Washington State physician might well come across an internet ad suggesting she may have an arrest record.

“Latisha Smith, arrested?” reads one such advertisement.

Another says: “Latisha Smith Truth… Check Latisha Smith’s Arrests.”

Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the “internet’s leading authority on background checks”, placed both ads. A statistical analysis of the company’s advertising has found it has disproportionately used ad copy including the word “arrested” for black-identifying names, even when a person has no arrest record.

Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science.

After learning that her own name had popped up in an “arrested?” ad when a colleague was searching for one of her publications, she ran more than 120 000 searches for names primarily given to either black or white children, testing ads delivered for 2 400 real names 50 times each. (The author of this story is a Harvard University fellow collaborating with Sweeney on a book about the business of personal data.)

Ebony Jefferson, for example, often turns up an instantcheckmate.com ad reading: “Ebony Jefferson, arrested?”, but an ad triggered by a search for Emily Jefferson would read: “We found Emily Jefferson.”

Searches for randomly chosen black-identifying names such as Deshawn Williams, Latisha Smith or Latanya Smith often produced the “arrested?” headline or ad text with the word “arrest”, whereas other less ethnic-sounding first names matched with the same surnames typically did not.

“As an African-American, I’m used to profiling like that,” said Smith. “I think it’s horrendous that they get away with it.”

Instantcheckmate.com declined to comment. The company’s founder and managing partner, Kristian Kibak, did not respond to e-mails and phone calls over a period of several months, and other employees referred calls to management.

Company officials also declined to comment when visited twice at their call centre in Las Vegas. Former employees said they had signed nondisclosure agreements that barred them from speaking.

Instantcheckmate.com is one of many data brokers that use and sell data for a variety of purposes. The field is attracting growing attention, from government and consumers concerned about possible abuse. Rapid advances in technology have opened up all sorts of opportunities for commercialisation of data.

Anyone can sell arrest records as long as they stay clear of US legal limitations such as using the information to determine creditworthiness, insurance or job suitability.

Companies that compete with instantcheckmate.com include intelius.com and mylife.com

An examination of internet advertising starting last March as well as Sweeney’s study did not find any rival companies advertising background searches on individual names along racial lines.

In its own marketing, Instantcheckmate.com sums up its mission like this: “Parents will no longer need to wonder about whether their neighbours, friends, home day care providers, a former spouse’s new love interest or preschool providers can be trusted to care for their children responsibly.”

According to preliminary findings of Sweeney’s research, searches of names assigned primarily to black babies, such as Tyrone, Darnell, Ebony and Latisha, generated “arrest” in the instantcheckmate.com ad copy between 75 percent and 96 percent of the time.

Names assigned at birth primarily to whites, such as Geoffrey, Brett, Kristen and Anne, led to more neutral copy, with the word “arrest” appearing between zero and 9 percent of the time.

A few names fell outside of these patterns: Brad, a name predominantly given to white babies, produced an ad with the word “arrest” 62 percent to 65 percent of the time. Sweeney found that ads appear regardless of whether the name has an arrest record attached to it.

Blacks make up about 13 percent of the US population, but account for 28 percent of the arrests on the FBI’s most recent annual crime statistics.

Internet advertising based on millions of name pairs has only existed in recent years, so targeting ads along racial lines raises new legal questions.

Experts say the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which this year assessed an $800 000 (R7.1 million) penalty against personal data site, Spokeo.com, for different reasons (related to the use of data for job-vetting purposes), would be the institution best placed to review Instant Checkmate’s practices.

The FTC enforces regulations against unfair or deceptive business practices.

A deceptive claim that would be more likely to get people to purchase a product than they would otherwise would be a typical reason the FTC might act against a company, said one FTC official.

For example, authorities could take action against a firm that makes misleading claims, suggesting a product such as records exist when they do not.

“It’s disturbing,” Julie Brill, an FTC commissioner, said of Instant Checkmate’s advertising. “I don’t know if it’s illegal… It’s something that we'd need to study to see if any enforcement action is needed.”

Instant Checkmate’s Kibak, who is in his late 20s, works out of a San Diego office near the Pacific Ocean. The son of a California biology professor, he did not respond to repeated phone calls and e-mails seeking comment about his business.

“We would consider the answers to most of your questions trade secrets and therefore would not be comfortable disclosing that information,” Joey Rocco, Kibak’s partner according to the firm’s Nevada state registration, said in an e-mail.

Sweeney’s analysis found that some instantcheckmate.com ads hint at arrest records when the firm’s database has no record of any arrest for that name, as is the case with her own name.

In other cases, such as that of Latisha Smith, the company does have arrest records for some people by that name, although not for the doctor of hypobaric medicine.

Laura Beatty, an internet marketing inc expert in helping companies achieve prominent placement in web searches, said instantcheckmate.com appeared to choose its ads based on combinations of thousands of different first and last names and then segment them based on the first names.

“There does look like there is some definite profiling going on here,” she said.

“In the searches that I looked at, it seemed like the more Midwestern-sounding the name was, the less likely it was to have either any advertisement at all or to have something that was more geared around the arrest or criminal background.” – Reuters