[3] The primary purpose of the website is to reconnect with old friends and classmates, which is related to the site's tagline "Making the World a Smaller Place."
United Online CEO Mark Goldston said the acquisition of "The Names Database is a great addition to Classmates.com and furthers our overall mission of connecting people.
"[9] As of 2013, United Online no longer mentions the company in its Form 10-K annual report, except once to say it "excludes" in its "active accounts" calculation.
[12] Like other social networks such as Hi5, Names Database has been criticized for being abnormally and intrusively aggressive at pressuring registrants to refer friends.
Upon registration, the site immediately asks you to refer friends and then checks the validity of any address you enter, attempting to disallow fraudulent information.
[15] Additionally, the site appears to try to collect only the minimal amount of information needed to find an old friend and classmate (name, birth year, email address and high school country with optional maiden name) as opposed to more invasive required information like gender, zip code and birthdate as found on other sites.
Excerpt from 'The Names Database' Terms of Use: 'You grant Opobox a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free right to (a) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat Your Information in any media now known or not currently known, and (b) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.