TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Lots of Personal Reports Leaked Out From Choicepoint

Lots of Personal Reports Leaked Out From Choicepoint

Danny Burstein (dannyb@panix.com)
Thu, 17 Feb 2005 03:18:19 -0500

"Choicepoint" is one of the major accumulators of persnal info about
just about everybody in the US. It's used by credit agencies,
businesses, landlords, law enforcement, oh, and also, identity
thieves.

It looks like they've been a bit careless.

Here are excerpts from their own statement, followed by a comment from
EPIC:

"ChoicePoint has notified approximately 35,000 California residents
that their information may have been accessed by a very small number
of criminals posing as legitimate companies to gain access to
information about consumers. Additional disclosures will be
forthcoming to approximately 110,000 consumers outside of California
whose information also may have been accessed. Law enforcement
officials informed us today that their current investigation has
identified approximately 750 people who have been the victims of
identity theft in this incident.

"It appears that consumers names, addresses, Social Security numbers
and credit reports may have been viewed by these individuals, who
posed as legitimate business customers with a lawful purpose for
accessing information about individuals which, in fact, was not the
case...

http://www.choicepoint.com/news/statement_0205_1.html

and EPIC:

" ... issued notices to over 30,000
California residents that their personal information may have been
accessed by criminals with access to the Choicepoint's information
products. Individuals outside California may have been affected too, but
the company is not obligated to disclose security breaches to residents of
other states. As recently as two weeks ago, EPIC again warned the Federal
Trade Commission about unjustified access to commercial databases and
questioned the adequacy of Choicepoint's auditing procedures ...

http://www.epic.org
http://www.epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
=09=09 dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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