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I was going to use my mod points today, but can't pass this up. Having worked previously at an insurance company I can give you a little info here.

Insurance companies are not (automatically) discriminating against you based on age simply because you are charged a higher premium due to your age.

The first step is insurance companies generally create many virtual "buckets", if you will, and assign to each of those buckets the various combinations of age/gender/driving history/other stuff/etc that you could have.

For example, possibilities for age might be 15,16,17,18,19-20,21-24,25-34,35-54,55-64,65-74,75-89,90+;That gives you 12 possibilities. 2 possibilities for gender. Pulling a number out of my butt lets say there are 14 possible points on driving record (by insurance guidelines, not DMV guidelines, they may be different) so thats 15 combinations there. Then maybe boolean for whether or not you have had a dui. So thats 12x2x15x2, or 720 possible "buckets".

This is obviously oversimplified because I don't care enough to do it right or actually post underwriting guidelines. But what type of care you drive would also be part of the combo, along with other things.

Each bucket is assigned a "risk factor" based on comprehensive data that the company has on past losses for others in the same buckets, and likely based on data that they have purchased from 3rd parties that keep centralized info from many insurance companies.

The buckets are then assigned premium based on the risk factor. Viola.

Disclaimer: some of this may be out of order, they may assign the premium cost to the risk factor up front and then assign that number to the combination, blah blah blah, again I don't care about getting it 100% right, because>>

2nd Disclaimer: I was the network technician, not an underwriter.

Oh and as I said, they are not automatically discriminating against you, due to the above. However, it is possible, though highly unlikely due to the regulations they face from their state, that they could discriminate against you based on age grossly and above the above allowable calculations.

Now this may not be a big deal considering Joe Dogooder is an upstanding citizen so he would have nothing to hide. John Cheatman is an altogether different story.

It's not a big deal, and most of us have nothing to hide that isn't already hidden, so what exactly is your point? John has been having an affair on his wife of 30 years, and he happens to be a millionaire. Wonder what he'd do if someone threw together a video portrait of his weekly (Thursday 7:00pm to be exact) sexcapade with his executive assistant. I wonder how much he'd be willing to pay to stop that from being exposed. Hell, one could make a fortune between him and his wife if they wanted.

Oh, so you're saying that the information can be used to obtain video of someone cheating on their wife? Well how about this, you shouldn't cheat on your wife? No? We should all be allowed to do that? Ok how about this... most people who are considering cheating on their wife, know not to use their EZ Pass, pay for everything in cash and keep no receipts. Also, I've driven in a ton of cars with onstar and they only start recording anything when you press that button, tracking information isn't recorded every time you get into the car, I can't call up onstar and ask them where my friend's car was yesterday at 5:30 (and neither can he.) Besides, a private investigator can just track a person all day, most people don't know when someone is tailing them (if the PI is good at what they do) and they can still video tape the whole thing.

Jack K. Politician is another upstanding guy. He's running for his local seat against Todd R. Hardstone who's known to pull of some dirty campaign tricks. Hardstone's team decided they were going all out this time leaving no digital trick undone. Forging email headers to make it seem as if Jack was sending out racist comments, creating all sorts of digital chaos. If you think it doesn't happen in government, think again. It's actually done with ease for those in the computer security field, and for anyone who would be willing to invest a few hours time learning the ropes. Aside from that, money talks, meaning someone can hire a "lone gunman" if you will to do the deeds for you.

So what exactly does forging e-mail headers have to do with anything else you mentioned about privacy? I see no relation at all so I'm just going to ignore that and pretend it wasn't mentioned.

Pretty boring writing so far you could say, surely it is, I mean people are all good hearted they would never do such a thing. Who would want to track someone like that. Well, did you know Choicepointclaims to have about 16 billion records on American citizens? 16 billion is a hell of a lot considering there are only about 300 million citizens, so average that out for yourself and ask yourself, what do they have on me?

Ok that's 53 records on average. They would have less information on me since I don't fill out little registration cards and all that, and I never give out real information. So my number would be much lower, but lets say that is 53. That could be anything, from my level of education, my job category, my name, address, phone number, all that stuff. Now if I wanted to find out what that stuff was I'd go here and make a request on my own personal info. Then I'd read it and go "Oh, that was very boring."

Where is the privacy you ask? You gave it away. No one else but you.

Well, not really, I'm sitting in my room right now, no one who isn't watching me knows what I am doing. No one has any idea what time I'm going to go to sleep. No one knows what I'm going to do tomorrow except for those people who will see me do it. So I have to ask you, when did I give away my privacy? Maybe you meant my sister. To let you know, she's the person who signs up for every supermarkets shoppers club cards, she fills out all those surveys o

or do you mean choicetrust? http://www.choicetrust.com/servlet/com.kx.cs.servl ets.CsServlet?usertype=c

I would expect that his group of people would know by now not to take everything they read in the news at face value. Since that does not seem to be the case, I would just like to correct several errors of fact in this blurb about the ChoicePoint incident. First of all, ChoicePoint did not get hacked. There was no breach of our network and no internal or customer information was compromised. Second, ChoicePoint is not a private firm; we are a public company and trade on NYSE as CPS. Third, I think it erroneous to call this a 'scandal' as ChoicePoint did nothing illegal. We ourselves were a victim of fraud, and we are working very closely with law enforcement to continue to track down and prosecute the perpetrators of this crime. Finally, we ourselves are, and have been for years, encouraging a national discussion on this industry and strongly support independent regulation.

As others have mentioned, we have notified about 145,000 people nationwide that their information might have been compromised and we have, at our own expense, purchased tri-bureau credit reports and a one year credit monitoring service for each of them. We also, as our CEO has said in interview, are not ruling anything out in terms of what we may do to further assist those who do fall victims of identity theft. Please, if you have more questions on what is going on and what ChoicePoint is doing about it please visit http://www.choicepoint.com/news/statement_0205_1.h tml

A couple other bits of note:

There are laws in place, namely the FCRA (Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act), that do already regulate what constitutes permissible purposes for information to be disclosed. We operate very strictly by these regulations already in place. In addition, the FACT Act, which went into effect in 2004, mandates that consumers may obtain free copies of their reports and may, as they always have been able to, contest items they believe to be inaccurate. You can visit www.choicetrust.com to review your personal records kept by ChoicePoint.

And for those of you who are interested in some of the work ChoicePoint does to fulfill our vision of creating a safer and more secure society through the responsible use of information:

-We, as previously noted, operate the CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) database to which insurance underwriters contribute claims data so that they can more accurately assess risk to keep premiums low.
-We operate Volunteer Select, a service for non profit organizations. Background checks may be purchased at cost (ChoicePoint makes no profit) on volunteers to ensure that a convicted child molester two weeks out of jail will not be able to volunteer to work with young children (a real example).
-We operate ChoicePoint Cares which funds DNA testing to solve cold cases and process rape kits that local municipalities cannot afford to process on their own. Our funding has lead to several convictions and has helped to free those wrongly imprisoned.
-We operate ADAM an alert program that had lead to the safe return of more than 800 missing and kidnapped children.

Actually, you can receive a copy of your profile.

This page on the ChoicePoint web site points to Choicetrust. (Insert joke about the mane choice here)

From the Choicepoint web site:

FACT Act Compliance

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) was enacted in 2003 and amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a federal law that regulates, in part, who is permitted to access your consumer report information and how it can be used. The FACT Act entitles consumers to obtain one free copy of his/her consumer file from certain consumer reporting agencies during each 12-month period.

ChoicePoint has three separate companies that maintain consumer files that are subject to the free disclosure requirement: C.L.U.E. Inc. maintains information on insurance claims histories, ChoicePoint WorkPlace Solutions Inc. maintains employment history information, and Resident Data Inc. maintains tenant history information. Each of these companies designed an easy process for consumers to request their free file disclosure.

Please note that a consumer file does not necessarily exist for you with any one of the three companies. For example, if you have not filed a claim with your auto or home insurance company during the last five years, we will not have a report on you. If you have not applied for employment with a customer that we serve, we likely will not have an employment history report on you. If you have not submitted a residential lease application with a customer that we serve, we will likely not have a tenant history report on you.
To request copies of your claims history report, visit www.ChoiceTrust.com or call 1-866-312-8076.

To request a copy of your employment history report, call 1-866-312-8075.

To request a copy of your tenant history report, call 1-877-448-5732.

If you would prefer to send your request by mail, please send your name and address to the appropriate address below. A report request form will be sent to you to complete and return.

For claims history reports:

ChoicePoint Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 105295
Atlanta, GA 30348

For employment history reports:

ChoicePoint WorkPlace Solutions Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 105292
Atlanta, GA 30348

For tenant history reports:

Resident Data Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 850126
Richardson, TX 75085-0126

If you're a patient, check ChoiceTrust.