ChoicePoint Identity Theft Fallout Widens

dstates writes "A unique California law forced ChoicePoint to reveal that a break-in had compromised accounts revealing personal information on 40,000 southern californians and leading to more than 750 cases of identity theft. The company initially denied that the break-in compromised consumers outside of California, but CNN is now reporting that 110,000 accounts nationally have been compromised. 'The irony appears to be that ChoicePoint has not done its own due diligence in verifying the identities of those 'businesses' that apply to be customers,' said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. 'They're not doing the very thing they claim their service enables their customers to achieve.'"

Comments

How to find out what they know about you

[doublem]

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

Read Between the Lines People!

[darkonc]

Nope. They never denied that there were non-Californians affected. All that they confirmed is that California law required them to inform the 35,000 affected CA residents. Given that CA represents about 10% of the US population, I took that to mean that there were about 300,000 affected US residnts.

That they're announcing that they're 'only' informing 100,000 other US residents can be explained in any of the following ways:

• The attacks were focused on CA residents, for some reason.
• They have only identified 100,000 people this week, and there's another 3 weeks of work to do.
• They are willfully underreporting the actual numbers and hoping that nobody will do the research to prove them wrong.
• Given that the law doesn't require them to inform everybody who got hit, they're only informing those non CA residents who got hit the worst. 2/3 of the people who would have been informed under CA law will never know...

The most interesting information is between the lines. Learn to read there more often. ("Diplomacy is the art of telling a lion 'Nice kitty kitty' while you search for a big rock. Media relations is doing for a company what a diplomat does for a country.")

Part of a Larger Problem

[privacyprof]

The ChoicePoint security fiasco is part of a larger problem -- the fact that companies dealing in personal data are not providing adequate security and that they are not well regulated. What makes matters worse is that ChoicePoint is increasingly supplying its information to the government, including the FBI and IRS.

Back in December 2004, I along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote a letter to the FTC arguing that the FTC should open an investigation of ChoicePoint: http://www.epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/fcraltr12. 16.04.html

This letter might be of interest, as it explains the extensiveness of the data companies like ChoicePoint have and how it affects people's lives.

I also argued in my new book, THE DIGITAL PERSON: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE, that identity theft and other privacy problems are caused not by technology but by irresponsible business practices. Everybody seems to be saying that in today's world of information technology, privacy is dead. The culprit is technology, and since it is foolish to believe that it can be stopped, there's little hope. I argue that this isn't the case. The culprit is government and business practices. There's a "digital person" that is a counterpart to people, not composed of flesh and blood but of bits and bytes of personal information gathered together in databases. The digital person is a representation of ourselves in the world of computers. But this is only part of the story. Increasingly, decisions about us are made by looking to our digital person. What happens to our digital person in the digital world is increasingly having effects in realspace to our real person. It is this problem that I explore, and I argue that the answer is regulating government and businesses - not technology. For those interested in learning more, I encourage you to read the FTC letter as well as my book. Here's the book's website: http://www.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Solove-Digit al-Person.htm

Re:You know what would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that ChoicePoint HQ is Alpharetta GA, and Derek V. Smith is the CEO, then it's quite possible that

• Derek V. Smith (CEO)
  Phone: (770) 752-0881
  Address: 15120 N Valleyfield Rd, Alpharetta, GA 30004

is your man. Also available via Google:

• David Lee (Executive VP)
  Phone: (770) 594-7838, (770) 594-9090
  Address: 230 Ridge Point Ct, Alpharetta, GA 30022
• David W. Davis (Corp. Sec and VP, Government Affairs)
  Phone: (678) 366-9445
  Address: 3325 Cedar Farms Ct, Alpharetta, GA 30004

So, if any um... parents of those 822 missing children recovered would like to call and, uh... thank them, well, there you go.