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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.'"
There was nowhere to sit. Well there was one place to sit; it just didn't look like a good place. The man on the end was obese and the guy against the window did not look friendly at all. He was scratching out letters into the daily crossword and he had earbuds connected to a radio, no doubt listening to Howard Stern. Shannon looked at the available seat again and meekly asked the obese man to get up so she and all of her gear could get in to the only seat left.
Big day today, Shannon reminded herself as she slipped her thin body past the obese man. Oh my god, was that his thing? He'd stretched his hips out to "accidentally" bump into her as she got past him. As she sat with her bag on her lap her practice clarinet, a long plastic tube that looked like a clarinet but made no sound, slid out of the bag onto the surly looking man against the window. With out even looking up he handed it back to Shannon. As she sat she noticed him looking at her.
With a shot at the pit orchestra for the play 42nd street Shannon had dressed a little funkier than she would for her usual job, teaching woodwinds to eighth graders. Today her skirt was shorter, and faded denim. Her shirt was a snug metallic material with a plain white men's Oxford over it. It was the boots that made the outfit funky though. They were obligatorily black but they had a tongue frontispiece and a large buckled strap across the calf. The heels were the chunky kind all the girls were wearing now. Her red hair was tussled as always and she tried leaving her schoolmarm glasses home but several near misses with walls changed her mind. She decided not to wear any stockings and her pale freckled skin contrasted with her black boots.
The surly man leaned forward so far that his head was against the back of the seat in front of him. He kept looking at her boots. It was odd for Shannon to receive attention like this. It made her feel uncomfortable, but at the same time it felt good. The attention was defraying the guilt she felt spending 150USD on the boots. She tugged at her skirt, but not to pull it down, to pull it up. She watched his eyes wander up her thighs.
No one at Branford Middle School had given her such lecherous looks before. He pulled his right ear bud out of his ear and smiled. Mr. Surly looked like Mr. GQ now. Shannon felt a wave of intense warmth flush her body. In 33 years a smile had never done that to her. Life in conservative Connecticut simply wasn't like that. Even in the rougher middle class sections she grew up in as her father moved from military contract job to the next. Certainly she'd dated, even seriously but her love of music always won out over the men in her life.
"So you play clarinet?"
Shannon was dumbstruck, unable to talk to the beautiful man speaking to her. She regained most of her composure and managed to utter, "I teach."
"I used to teach music, guitar though. Mostly to boys who wanted to be Jimmy Page," he added with another perfect smile.
Shannon unconsciously stroked her smooth plastic clarinet. He noticed.
"What sends you to Manhattan?"
"I, I am going to an audition for an orchestra pit."
"What do you like about woodwinds so much?"
He wasn't even touching her but she was getting the oddest urges. She wanted to grab him by the face and kiss him with her deft tongue. She wanted touch him; it was becoming an imperative for her. There was another hour and a half left in the train ride to Penn Station. The words slipped out of her mouth as if she was no longer in control of what she said.
"I just like having a vibrating reed on my lips, in my wet mouth," she said leaning towards him. She shifted her weight onto her left hip and crossed her right leg over her left trying to quell the urgent feeling between her legs. More of her thighs were revealed to him. The sudden brushes of the obese man's arm on her ass made her gasp in a breathy inhale.
"Really?" Asked the man driving Shannon insane.
"There's something about the wa
Damn, I wish I had a beer...
/. articles, I don't like being alive anymore. You know that feeling of every one being "out to get you". Geez, look at the articles today! Spyware, exploits, terrorists blowing us up, global warming, security holes in communication databases, and identity theft...
After reading today's
I LOVE AMERICA!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!