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Consumers Data Stolen from LexisNexis
LE UI Guy writes "Reuters is currently running a story regarding LexisNexis being tapped into by identity thieves who accessed up to 32,000 customer profiles. Information hit included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers. This comes on the heels of rival ChoicePoint being breached for 145,000 profiles last month in a similar case. Better check yourself." Update: 03/10 02:40 GMT by J : ChoicePoint's name corrected (and, it may be more than 145,000, they don't know).
Jesus! I've seen this mistake on the national news and now on slashdot. I thought the geeks would realize there is a difference.
Let me make it clear, CheckPoint makes security software, rfid badges and firewalls. They are not the ones who sell all of your information to credit card companies. CheckPoint has no info that you didn't give them. ChoicePoint is the one that fucked up!!!
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Checkpoint ( www.checkpoint.com ) makes firewall software. THEY HAD NO CUSTOMER INFROMATION STOLEN. please update the story and make sure the facts are correct - its pretty freaking rude to say a company lost data, especially an innocent company.
Choicepoint lost the data. not Checkpoint.
The article says that the data stolen was collected by Seisent, which is a company that LexisNexis/Reed Elsevier acquired recently. Because of this, I doubt that looking up the netcraft report for www.lexisnexis.com will tell you much about where that data is stored.
If you look up Seisint, you'll see Linux/Solaris servers.
I'm not sure how the two are really comparable as rivals. LexisNexis (along with their rival in the legal profession, http://www.westlaw.com/ ) Provide excellent (as well as very expensive with searches running at over $70 per minute) coverage of court cases, codes, laws, public records, etc, which are all immensely helpful to legal types. Sure they have public records containing some personal information, but very little that isn't already available as public information (so things such as deeds, criminal records, voter registrations, etc), and it's definately not their primary focus in life.
Your personal data, which are considered "facts", have no copyright and are not eligible for such. Collections of facts, however, are copyrightable. In one of the classic cases, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539, 556 (1985), the courts ruled that "No author may copyright facts or ideas. The copyright is limited to those aspects of the work -- termed 'expression' -- that display the stamp of the author's originality". However, compilations of facts, such as databases, were expressly mentioned in the Copyright Act of 1909, and again in the Copyright Act of 1976, and as such were copyrightable, even though they are nothing more than collections of facts, due to the "sweat of the brow" theory that the work sustained in creating the compilation justified its copyright.
However, this changed when the US Supreme Court clarified the matter, in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), that copyright requires originality, that facts are never original, that the copyright in a compilation does not extend to the facts it contains, and that a compilation is copyrightable only to the extent that it features an original selection, coordination, or arrangement.
However, IANAL, so take this with a pound of salt.
DSW's parent company, Retail Ventures, just issued the warning that thieves may have stolen credit card information for thousands of customers by hacking into the company's corporate database.
It only affects credit card customers who used their cards the past three months at more than 100 stores nationwide. There are at least eight locations in North Texas.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7137966/
oops.. http://www.turbulence.org/Works/swipe/request.html
Funny you mention them. In our firm, the two compete equally. Every time one of the two upgrade our site, the other follows shortly after. We are now up to a dedicated T1 each for both of them. They do everything, supply the router, install the lines, and pay for them including service. They have even installed dedicated printers in our library facility. All we do is provide a port on the PIX and modify the routes to direct the traffic to each of them. When they notice the router or the pipe going down, they call us within minutes. We have more bandwidth available to each of Westlaw and Lexis for our ~300 users then we have for overall internet access.
"No entry found for whome."
from dictionary.com
"whom
pron.
The objective case of who."
Also, the word "whom" is pretty much only used by people who want to sound smarter.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I had lexis for a while. now westlaw, but for the lexis service, I have no recollection of giving them my SS#. We had to give firm name, lawyers who would use it, credit card unless we wanted to pay by check. But SS# ... not that. Aside from a credit card number, everything they got on me is already in the phone book. The problem here is with their subsidiary which is trying to collect information without people's assent. The subsidiary should be sued to hell by anyone who is affected. The irony would be if the plaintiffs' lawyers did their research on Lexis. *wild cackling*
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Copyright simply does not protect facts, only expression, so no luck there. Trade secrets are probably out b/c you freely gave up the info. Probably have a plain old negligence suit, though, if you can show you were damaged.
"whom, pron.
Forms: [snip] 4-7 whome [snip]
1551 TURNER Herbal I. Kv, We haue no herbe in Englande that I knowe to whome all thes hole descriptions do agre."
From the same page:
"The objective case of WHO: no longer current in natural colloquial speech."
So while he might've been able to get away with 'to whome' 450 years ago, I don't ever recall 'worth' being a verb (at least not with his intended meaning). As a whole, the grammar (or lack thereof) of that post is fascinating. I hope he is not a native speaker.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Which federal law? I couldn't find anything about that from the SSA's website, but I did find this page:
When am I legally required to provide my Social Security number?:
Also, your SSN is required for more than just tax purposes, as you claimed:
(from the same page linked to above)
Finally, to the grandparent: yes, you can get a new SSN number assigned to you. Here's how:
How can I get a different Social Security number assigned to me?
These companies will not have any information on you as long as you do not have a job, own a home, rent an apartment, or have credit of any kind (car loans, credit cards, whatever). If any of the above apply to you, then you are in their database. I do agree that we need to protect our information, but unless you live in a shack in the mountains and have no contact with society, you have very little control over your information.