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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).
Anyone got a torrent of it?
I am sure glad I don't drive a lexus.
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
Make the CEO, CTO and Customer Support manager provide their own personal information in their own databases.
This comes on the heals of rival Check Point being breached for 145,000 profiles last month in a similar case. Better check yourself.
Can someone post the list?
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.
Check yourself? What does that mean? Check that you haven't been stolen? What if you haven't - what can you do to stop it from happening after you check?
These corporations are destroying the value of our essential property: our identities. They demand we give our personal info, without enforcing our copyrights to prevent its being disseminated, then let it get stolen by people who will use it to damage us. When someone rips me off with some personal info they stole from some negligent data warehouse, the warehouse should be liable for my damages, including the work to recover my losses, and the defamation that will inevitably ripple through the endlessly interlinked online infosystems forever. And when compromised, they should pay my identity theft insurance premiums. This free value we deliver to them has a cost when it's abused, and such insecurity abuse is now obviously standard practice.
--
make install -not war
With phishing, spyware, database theft... people picking thru your trash...
How long before ANYONE'S identity has not been stolen?
Seriously.
Why not just put a fraud alert on everyone's credit reports and let's get it over with. You want to apply for credit? You'll have to jump through a few more hoops...
The system as it is now is painfully broken.
How long it will take someone to build a complete (may be 90%)databese of all americans thet will include SSN, DL#, Home address & Phone # etc. If this is the rate of privacy the thefts.
How much it will be worth it and to whome it will worth it.
It can't be theft if the data is still there, right?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I am a man, not a number!
Signed, #6
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19
Most organizations have some sort of regulatory body. Does the data harvesting industry have this?
Perhaps this should turn some heads in Congress now that we've got multiple cases of this insecurity. The question is, is Congress going to be able to do anything about it or will it be the same situation as with government computer security: Right now they just say "your security is bad" but that doesn't always fix the problem.
I know only the name of my phone company, for example, but I have no clue who they contract with for data processing or billing or marketing. How can we ever really find out if a security problem at one company affects us? These back-end companies are generally companies that serve niche markets and practically no one has heard of them.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I don't want a bunch of strangers reading my dossiers (and I have had exactly this - I was affected by the ChoicePoint scam). If I had to approve every offering or sale of my data, I would have easily been able to block said scam.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
It was information on 32,000 (anybody want to bet it was 32,768?) members of the public, not customers. To bad, in a way -- Lexis is used most by lawyers, judges, congresspeople and so on -- had the Lexis customer data been hacked and say all the judges on the 5th Circuit or the Ohio congressional delegation had their identities stolen as a result, you'd probably see reform a whole lot faster.
In this Homeland paranoia age where everything that is in the database must be right, you certainly don't want to see government ID numbers getting used in fraud. How do you go about getting a new Social Security number when the existing one is being used in fraud?
...people willingly give away their personal property, their data, their "IP", then these other companies own it. If people just insisted that THEIR data was THEIR property and took care of it with that sort of mindset backed op with some rational laws, then this wouldn't happen, and these companies with the data warehouses wouldn't even exist like they do now.
.0001% people ever even tried one time to keep their data to themselves and to insist to government that this should be so. They never gave a care, to busy with entertainments or whatever to even lift a phone to make a call to a congress critter, or to say NO to some company "asking" for data they don't need really for a business transaction. Mass conditioning that it's socially cool to get ripped off. Shazzam, the world is full of thieves, maybe more people will stop and think about who they give their property to and why they give it away for what purposes now. Maybe it's a better idea to just retain ownership? One law would do it, too, your data is yours, it shouldn't be necessary to transfer ownership of your data just to do business someplace.
Most people don't think that way, but people who start corporations DO think that way, they recognize valuable property when they see it, and make billions off of millions of people voluntarily giving away their property to them.
If it wasn't stolen from you directly, it's sure not your property anymore. If you donate your old TV to the thriftstore and they get broken into and that TV is stolen, well, "your" TV didn't get stolen, their TV got stolen. If you want to own and keep possession of your TV, well, don't give it away in the first place then. Simple concept, just apply it to your data. It's similar enough for conversational purposes anyway. "IP" ownership is bigtime in business, there's zero reason everyone's personal data "IP" shouldn't be theirs in total.
So people can't really say "their" stuff got stolen, some big companies stuff got stolen, they gave up their rights to full and complete ownership a long time ago. they already got "social engineered" out of ownership, just they don't realise it, or just don't care enough to think it through. Now that same data property down the pike got social engineered again, oh well, guess the original owner didn't care enough to hang on to it.
but, but..we can't live in society without giving our property away! Yep, that's the point, much less than
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?