Slashdot Mirror
LexisNexis Breach Worse Than Believed
Rollie Hawk writes "Worldwide law and news sifter LexisNexis has some bad news of its own this time. Actually, "bad" might sharply understate the situation.
More than a month after disclosing information on a database breach that led to 32,000 customer IDs being stolen, the results of an internal review showed that in fact the damage was nearly ten times worse than previously thought.
LexisNexis is already "offering free support services, including credit bureau reports, credit monitoring for one year and fraud insurance" to the nearly 300,000 additional victims it will soon be contacting, according to a Reed Elsevier statement to the Regulatory News Service. So far, no identity thefts have been reported by earlier victims, at least some of whom had private information such as addresses and Social Security numbers unwittingly divulged."
Somewhere between -5 and 5 months ago/from now.
The FTC is already requiring the credit agencies to give you a free report every year, with implementation rolling out since 1 Dec 2004 depending on where you live. Some states have required this for years.
I took a class in grad school on the general legal environment in engineering (mostly IP issues), but for part of our legal research, we were given access to Lexus Nexus by one of their sales reps. Part of us being given access was that we had to listen to the rep talk about the company. I questioned whether ornot the responsability of keeping such a large database with such personal info in it was a nitemarish liability, and was told by the rep that if anyone wanted to sue them "I'ts a company full of lawyers- good luck".
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Their biggest database is just public records, so they have your information if you ever took out a loan, bought a house, have a drivers license, been arrested, or walked near an ATM.
That is not what got abused, another database owned by Seisint (Only recently purchased by LexisNexis) was the target.
It was a social engineering attack.
This sig is the express property of someone.
Have you used Lexis-Nexis? Identity loss notwithstanding, the amount of important data available in one place is fantastic. While one might be able to gather bits and peices (or eventually the entire set) L-N has it ready. Not to mention ready access to all of the "archives" sections of newspapers and wire services from around the world, ready to be searched. I regret the day I have to leave University and my included L-N access.
Most of their data content (as opposed to news articles) comes from government agencies, is in the public domain, and is just a Google search away.
That's simply not true. As someone uses Lexis-Nexis' public records and data content every day, as well as google, there's a lot of information that isn't available on the free internet. While a lot of it IS in the public domain, it's not centralized, and it's not updated, and it's not reliable. If you have some source publically and freely available, I'd love to know about it.