Today's Choicepoint Roundup
Google is running an ad when you search on Choicepoint: “ChoicePoint letter says your identity stolen? Learn your rights. www.jameshoyer.com” On clicking through, its just a form, asking someone to contact you. Renaissancemen has a good roundup, including the fact that only 5% or perpetrators are arrested, and a pointer to Kevin Drum arguing for more consumer control. (The industry will successfully argue that they can’t identify customers like that, and it would be too expensive if they did.) The Seattle Times points out that Choicepoint will be rescreening 17,000 customers.
Wired has a story by Kim Zetter:
Legal experts say that people who suffered losses as a result of the breach will find it difficult to get compensation from ChoicePoint for selling their personal data to con artists, even if the victims can prove that ChoicePoint was negligent in screening customers who purchased their data. That’s because courts have been unwilling to penalize companies when victims of identity theft are not their direct customers.
Michelle Malkin has a roundup, which includes pointers two comments from a private investigator on the value of that industry and the danger of knee-jerk reactions (with more on why PIs are good for you). I am actually very sympathetic to the problem of bad law. It’s too bad that Choicepoint has claimed they’re not covered under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If they hadn’t taken that position, they’d find it easier to oppose new laws.
Finally, Jackson’s Junction has an interesting insider’s view, including:
I have always known that fraudulent companies were finding ways to obtain credit reports. How have I known this you may ask? Simple. One of the major bureaus issues a list of companies they have banned for improperly obtaining credit reports each month. This list is sent out to all resellers of credit reports letting us know not to do business with these companies.
One thing to keep in mind is that ChoicePoint doesn’t simply re-sell credit reports, although that may be part of their business that I am unaware of. A larger part of their business, that which applies to this situation, is the selling of credit-header information. This means that the people who purhcase the information get address, name and telephone information off of credit reports. Not financial information.
People purchasing the info do not see your credit rating nor do they see your account numbers. All they see is your name, address and phone number.
I think that’s an important discintcion to make.
ChoicePoint Update
Emergent Chaos has a round-up of ChoicePoint related stories today.
When reading some of those comments I saw where there is some confusion as to what ChoicePoint actually sells to its clients. One thing to keep in mind is that ChoicePoint doesn’t …
Checkpoint – 700 identities attacked
As predicted, http://www.identitytheft911.com/education/articles/art20050218choicepoint.htm“>the states ganged up on Choicepoint and forced them to agree to notify all the victims of the identity thefts. Of the 145k or so identified sets of identity, 7…
More ChoicePoint
Following up from my previous post, I thought I
Anyone out there who is a current ChoicePoint employee, please contact me offline at hweber@ap.org.
Harry Weber-The Associated Press